The Trouble with Prisons

I actually have no problem with the reasons mixing.

ISOLATION - Would you let a paedophile back out? It seems 90% of them reoffend. So they need to be isolated.

REABILITATION - Some people in jail are otherwise good people who make one mistake that deserves jail...rehabilitation is a distinct probability for them. Further, if you don't provide the chance for reabilitation, all many prisoners have left when they leave, is to offend again.

DETERENCE - Jail is a deterence for some. Others see it as a rite of passage, and others don't think about it when they commit the crime that sends them there.

That said, I think corporal punishment (that is corporal, not capital, which some people get mixed up when they hear 'corporal') is a better way to go for many offences (not all). Now, I don't mean chopping someones hand off for thieving, because people lose hands by accident, and they would be forever tarnished, but there are other ways - like tatooing 'thief' on the back of someones hand, or floggings that don't leave scars, or some other method. And for pedophiles, some method that causes impotence.

We at least need seperate facilities for these different goals. A place designed for deterence is not the best environment for rehabilitation.

The basic problem is that prison as a punishment for many of the crimes which land people there is absolutely counterproductive and most of that sort of crime would evaporate were we to end the "war on drugs(TM)". Ending the war on drugs would at least reduce prison populations to manageable levels.

another cause gunga and i agree on.

I have about four or five major or quasi-major issues with Republicans, and this is one of them. Pretty much everything demokkkrats ever try to do is some sort of an issue...

What are the other ones, Gunga?

The three biggest would be this question of prisons and the "war on drugs(TM)", "right2life(TM)", which I wish I'd never heard of, and this question of wanting to create some sort of a super country comprising Mexico, the US, and Canada, without any real thought as to who owns what, whose constitution or legal system will be adopted, or anything like that.

The whole problem is the phony "war on drugs(TM)".

The amount of chemicals one of these idiots uses in a day would cost a dollar if produced and sold on the free market. Under the present system, the druggie is paying 200 - 400, say, for the dollars worth of chemicals and, since he's dealing at a ten percent fence, he's having to steal $4000 worth of something or other to get the 400 to buy the dollars worth of drugs. In other words, a dollars worth of chemicals is being transformed into $4000 worth of crime times the number of those idiots out there times 365, all via the magic of stupid laws. No nation on Earth could afford that forever.

Ideally you'd like to keep a few things like crack, pcp, and lsd illegal, but you'd be better off to legalize it all than to go on doing what we're doing.

At the turn of the century, both heroin and aspirin were legally available and sold for approximately the same amount. Today aspirin can be purchased at the corner drug store for 20 cents per gram; heroin costs $50 per gram. [p. 33, 3] The price of heroin rose drastically after it was made illegal due to the dangers involved in its sale. Dealers are willing to kill each other for profits obtained from such a lucrative market; junkies are willing to rob and kill for money to support their habit--money, if drugs were legal and cheap, that they could easily obtain by working at McDonald's. You and I, through high crime rates caused by the War on Drugs and high tax rates used to support the War on Drugs, pay the price. During prohibition "liquor store" owners murdered each other to protect their turf just as drug dealers do today. Today, liquor store owners are generally peaceful. Eliminating the enormous profits involved in black-market businesses eliminates the motive for violent crime, and therefore the violent crime.

More law enforcement is commonly touted as the answer to America's violent crime problem. Since 1970 the percentage of the American population in prison has tripled with no noticeable effect on the homicide rate.[2] More than 1.3 million citizens are now in jail.[p. 24, 3] The United States has a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other nation[2], and still maintains the highest homicide rate in the industralized world. [1] We have even thrown away parts of our constitution in the name of fighting crime. Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement officers to seize the property of American citizens without even charging them with a crime, even though the 5th amendment to the constitution clearly states "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." Of course if you want your property back you do have the right to post a bond and try to prove yourself innocent, of a crime you have not even been charged with, in a court of law. No attorney will be provided for you if you cannot afford one. Over $2.4 billion worth of assets have been seized since 1985, $664 million in 1991 alone--and in 80% of the cases no charges were ever filed.[7]

Disparities between the poor and the rich are often considered causes of our high crime rate, but the United States has not only one of the world's highest crime rates, but also one of the world's largest middle classes. The religious right claims America's huge crime rate is caused by a break-down of family values. This would require family values breaking down suddenly in 1907, returning in 1933, and suddenly breaking down again in 1964. Many liberals believe that America's large crime rate is due to our lack of gun-control laws, but America's gun-control policy has changed little throughout this century. There is no way gun control can explain the enormous fluctuations in America's homicide rate. The United States government's substance control policies are the only answer. The only way to lower America's violent crime rate, short of turning the United States into a totalitarian state, is through ending the War on Drugs.
http://w3.ag.uiuc.edu:8001/Liberty/Tales/CrimeAndDrugWar.Html

Currently those institutions which comprise the penal system are the only viable solution to either eliminate or rehabilitate the wrong-doers, and the system attempts to be equitable in regard to the three dominant methods for correction (derived from the Quakers etc). Without question the overlaps may be a detriment at times.

Within the penal system a number of organizations (or sub-groups) attempt to rehabilitate convicts while concurrently alleviating the symptoms of isolation and deterrence. This is once instance of the overlap we are speaking of. It is a rather difficult enterprise since entrance into the (penal) system immediately engenders isolation into another facet of society, and this "new" society within which a convict is thrown into does not (from the outset) deter him/her from repeating the same acts. A prison is, as they say, a world of its own; its function among inmates in turn engenders rapid assimilation into the new society for the sake of survival.

To separate these three dominant ideas from their overlaps (in the current penal system) would entail a revamping of the penal system into three corresponding divisions. How do you recommend this be done? I have some ideas; none definitive in any regard.

The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul
The report released on Monday cites statistics and examples ranging from former vice-presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby to a Florida woman's two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee to make its case for reducing the U.S. prison population.

It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing recreational drugs as steps that would cut the prison population in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without endangering the public.

"President (George W.) Bush was right," in commuting Libby's perjury sentence this year, the report says. "But while he was at it, President Bush should have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of Americans who each year have also received prison sentences for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to our society."

The report was produced by the JFA Institute, a Washington criminal-justice research group, and its authors included eight criminologists from major U.S. public universities. It was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and financier George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Its recommendations run counter to broad U.S. public support for getting tough on criminals through longer, harsher sentences and to the Bush administration's anti-drug stance.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/19/5330/