Why Prison Doesn't Work (or DOES it?)

[Venetia]

Okay this started in PWOYM but shut up there, it's here now.

Here is my stupidly detailed explanation of why JAIL [usually] works but PRISON [usually] doesn't.
I urge you to debate the matter.
THIS IS NOT A DEBATE ON THE DEATH PENALTY. Don't bring it up as a debate topic.

[Note that I'm American, so things differ elsewhere ... For instance, in other countries, there're Open/Closed types of detention centers, and named tiers of incarceration ... I am referring to 'JAIL' as a place of holding for low-level offenders and people awaiting trial, and 'PRISON' as a traditional place where criminals are held for very long periods of time.]



First, what is the difference between JAIL and PRISON?
A JAIL is a place of holding or of very short-term sentences. They are either comprised of cells connected to a police station, or they are small, localized places of holding, operated by counties or cities. They are typically not very large, and people staying there should only expect to be there for a term of anywhere from 24 hours to up to 1-2 years.
People who are locked up there include: Those who are charged with crimes and are awaiting sentencing, those who have been penalized with certain public/hazardous misdemeanors (see: drunk tanks), people who have been sentenced with low-level crimes (such as drug possession, prostitution, DUI [w/o incident], etc.).

PRISONS are run by either the STATE (in America) or the governing body (FEDERAL). Obviously (with some occasional variances), those who are charged with breaking state crimes are held in state prisons, and those who break federal laws are held federal prisons.
There are different tiers of PRISONS, which I'll get into later, but in any prison, you will find people incarcerated there for any long-term sentence, or for doing something dangerous/violent enough to warrant increased security, etc.


Why does JAIL work most of the time?
Holding people in imposing conditions, apart from society, who commit minor offenses, is a good idea. People who are charged with doing something worthy of jailtime (but not worthy of prison time) are, for the most part, comprised of two categories:

- Those who almost never do anything wrong, and will be "scared straight" by the process (majority), and
- Those who may break very minor laws (e.g., public drunkeness) with some frequency, but who are not really violent or any huge detriment to allow to return to society (minority).

Jails, for the most part, offer a lot of important rehabilitory services to those incarcerated there. They offer employment assistance & housing assistance (for when you're released), GED-acquisition programs, education counseling, drug rehab counseling, "free" (well, you have to be jailed first, so it's not that free!) medical services & advice, etc.

Like any program which offers assistance, there are faults and failures. Some people are simply beyond the capacity to be fully rehabilitated, and they are destined to keep doing the things that landed them in jail in the first place. This is unfortunate but unavoidable. It's nice to think that every person in the world would love to be a contributing member of society, given the right assistance & tools, but there are a lot of people out there, and this is not always the case.

But when the average person is suddenly removed from total freedom in society for a short lapse of time, and they are offered tools to get back on track after they leave, they are given a wake-up call which will not be forgotten. Any reasonable person just released from jail for a DUI is not terribly excited to get back behind a wheel after a pint of whiskey.


What sorts of PRISONS are there?
In America, there are about a dozen or "tiers" of prisons, which include:

- Juvenile: Prisons for anyone under 18.

- Mental institutions: These prisons are more like hospitals. They house those charged with being, essentially, criminally insane. People who have no control over their actions, and who are dangerous. People incarcerated in these types of places seldom reintegrate into society ever again. Should they be deemed non-dangerous, they are usually moved to a different form of mental health facility.

- Minimum & Low security: These will either be "part time" prisons, where inmates mostly work, and stay in holding overnight, or they are "white collar" prisons, designed to hold people who commit petty/financial crimes, and are deemed very low or no risk. The security is fairly lax. Inmates here will usually be sentenced for insider trading, petty theft (<$5000), tax evasion, check fraud, etc.

- Medium Security:: These are "full" prisons, with full supervision, but which still offer work/study programs. The inmates here pose a moderate flight or assault risk, and are usually in there for terms of 3-10 years. These people would be those charged with non-violent drug trafficking, minor assault/battery, burglary, escaping arrest, etc.

- High & Maximum Security: These prisons are extremely guarded, with high perimeter walls, guard towers, random searches, etc. Think HBO's "Oz". Inmates here are extreme flight/assault risks, and have been deemed dangerous to society, held for anywhere from 10 years to life. They include arsonists, rapists, those charged with manslaughter, lower-level homicide, etc.

- Supermax: These prisons would be a step above Maximum ... Inmates are almost entirely cut off from other human contact. They are a risk to absolutely everyone, and usually themselves. Non-stop supervision via cameras. Inmates here would fall into the categories of those who may as well be (and probably are) on death row: multiple homicides, assassinations, etc.

(Supermax prisons & mental institutions have to be excluded from this debate ... Most inmates incarcerated within them are extremely unlikely to re-enter society.)


Why doesn't PRISON work?
The term used for the statistic of how likely a person is to repeat an offense after serving a sentence for it is called RECIDIVISM.

Quite simply, my reasoning I put to you on the likelihood of recidivism is based on three things:
1.) Length of removal from society,
2.) Quality of conditions and overcrowding during prison sentence, and
3.) Availability of programs that allow for re-integration into society.

Any person wronged by another person will, of course, want them to spend umpteen million years in the worst conditions imaginable. That's an obvious fact right there.

But the sad truth is, the more time a person is removed from society, and the worse their conditions are during that time, and the less focus is given to actually CORRECTING their lives instead of simply extracting them from the equation, the more likely that person will be to continue their life of crime, and this is especially true of violent criminals (the people we want LEAST to repeat their offenses)!

Prison, simply put, teaches people to commit more crime.

I will use Florida prisons as an example here. They are pretty standard, as far as prisons go. Extremely bland/shitty food, peeling grey & green paint, extremely limited activities/diversions, very limited (or non-existent) availability to education, job assistance, work programs, or housing assistance, lots of overcrowding. Some prisons have a small amount of computer time available, but no computer literacy training to speak of.

Check out this chart for recidivism in Florida:

Source: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/recidivism/2001/curves.html

According to this, between the years 1993 and 2001, within 6.5 years of release, 48.6% of ex-convicts would be sentenced to prison time again.
(This is actually considered PRETTY NORMAL on a national level -- the average being approx. 43%)
(Source: Pages 10 & 11 of http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/ ... ons%20.pdf )


So let's think about it this way:
You are sentenced to 5 years in a medium-security prison for selling cocaine. You've never really hurt anyone in any big way; you're not a violent person. You never got a chance to get any good education, or a decent job, so you did what you felt you was easiest to make ends meet. But now, you're put into a place where you are grouped in with people who are required to act tough around other toughs to survive--so you have to act tough as well. You are monitored more often than not. Your feelings of privacy are entirely gone, which makes you agitated and restless. There is nothing to do for most of the day, so the agitation and paranoia are all you can dwell on for long periods of time. Someone pay hurt you at some point, or threaten you. You feel retaliatory--even if you don't actually retaliate, just in the hopes that you'll get out faster.
Eventually, your sentence is served and you're out.
You have spent 5 years of your life, feeling agitated and paranoid and listless and angry, every single day. For 1,825 days. You have not progressed as a person at all. You have no job--and, what's worse--you now have a permanent strike against your ever finding one. You have no education, and certainly no money for it. Your friends and family have probably either moved on, or have alienated you in some way. You may have no home, or means of transport. It's a real possibility that everything you once owned--even if it wasn't much--is gone. Pretty much all the social interaction you've had for the past half-decade was done with OTHER people that are just as agitated and uneducated as you, or with prison guards who make you feel like dog shit.

What do you do?

Do you take a deep breath, and walk down to the nearest construction labor camp or menial dishwashing job and apply for work, so you can make almost no money and be pigeonholed into never making much money ever again b/c you have a permanent strike on your record? Do you try to start over and start hanging around all new people, and just try to dance around the fact that you spent 5 years in prison to them (b/c if they found out, they'd surely alienate you too)?

Or do you fall in with your old crowd, and take up your old habits, because that's all you really know, and that has the highest potential (in your mind) for providing you with the best life?



So what the hell is my point?
My point is that prisons are fundamentally flawed!

People charged with any crimes outside of the very violent should be placed into a form of THERAPY instead of EXCLUSION.
Someone needs to sit down with them and figure out why they did what they did. They need to FORCE them into education. FORCE them into working a regular job. This is extremely possible in modern times--Just make a set of computer programs which tests them, and reward them based on their scores. Consider boot camp--After a day of running laps and doing push-ups, will most inmates have the stamina left to shiv someone in the kidney? Instead of pouring money into keeping a bunch of people in a tin can for years on end, keep those sentences short, and instead invest in job counseling and more incentives to businesses who hire ex-convicts.
Maybe offer to wipe their record clean if they spend X number of years in the military, with no chances of being promoted to officer ranks?

Instead of making penalties year-based, why not make them program based?

Instead of "I sentence you to 10 years in prison", how about, "I sentence you to 3 years of Level B Counseling, Level A Education, and Level C Work Programs"?

I've never had ANY sympathy for criminals, and I still don't. But the fact of the matter is, putting them in a shithole with a bunch of other shitheads for a shitty length of time will only beget MORE SHIT.




Discuss!


More reading up on this: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/is ... risons.htm

 

[glorious caesar]

seeing the beginning of this discussion in pyoym i really wanted to reply to this. but you put too much effort into this thread and i don't want to read all of it (right now i mean. it seems like a good post that i'll go back to when i feel in the mood). oh well i'll just say this.

the biggest thing we can do for prison reform is decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal use (and straight-up legalize weed). prisons are overcrowded as fuck because of the bullshit war on drugs.

far more interesting to me is the idea of prison overcrowding because of life-sentences and an increased life expectancy, and the millions of tax dollars that go into taking care of the exponentially-growing elderly prison population.

 

[Mr_Smith]

Nothing really to discuss so far, like you I have absolutely no sympathy for criminals, but prison ain't working either. We need someone fundamentally against all you just said to start a discussion :cheers:
(Btw, we just had that discussion in PWOYM, and though we were stopped from discussing there - I want to clarify that I do not care about people murdering each other in prison in those top-level prisons, that is High & Maximum and Supermax. Juvenile and Low are a different kind of course, and like Ven says, those can mostly be rehabilitated and go back into society. Mostly. )

 

[Mr_Smith]

Ah, Despain posted when I was reading and typing my post. You are right, Despain. But that life-expectancy thing is not only for prisons true, it's true for everything. We keep complaining that our pension funds are running out, and that we should work longer, but the thing is that we keep getting older and that just costs money. We always had age 65 as pension here in The Netherlands, but now they want to prolong it to 67. Everyone complains that they can't work until then with their hardworking jobs, and that is true. We should stop getting older at all:D

 

[Venetia]

the biggest thing we can do for prison reform is decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal use (and straight-up legalize weed). prisons are overcrowded as fuck because of the bullshit war on drugs.

far more interesting to me is the idea of prison overcrowding because of life-sentences and an increased life expectancy, and the millions of tax dollars that go into taking care of the exponentially-growing elderly prison population.

I agree. There're more people in prison [in relation to the total population] in America than anywhere else.

I mean, fuck, we outpace asshole countries like RUSSIA and SOUTH AFRICA?

Src: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/u ... 2page1.stm

That seems ridiculous.

Lol @ using wikipedia, but, according to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarcerat ... ted_States
- 7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons on September 30, 2009 were in for violent crimes.
- 52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons at year end 2008 were in for violent crimes.
- 20% are incarcerated for drug offenses (in state prisons--federal prison percentages are higher).

"The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges."

BUT

(You could argue that the system is working, and that jailing people for drug charges is causing them to do it less, but you can also argue that it is because we have ramped up education against it, and the extreme increase in ARRESTS implies that we are being overly sensitive)

It's been a well-known and well-published FACT that the reason for the overcrowding is solely the three-strikes act.

Why won't we repeal it? I don't get it.

 

[Ellie]

PRISONS are run by either the STATE (in America) or the governing body (FEDERAL). Obviously (with some occasional variances), those who are charged with breaking state crimes are held in state prisons, and those who break federal laws are held federal prisons.

We brits did the inconceivable and PRIVATISED some prisons.

Guffwhatsyej.

 

[Venetia]

Ulgh, this is crap:

Src: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/63

So drug offenders are serving only a median of THIRTEEN PERCENT less time than VIOLENT CRIMINALS.

That DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

We brits did the inconceivable and PRIVATISED some prisons.

There are 264 privatized prisons in the U.S. But the convicts are grouped into state or federal offenders.

 

[Mr_Smith]

It's weird that drug offenders serve just a bit less then violent offenders, but you should also take into consideration that drugs do increase violence, and that drug offenders can also get convicted for violence. It doesn't state that clearly what is considered as what, if you get what I mean.

 

[Ellie]

If drugs are illegal then you're more likely to recommit while in prison to get those drugs, too.

 

[Venetia]

It's weird that drug offenders serve just a bit less then violent offenders, but you should also take into consideration that drugs do increase violence, and that drug offenders can also get convicted for violence. It doesn't state that clearly what is considered as what, if you get what I mean.

When you serve time, you serve time for each offense.

So if someone sold a bunch of drugs and then shot a guy in the leg, he would serve X years in prison for selling drugs, and Y years in prison for shooting a guy.

It doesn't matter if a person is charged with multiple charges, the table is valid b/c it is based upon number of years sentenced for the drug charge vs. number of years sentenced for the violent charge.

Ex: If a judge sentenced me to 6 years for selling a pound of weed, and 7 years for whomping a guy with a baseball bat for not paying on time, my violence charge is only 15% greater than my drug charge (even though, to me, I am serving 13 years in prison).

(Ever hear of someone serving something concurrently? It means that each sentence is served at the same time. So 2 years for X and 3 years for Y = 3 years served.)

 

[dadevvtsvre]

In Canada, our prime minister recently passed a new "Tough On Crime" bill which is something he was promising to do during the last election campaign.

It was pretty obvious to anyone that read a newspaper that it was merely a tactic to gain votes, but it seemed to work!

It's a new crime bill that introduces things like mandatory minimum sentences for drug users, putting more people in prison for less things, etc.

The thing with this is that it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist. Crime in Canada has recently hit a 30 year low. The rate of violent crime has been declining for decades.

Our government is going ahead with a new bill that will build more prions in our country and put more people in jail, under the mantra that it will take crime off the streets. Which, as literally anybody else in the world will tell you, is a terrible idea.

It's gotten so bad here that conservatives in Texas are telling our government that this won't work. Lawmakers from around the world, particularly in the US, have been repeatedly advising our government that this is an ineffective solution to a nonexistent problem. And our government continues to plug its ears and whistle away.

I don't really know if this is on topic but goddamn it is infuriating to think about for more than a couple of seconds.

 

[Venetia]

Yes, I agree. It is retarded for ANYONE to copy America's drug policies for imprisonment, and even more retarded to NOT listen to people who have to deal with its repercussions!!

 

[Ellie]

Also, I may be naive, but wouldn't legalising drugs save Mexico?

 

[Mr_Smith]

Ven, that wasn't clear to me. The table is valid, yes, like you explained. Well, then I have nothing to say on it. It's retarded, just like what those folks in Canada are doing.
I have no idea how the prisons here are doing, but I believe they are pretty effective and relatively low profile, that is, they don't bash each others skull in everyday like they do in the higher US prisons.

 

[Misery]

Prison works because it takes the bad people away from us
I am right close this thread
Prevent others from proving me wrong

yeah stop posting dumbshit like this ~the management

 

[Echo Magnum]

Then those "bad people" want to do even more bad for being thrown in a shit-hole to rot for god knows how long.
The main problem with prisons is that nobody cares to solve the issue at hand which isn't as simple as throwing someone in prison and hoping they will get some sort or revelation and become a good loving citizen/member of society. Nope, seldom works that way.

( Here in Africa, Uganda )
The real problem is because of a disequilibrium of wealth, you have some really wealthy people using up a lot of resources to build themselves mansions and luxuries while others starve or settle for minimum wage simply because they didn't have similar opportunities to become wealthy/earn a comfortable amount of income and that people are almost instinctively greedy and selfish.
I'm not sure about the American education system ( from what I hear its pretty good ) but the local education system here in Uganda ( UNEM ) is so shitty that you could be the best student all your school life but when it comes to get a job you're totally reliant on people telling you what to do and how to do it, we get only a small population in expensive "modern" educational systems and most people would rather work and live oversea than help their countries economy ( I wont lie, I fall in this category ).

lastly their virtually no drug rehabilitation centers here and the black market for drugs is introducing more potent and addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine to ignorant users. The biggest thing that pisses me off about all this is that the president and government ( Museveni and his band of kiss-ass politicians ) are all getting fat building large mansions and estates in their home district's from the money that was supposed to be for charity ( yup, you know all that aid we get from U.S and U.K? Its all chow-down for his merry political followers )

( About legalizing drugs )
Drugs are very dangerous simply because they are illegal, criminals sell drugs to make profit knowing that because they are illegal they in a way ( the drug dealers and suppliers ) are monopolies and secondly their is no one to tell them that making a chem this potent is harmful to others, they simply want to produce the most addictive drugs possible to earn higher amounts of income from sales ( drug users keep coming back out of addiction ). The main reason drugs would be better if they where legal ( bare with me, it sounds crazy at first ) is that you would have overseers e.g the government ( lets say their not corrupt like most governments ) to stabilize the production of drugs to that they are produced for their helpfulness and therefore become merit goods ( goods helpful to society ). Cannabis is already proved to be medicinal, but it becomes dangerous when produced to increase its potency. Poppy seeds are also proved to cure some ailments like cough, headache e.t.c and coca leaves are not really that bad. Natrual drugs are natures medicine, when you commercialize drugs and produce them for profit they are no longer natural and thus become deadly.

Sorry for my long rant, just needed to get this off my chest...

 

[Mr_Smith]

Echo, what you said about money for charity is well-known. A lot of people here, including my parents, stopped giving money to charity because most of the money ends up exactly where you said - in the asses of the politicians.

The legalizing-drugs issue was also a topic for discussion here not so long ago, a few parties here gave exactly the same arguments as you. People will use it anyway, it's better to regulate it and make sure the government can control it, much like the case with soft drugs here in the Netherlands. It's no big problem here, even though it's not strictly legal that you use it, but they allow it anyway.
Government earns money from it, there is no shady business around it, everyone is happy. (Though I don't know if you want that the government in Uganda to earn money from drugs.)

 

[Ellie]

I stopped giving money to charity because it seems to end up paying the wages of the ten or so charity muggers walking down the high street every day pestering people for money (and getting paid a salary for it).

 

[Perihelion]

Ah, Despain posted when I was reading and typing my post. You are right, Despain. But that life-expectancy thing is not only for prisons true, it's true for everything. We keep complaining that our pension funds are running out, and that we should work longer, but the thing is that we keep getting older and that just costs money. We always had age 65 as pension here in The Netherlands, but now they want to prolong it to 67. Everyone complains that they can't work until then with their hardworking jobs, and that is true. We should stop getting older at all:D

You know why pension funds are running out in the US? Because they pay ridiculously huge executive pensions, which they siphon from regular worker pensions. GE alone has like $6 bil in executive pensions. Meanwhile, to pay for this, they do things like take out life insurance policies on their workers without their knowledge, which is apparently legal.

Ahh, this country!

Anyway, on topic, I think prisons should focus on rehabilitation to reduce recidivism. Also, drugs should be legalized because filling up prisons with nonviolent offenders is an unnecessary drain on government funds when we should be increasing revenue with high taxes on legalized drugs instead.

 

[united washcloth express]

Also, I may be naive, but wouldn't legalising drugs save Mexico?

They are. Drug cartels war over who has the monopoly.

Possession for personal use is legal. While having a large amount of any mainline drug would be illegal, full legalization wouldn't combat the fact that each drug cartel is fighting for territory. Drug cartels in Mexico are not corporations. There is no reason for them to adhere to any form of regulation or play nice with any other cartel. Even if the government backed one particular cartel and managed to snuff out the others, they would still have one huge cartel more than willing to do whatever is needed to make the most money.