This question is entirely hypothetical. Not necessarily real or in this world. Let's say you're the owner of a prison. There's a prisoner and he/she truly learned the wrongs of his/her crime (you have the ability to read minds so you are sure of this ). Would you allow him to have certain privliges that the other prisoners don't have?
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08-05-04, 10:26 PM
honilov
No, I wouldn't. It really might not be a good thing to do anyway because these special privileges would be detected by fellow-prisoners, and this could cause controversy.

08-06-04, 08:24 AM
Jelp01
No, I wouldn't. Prisoners don't need much of an excuse to beat the crap out of one another and this would give them a reason, since they wouldn't be able to see why the person was getting privileges they weren't.

08-06-04, 03:31 PM
Elexina
No. I don't care how sorry he is or how bad he feels about it, he committed a crime and must serve his sentence just like everyone else.
When he is up for parole, I would recommend that it be granted at his hearing -which I would not do for someone who did not show sufficient remorse.

08-09-04, 12:04 PM
teeceeum
Sorry folks, but it's already being done in prisons everywhere. There are various levels of security classifications for inmates with the lesser classifications having more "freedom" than the higher ones. Max security inmates are locked in their cells for 23 hours a day. Trustees are even allowed outside the prison fences.

08-09-04, 01:39 PM
Elexina
So what?
The question was hypothetical and asked what we would do. I don't care what anyone else really does. Real prisons might do things the way you described, sure, but I still wouldn't.

08-09-04, 06:58 PM
DvdGStwrt
Lets change the question around a little:

Hypothetically Speaking: IF YOU were the prisoner what would your response be?

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Personally I am against the warehousing of human beings - except in the cases of the worst possible crimes - ie rapes, murder, armed robbery - things where letting them stay on the street is not such a good idea.

The concept of putting people in a concrete cell for X number of days, months years seems terribly unsophisticated when we start uncovering that many (not all) who are in jail/prison are there because they did drugs, sold drugs, needed money for drugs, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and/or didn't learn sufficient skills to get a decent job, or other societal issues which are only compounded by the process of locking them up with nothing to do. Many are suffering from mental illnesses too.

Not only that but once released society will continue to punish them for the rest of their lives, stripped of rights, and offered little opportunity in the job market (Who really hires ex-cons?) Some are in there because they made a mistake - where forced by the circumstances of their lives to make choices which were not good. Others are arrested when in their early 20's - The older we get the more we understand that when we were younger we made a lot of foolish mistakes - even if they are not "crimes". "It sounded good at the time" is something we all can say about our own blunders - good intentions gone wrong. The difference, and the only difference, is that they made bad choices when it came to crime when we made stupid choices about things that are not illegal - yet.

One has to ask what kind of homes did these people come from? Obviously something went terribly wrong and yep, the studies done reveal that many of those in prison come from broken, abusive, neglectful homes, were raised in the "projects" were latch key kids, etc. So in order to survive or get ahead in this world they turn to crime. I am hard pressed to say that anyone of us in the same shoes would be able to make the right choices and not do crimes.

Yes there are SOME who are in their rightfully who willfully and with intent went about doing crimes - not all, not even half.

The fact is that prison breeds more criminal minds than it cures. Imagine living with an insane man for years - sooner or later you will lose your sanity too. This is what is happening in prison, we put a whole bunch of relatively sane guys with the insane criminal element thinking that all "crimes" are justly punished by the same "sentence" without going beyond pushing as many court cases through the court per day as possible.

You may think that there are fair trials for all, this is hardly the case. The plea bargain scheme is how most prisoners get to jail fast. The DA aims high for number of charges, things like "possession of an illegal ____________" and getting them again
on "possession of ____________" two different laws which are the self same item in question but both charges carry X amount of punishment - combined the DA is suing for the combined - The plea bargain is the minimal of the sentences ran at the same time. Given the choice between 50 years for 10 charges, or 5 years for a combination of charges at once, the defendants are usually coerced (legally though) to take a plea bargain agreement where the particulars of the case are NEVER heard.

Don't believe me? Go sit in a court room for one day, return when your favorite "defendant" is suppose to return, follow a few cases, watch and see. Then you will understand the daunting task of really knowing why a man did something under the duress and stress of the criminal "justice" (sarcastically speaking) system.

Then go and do some volunteer work with just released cons or better yet put in some time in prison outreach - you soon find the glaring awful truths and inhumanities which we as a society accept through ignorance of the true facts.

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Needless to day I am completely and totally against what everyone answered thus far. But then I am armed with facts and bear witness by taking the time to really learn just how completely inhumane our "legal" system really is.

David

08-09-04, 09:00 PM
gerry
Excellent response, David, as usual.

08-10-04, 12:53 PM
teeceeum
Almost perfectly stated David. I say almost because I think that drugs are an issue in something closer to 75%-80% of the cases of most inmates.

I work daily with inmates. I can attest to everything you said. The agency that I work for is the last to still rehabilitate offenders. These programs work people. Inmates who complete one of our programs are 6 times less likely to ever return to prison. You wanna save tax dollars? That's where the real savings are. And our program is totally self-sustaining since we can sell the products that we train the inmates to make.

I've only worked at this job for three years but it's totally changed how I view our prison systems. And I was pretty familiar with it before.

08-10-04, 10:56 PM
CincyOnTheRoad
David, I've come to expect well-thought, coherent opinions from you. Once again, you've delivered.

I think it was the movie "Blow", where Johnny Depp likened prison to college for criminals. You're surrounded by people who were caught breaking the law, and you've got a lot of time to do nothing better than to learn from their mistakes and make yourself a "smarter" criminal when you get out. Because we all know that any legitimate avenues of income are all but shut out by a criminal record. Where is the incentive to rehabilitate when you know you're going to be limited in employment and housing choices by the big black mark on your record?

08-20-04, 12:22 PM
samantha
excelent post David...and i would allow them to have certain things to do ..

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