Prison Reform

Okay, I have some beefs with our current prison system, so let me start off by giving my view:

I think people wronged want justice to be done. If someone murders my sister, I'll want to kill them (preferably as painfully as possible). And most people would be sympathetic to me. But since there's no way for them to be sure that I killed the right person (or that I wasn't just pretending), there'd always have to be government intervention (a trial) anyway. Our justice system may not be 100% fair, but we like to think of it as more dispassionate than someone who has been wronged. Which is a good thing. We collectively give up on vengeance with the understanding that the government has got our backs on that one.

However, retribution should not be the primary goal of our prison system - rehabilitation needs to play a role, or we create career criminals. If you go to prison, you will find it much more difficult to get a job afterward, and your un-adjusted personality is likely to make it that much more difficult for you to re-integrate.

I'm not saying that criminals don't deserve the difficulty - that's neither here nor there. But people that we will be releasing (anyone who has a sentence other than death or life without parole) should be prepared for reintegration into society. Years of giving or receiving gang rape is unlikely to have this effect.

Therefore, I propose a system where offenders work throughout their time in prison. Work to keep the place clean, work to expand the prison facilities, work to make the food, or garden, landscape; non-prison related activities as appropriate. To make certain that prisoners do work, *only days that the prisoner works counts against their sentence.* Of course, sick days would be granted as necessary, etc. This reduces the cost of keeping them, as well as teaching them to work as necessary.

When a prisoner has 1 year left, or is released on parole, whichever comes sooner, he is sent to a rehabilitation camp (or just a separate wing of the prison). They receive psychological screening and counseling, career counseling, perhaps get enrolled in a temp agency; anything else that can help them re-integrate. I'm not an expert, but I'm sure there's plenty that could be done at this stage to help.

I'd like to say that I'm not a big fan of going easy on criminals, but this is about reducing the cost to society of repeat offenders. I would prefer never allowing murderers or rapists to leave prison, but if we are going to, we have to re-integrate unless we are ready for repeat offenders. Most other offenders I'd be happy to see rehabilitated.

Thoughts?

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

I'm tentatively opening this conversation despite a fear that it'll go down a fiery road. Please, refrain from violent fantasies of punishment (yeah, we actually have had that before, would you believe it...) and keep it civil in general. If you have an extreme position, defend it and if you see such a position and want to attack it, remember: attack the argument, not the person; and assume good faith unless every sign points to trolling, in which case you're to Holler.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

These might work for people with a definite time frame left on their sentances, but what about the people sentanced to life in prison - you know, the ones who have no work-off-the-time option? Or the violent offenders who just haven't been hit with a life sentance? Part of the reason work groups aren't used more often is because they're very risky (giving prisoners a much improved chance to escape) and require a far larger number of law enforcement officers on the scene then having them in a yard behind a twelve foot barbed wire fence. Also, what do you do when the prison population has worked through all the gardening or landscaping around?*

Putting aside for a moment how many other people would be out of a job from this.

Unless you have a large set of contracts and are using the prison population as a lovely slaveryindentured servitude ring, you'll either run out of work for them to do, or end up having them start over and re-landscape, essentially meaning that all the work put into the previous job was useless - which doesn't exactly foster pride and good behavior.

This I agree with, in theory at least - it would be nice if there were more businesses or temp-agency-types willing to hire ex-cons, to give them a chance to prove "Hey look, I learned my lesson, I'm reformed." Unfortunately, I don't think it has a chance in hell of being implemented until unemployment drops rather dramatically.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Well I'm very much against revenge despite how I may personally feel if someone wronged me because society should be designed to maximise benefit, and government in particular should be trying to get the most bang for buck out of tax dollars.

So first thing I suggest is "jail last" policy. Unless you absolutely need to, I wouldn't waste money on jailing a person (like for instance, minor possession of marijuana should not require jail time).

Second thing is to layer the correctional system.

At the lowest level is just curfew, counseling and career adjustment. Punishments include community service and/or fines (income-adjusted).

The next level is some form of house arrest or half-way house.

The next level is "night-time" prison (you go out to work somewhere during the day). Or a farm prison.

Then finally you have actual prison with varying levels of security.

There is no level jumping. You have to move down slowly and throughout the entire time show improved behaviour. Nobody has a "okay you're done your time, here's twenty bucks and you're out the door". The most important thing to me is a near zero recidivism rate.

@Blueninja: I don't see a problem with indentured servitude of prisoners. Setting up contracts with organizations for cheap menial labor that could be done within the confines of the prison sounds good to me - maybe in return for the cheap labor they are required to hire a certain number of newly released prisoners every year.

Violent offenders would only work within the confines of the prison. Nonviolent offenders (white collar criminals, thieves, drug users unless we smarten up and legalize) could be given out-of-prison jobs.

@breadloaf: Layering the correctional system sounds good for non-violent offenses. Violent offenders, on the other hand, don't need the "no level jumping" rule (unless it was meant to be no jumping down) because they need to immediately go from level 0 to incarceration for the safety of society.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

I basically approve of breadloaf's idea.

...hm.

Lemme go look for an article I read...

edited 21st Jan '12 1:24:52 PM by Flyboy

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Also, Blueninja, for those sentenced to life/death, I'm less concerned about their rehabilitation, so them working is less important to me. Still, they could be coerced by having privileges (television time or whatever) being linked to successful completion of work. Definitely wouldn't let them out of prison to do whatever their job is, though.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

Life imprisonment is seldom for life - it's simply 'a really really long time', and, as a result, people with that kind of enormous sentence need more attention, not less, if you want them to survive leaving prison after, say, three decades.

What's precedent ever done for us?

We do have life without parole here, as one of the three typical options in dealing with murder-1: Life, Life without Parole, or Death.

Those who did have life sentences with the possibility of parole would be encouraged to work just like any other prisoner, and informed that they won't be eligible for parole until they've worked X days (the same amount of days that we have now before they become eligible for parole). Linking privileges to working would help as well. Those who refused to work would simply never become eligible for parole and never need rehabilitation.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

For a lot of penny-ante offenses (vandalism, etc.) I've always thought we should do something like what Singapore does and bring back caning; it costs the State -and therefore us, the taxpayers- a deal less money to pay someone to give someone twenty smacks with a rattan rod than it does to incarcerate them for a month or two.

and as to drug-related offenses, confiscate the dope, fine them and let them go. This is why..

I don't think it does society or the user any good to incarcerate for simple possession. These two ideas would at least reduce overcrowding in our prison/jail system, which as I understand it is the number-one problem, not to mention the cause of a good many other ills.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

@ Vericrat

"No level jumping" was no jumping down. That said, if you're actually rehabilitated, you would move down the levels fairly quickly as you get toward the end of your sentence. In this manner, I hope that inmates will already have established a semi-life and have a job so that when they come out, it's merely to move into a home of their own rather than "plop and no job, so go back to dealing drugs or whatever".

@ Life sentences

Well I'm an anti-death penalty kind of guy, but in addition, I'm also an anti-forever-life penalty.

I agreed with the previous Liberal government (here) who put in the "Faint Hope Clause", was that no matter your sentence, you had a chance of parole. So if you never shape up, you don't get parole. If you do shape up, you have a faint hope even if your sentence was 10000000 years in prison that you can get out. Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest not to screw up your chances of getting out.

That said, Canada's life sentence usually paroles you after 25 years unless something really extraordinary is wrong.

The US has life, life without parole and death. So I would generally take out the latter two, and replace "Life without parole" with "Life with only the minimum chance of parole".

I disagree entirely; I don't understand why someone who willingly took a life should be given the opportunity to ever live a normal one of their own. That being said, I understand the rationale of giving all prisoners something to work toward to keep prisons from becoming overly violent.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

I suppose, but like you said, you want to keep the prisons from becoming overly violent. So even if in reality you parole nobody, I think you should still have the clause there (and besides, there's probably at least 1 guy who actually deserves parole after a few decades and it is discovered the murder was more accidental than on purpose or something).

So, I wrote a paper on the United States prison system as my freshman year (of high school) final English paper, and found this article about the Arizona state prison reform they were enacting.

Linky.

It really seems like a fantastic idea, and apparently they didn't even need new funding to do this (which is like, holy shit awesome).

That it's Arizona doing it also surprises me, but...

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

In Huntsville, they used to have a prison rodeo. I assume it make quite a bit of money, because, hey, this is Texas and we love rodeos. I think it got closed down due to inmate injury, though. Still, I wouldn't be against having more prison have rodeos in order to bring in prison revenue. It's something for the prisoners to do, and provided they don't have a life sentence they have a job skill for when they get out. And the revenue can go into make sure the prison actually has properly maintained facilities and safety measures. (There are probably some other prisons where this is a thing that's done.) Mostly I would do this for prisoners that have a history of good behavior or were incarcerated for non violent crimes. This is probably an unusual view, though, and not something that every single prison would be able to do. Reviewing my post it almost feels like a non seqiutor, but it does involve prisons.

I'll reiterate my idea from the vices legalization thread about having proper, updated rehab facilities and school programs in prisons, which is more broadly applicable across our nation. I'd put those that are solely drug related crimes (probably not violent theft and such would be okay) in the rehab places and put them through that and the school programs in the hopes that it prevent recidivism and keeps them away from the truly violent criminals. No point in putting those that committed non violent crimes in with those who do, that just causes more problems down the road. I'll also reiterate that this requires people to start giving a shit about others in a real and meaningful way. Proper rehab facilities in the prisons for violent criminals would also be a must. All of this would require hiring more health care personnel, though, and a lot of people might see this as expanding government. (I see it as increasing employment and helping to reduce future crime.) (Also, I don't know how widespread drug rehab in prisons are. I'm just assuming that there are some, but that they really, truly suck ass.)

I'm pretty neutral on the whole life without parole and death sentence things. Going out and deliberately depriving someone of their life for money or anger or whatever pretty much causes me to lose all sympathy for you.

Lastly, I would ban private prisons. If it was up to me, the government would buy up all of those and actually enforce the rules that require the employees to not abuse the inmates.

Oh my God, that has everything I want and then some! Too bad Texas is like the most punitive state in the union. I think Perry would have to be ousted before we could implement that.

edited 21st Jan '12 2:09:45 PM by AceofSpades