Prisons: Are making better criminals?

This question had been posed by my high school teacher once, "Say you send someone to prison for a crime that is worth a 25 year sentence. He served his time but he hasn't changed at all and he still goes back into doing said crime only this he knows how not to get caught. In the end, did the criminal in question actually learned his lesson? Is jail really deterring potential crime or are we just making better criminals?"

That is a question that is popped in my mind recently and I wonder if we really are making better criminals as some of them know enough about the system and how to exploit to their ends. That is not to say that all criminals are like this but it seems like sending some person off to prison with hardened criminals is not a good idea. The individual question could be a timid man but after spending sometime in prison with other would be criminals could make him into tougher person. Not to mention, they could be serving parole and still be going back into doing the crime again but this time they know what to avoid and how to exploit the system. I know the purpose of prison is to deter crim but that may not always work and are we really just making better criminals?

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

Apart from the fact that you seem to imply that having been in jail somehow makes you a criminal mastermind that can now evade the oh-so-incompetent police...

This can indeed be a problem, as prisons are basically a society, seperated from the outer world. I think we can all agree that spending years in a different society is going to shape you to some degree. Only this society is basically filled with criminals. People who sometimes have pretty weird ideas about... Pretty much anything.

When you're released, after having spent years among criminals, I suppose it can be difficult get back into actual society. In the end, this may work in the opposite way than what is intended, namely rehabilitation. Which is an incredibly unpleasant fact, because, well, aiming for something and achieving the opposite is pretty stupid.

Murrl LustFatM

Prison should only be for lifers. Anything less, go for enforced community service.

Throwing a person 25 years into prison and then just having him sit there does not really produce contrubiting member of society. Having no skills, few contacts and big fat mark in your record tends to cause prisoners to become criminals again out of sheer desperation.

What prisons need to do is prepare the prisoner for life outside prison, so that he won't relapse into crime. Leaving prison and still having some skills to get a job makes wonders.

There are only four crimes really worth the prison time: (high-level) assault, murder, rape, and treason.

All of those are worth a bullet, though, so we could theoretically dispose of the whole system...

I am now known as Flyboy.

All those potholes, and none of them were to Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook?

</nitpick>

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Somehow I don't see community service as actually teaching anyone a lesson. Or to regret their crimes. Or, if they did it out of desperation rather than greed/rage/whatever, improve their situation enough that they can go back to live an honest life.

Community service is part humiliation, part education. It is also a very tangible kind of punishment that you have to deal with for as long as it takes before you can finally be free from your own actions, without the added 'bonus' of being thrown in the same room as hard-core criminals.

It can also be an internship of sorts, teaching you skills that could get you a job.

edited 14th Sep '11 10:13:31 PM by Kayeka

I'd prefer community service to be seen in more of a rehabilitative light than punitive. I mean, personally I'd rather take a dude on the edge of fucking himself up pretty badly and give him a chance to tangibly reconnect with people. These are the people who aren't off the deep end yet after all.

Unfortunately we tend to use anonymous fuckawful jobs nobody else wants like 5 AM street sweeping and roadwork when we should probably be putting them to work in soup kitchens and stuff.

edited 14th Sep '11 10:45:13 PM by Pykrete

The only way to survive prison is to be a better criminal so....yes.

The current trend is away from capital punishment and toward increased criminalization. And even then, capital punishment is not a good solution; the same result could be had by keeping a prisoner confined for life, and if you do away with the appeals system (what makes it more expensive than life imprisonment), say hello to endless allegations of innocents put to death by the state, slaughtered by a bureaucracy of death.

What percentage of innocents in jail eventually have their name cleared, though? I'd say the death penalty only kills a small fraction of the wrongly convicted. Also, knowing that the consequence of wrongful conviction is the death of an innocent probably provides extra incentive to determine with more certainty whether someone is guilty or innocent.

Well, we need SOME deterrence against crime. Better to give criminals, as you put it "fuckawful jobs nobody else wants," than to give them the same jobs you'd give a civilian.

edited 15th Sep '11 10:06:35 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

And I think the current trend is abject bullshit.

Frankly, they don't deserve to live off the people. I think the appeals process could be quite streamlined. Look at it this way: 100 people were wrongly executed by the reckoning of the US Government between 1975 and 2000, if I recall the years correctly.

There were about 3,400 people on death row in 2000, too.

That's a really good average, insofar as I care, and not worth making the "criminal justice system" into the "daycare center for murdering rapist fucks."

edited 15th Sep '11 1:45:44 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

You compare places where people are left with their health and safety in danger, beaten to within an inch of their life for acting out, and shot for trying to escape, to daycare?

edited 15th Sep '11 2:42:11 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Yes. Although I think that only a select brand of people should be in prison, so if I were to implement it I wouldn't shed a tear over this.

Then again, if I were to implement it, there would be a slight few people in prison, if any...

I am now known as Flyboy.