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I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society.
In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html
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Well, criminals could get normal rooms instead of an extra-nice ones. It does seem unfair that law abiding people are paying for the upkeep of law breaking ones.
Sitting in comfy rooms the whole time does nobody any good.
Most prisoners (except uncontrollably violent and uncooperative ones) can be put to do manual work 8/hours 5/days a week. Some part of the proceeds can be used to fund the prison, and the rest can go to the prisoner after release.
This lowers the burden on the taxpayer, provides the prisoners with actual training and skills so that they can reintegrate into society more easily, and gives them some money to start their new life after prison.
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On August 14 2019 23:45 JimmiC wrote:I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society. In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html
I think that correlation =/= causation in this case when comparing the effects of correction vs punishment.
Different systems work better for different societies.
Correction and rehabilitation work very well in high-trust societies with a relatively law abiding culture.
For an extreme example, if you go to a country in sub-saharan africa with high violence and try to implement a corrective prison system with comfy rooms, people are just going to take advantage of niceness.
In places where cultural violence is high, punishment as a deterrent and death sentences to permanently remove unrepentant recidivists works best.
edit: It is possibly because developed societies have lower crime rates, that's why they can afford to stop using harsh punishments and have a corrective system where people are treated nicely. Not the other way around
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On August 15 2019 00:00 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2019 23:45 JimmiC wrote:I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society. In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html I think that correlation =/= causation in this case when comparing the effects of correction vs punishment. Different systems work better for different societies. Correction and rehabilitation work very well in high-trust societies with a relatively law abiding culture. For an extreme example, if you go to a country in sub-saharan africa with high violence and try to implement a corrective prison system with comfy rooms, people are just going to take advantage of niceness. In places where cultural violence is high, punishment as a deterrent and death sentences to permanently remove unrepentant recidivists works best.edit: It is possibly because developed societies have lower crime rates, that's why they can afford to stop using harsh punishments and have a corrective system where people are treated nicely. Not the other way
Gonna need a major, major citation on the bold and the edit there. Is there data for that claim or just your perspective on it?
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On August 15 2019 00:00 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2019 23:45 JimmiC wrote:I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society. In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html I think that correlation =/= causation in this case when comparing the effects of correction vs punishment. Different systems work better for different societies. Correction and rehabilitation work very well in high-trust societies with a relatively law abiding culture. For an extreme example, if you go to a country in sub-saharan africa with high violence and try to implement a corrective prison system with comfy rooms, people are just going to take advantage of niceness. In places where cultural violence is high, punishment as a deterrent and death sentences to permanently remove unrepentant recidivists works best. edit: It is possibly because developed societies have lower crime rates, that's why they can afford to stop using harsh punishments and have a corrective system where people are treated nicely. Not the other way around
The US locks up more people than anyone in the world in some of the worst conditions. Thousands of innocent people are in prison as well as many more in jails/prisons awaiting trial, sometimes for years. Vast amounts of room for improvement clearly.
The big problem I see coming is this will be used to argue for more funding of prisons rather than addressing the problem of far too many people incarcerated in the first place. Which of course are disproportionately marginalized, particularly Black and Indigenous, peoples.
We should be able to expect better conditions and less spending on incarceration as a result of imprisoning dramatically less people in the first place.
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On August 14 2019 23:53 Pangpootata wrote: Well, criminals could get normal rooms instead of an extra-nice ones. It does seem unfair that law abiding people are paying for the upkeep of law breaking ones.
Sitting in comfy rooms the whole time does nobody any good.
Most prisoners (except uncontrollably violent and uncooperative ones) can be put to do manual work 8/hours 5/days a week. Some part of the proceeds can be used to fund the prison, and the rest can go to the prisoner after release.
This lowers the burden on the taxpayer, provides the prisoners with actual training and skills so that they can reintegrate into society more easily, and gives them some money to start their new life after prison.
That is not what happens in the US Prison system.
Yes, inmates have to work.. Unskilled work that don't teach shit. Yes, inmates do get paid for it.. RIDICULOUSLY low amounts. Your basically defending the US Prison System that uses it's inmates as Slaves.
The stuff that you propose is actually what a decent prison system would do, but this is clearly not the case in the US.
And this is just one of the miriads of issues.
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On August 15 2019 00:08 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2019 00:00 Pangpootata wrote:On August 14 2019 23:45 JimmiC wrote:I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society. In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html I think that correlation =/= causation in this case when comparing the effects of correction vs punishment. Different systems work better for different societies. Correction and rehabilitation work very well in high-trust societies with a relatively law abiding culture. For an extreme example, if you go to a country in sub-saharan africa with high violence and try to implement a corrective prison system with comfy rooms, people are just going to take advantage of niceness. In places where cultural violence is high, punishment as a deterrent and death sentences to permanently remove unrepentant recidivists works best.edit: It is possibly because developed societies have lower crime rates, that's why they can afford to stop using harsh punishments and have a corrective system where people are treated nicely. Not the other way Gonna need a major, major citation on the bold and the edit there. Is there data for that claim or just your perspective on it? Yup, I would really like to see studies supporting that claim. I have never seen a single study that supported the notion that death penalty works as a deterrent.
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On August 15 2019 00:00 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2019 23:45 JimmiC wrote:I'm with Drone, and it has been shown that if you actually focus on correction instead of punishment crime goes down not up. Have you not wondered why they keep making the rules more strict in the states but crime keeps increasing? The people in jail need to be given the skills so that when they are out they can lead a productive life instead of a life of crime. Yes it is short term expensive but it is a long term investment in your society. In the Netherlands they have been closing prisons for some time, and for a while they were importing prisoners because they did not have enough. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-prisons-are-closing-because-the-country-is-so-safe-a7765521.html I think that correlation =/= causation in this case when comparing the effects of correction vs punishment. Different systems work better for different societies. Correction and rehabilitation work very well in high-trust societies with a relatively law abiding culture. For an extreme example, if you go to a country in sub-saharan africa with high violence and try to implement a corrective prison system with comfy rooms, people are just going to take advantage of niceness. In places where cultural violence is high, punishment as a deterrent and death sentences to permanently remove unrepentant recidivists works best. edit: It is possibly because developed societies have lower crime rates, that's why they can afford to stop using harsh punishments and have a corrective system where people are treated nicely. Not the other way around
You are basically arguing with data with anecdotal information. There is a reason so many psychologists, world wide, including the states have said how damaging things like corporal punishment and negative reinforcement are.
There is literally no evidence anywhere that increasing punishments, making prisons worse, capital punishment, or any of those types of things reduce crime. Populists just spout it because it sounds easy and people will believe it. It is not true. It is no more true than that there certain parts of your tongue for tasting certain things. Because people think it is "common knowledge" does not make it true.
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Most criminals don't think they're going to get caught, some don't even consider what they're doing in the moment is a crime. High punishment for criminal activities does not deter much of anything.
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On August 15 2019 00:54 semantics wrote: Most criminals don't think they're going to get caught, some don't even consider what they're doing in the moment is a crime. High punishment for criminal activities does not deter much of anything. I also think that harsh punishment system participate of the violence that creates crime in the first place. You don’t break the circle by treating criminals like animals and showing absolutely 0 compassion.
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The deterrence justification for punitive measures doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, but millions upon millions adhere to it based on the very strong effect of gut intuition. I’m all for the presentation of statistics and evidence that disprove the value of harsh punishments, but something extra is needed in order to actually convince folks who subscribe to what amounts to contemporary eye for an eye retribution, and I don’t think it comes from a rational place.
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You have to think about what prisons are there to do.
There is a major disconnect there in what people want prisons to do. In my opinion, a prison should majorly try to turn criminals into "good citizens", and secondarily keep those criminals who absolutely cannot be reformed away from society, but that should always be seen as a failure and reserved for the most severe criminals. Prison also serves to discourage people from becoming criminal in the first place.
What i do not think a prison should do is punish. I know a lot of people in the US view this differently, where they see the prisons main goal as punishing criminals. But i think this leads to things which are both ethically not acceptable in a modern society, and which also actively make society worse.
The US additionally has the problem that they just put far too many people into prison. About 0.7% of the US population are in prison. Germany, for example, has 1/10th of that at about 0.07%.
But lets ignore this glaring problem for a second and just look at prisons on their own. I think you should build a prison primarily to be most effective at reintegrating people into society and giving them the largest chances of being non-criminal, productive members of society against after they served their time, as i mentioned above. This also means setting incentives for prisons so it is best for prisons to work this way. Sadly, incentives for US prisons are set to make them keep as many people as possible behind bars for the lowest possible price. This is clearly not good for society. For one, do you really want to be part of a society that treats its prisoners the way US prisons treat their prisoners? That society clearly sucks and feels almost medieval. Secondly, if you spend a few years in a US prison, how are you going to integrate back into society as a non-criminal? You have no skills, you are only used to how prison live works, and the prison is mostly interested in you being a repeat customer.
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On August 14 2019 23:53 Pangpootata wrote: Well, criminals could get normal rooms instead of an extra-nice ones. It does seem unfair that law abiding people are paying for the upkeep of law breaking ones.
Sitting in comfy rooms the whole time does nobody any good.
Most prisoners (except uncontrollably violent and uncooperative ones) can be put to do manual work 8/hours 5/days a week. Some part of the proceeds can be used to fund the prison, and the rest can go to the prisoner after release.
This lowers the burden on the taxpayer, provides the prisoners with actual training and skills so that they can reintegrate into society more easily, and gives them some money to start their new life after prison. Reminds me of this
“In addition to the bad ones ... they’re releasing some good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change oil in the cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that where we save money,” he continued. “Well, they’re going to let them out ― the ones that we use in work release programs.” Slavery is alive and well in America. They just call it Prison now. www.huffpost.com
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On August 15 2019 01:05 farvacola wrote: The deterrence justification for punitive measures doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, but millions upon millions adhere to it based on the very strong effect of gut intuition. I’m all for the presentation of statistics and evidence that disprove the value of harsh punishments, but something extra is needed in order to actually convince folks who subscribe to what amounts to contemporary eye for an eye retribution, and I don’t think it comes from a rational place.
It is because logic and data isn't what most people make their decisions based on. It is why a sea turtle getting a straw stuck in his/her nose cause a bunch of straw bans when straws are hardly a drop in the bucket as far as environmental problems go. In the environmental world we are often scared to tell people the "truth" about recycling certain materials because we don't want them to get fed up/emotional and stop everything.
I'm really not sure how you change people to use a different criteria for decision making, it would probably be easier to come up with a compelling emotional argument on why correction is more important than punishment. And that would be far from easy.
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A rather effective measure to teach people about unfairness or things they can't relate to is to have it happen to themselves or someone close to them.
E.g. unjust police brutality, justice system failures or even just a nice migrant / native American / POC person to crash their prejudiced ways
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Are prisoners allowed to vote in the US?
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Somes states maybe yes, some states no, FL voted to have felons their voting rights restored. But it's already being help up because they can't just cleanly write a bill, they have to obviously find a way to milk the felons only possible money while keeping them from voting still. So the state of FL is already being sued.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/us/florida-felons-voting-rights.html
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law on Friday significant restrictions to the recently restored voting rights of people with felony convictions, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the state hours later.
The new law requires people with serious criminal histories to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they become eligible to vote. In some cases, those costs amount to thousands of dollars.
The A.C.L.U. argued that the new limits would unconstitutionally price some people out of the ballot box and undermine the intent of Florida voters, who last November approved a measure to enfranchise up to 1.5 million former felons.
“There’s no rational basis for treating somebody who can afford to pay fees any differently than treating anybody who can’t afford to pay them,” said Julie Ebenstein, a senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project. “That’s just distinguishing people’s right to vote based on their wealth.”
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On August 15 2019 01:47 Jockmcplop wrote: Are prisoners allowed to vote in the US? No, only in 2 states are they allowed to vote. In some they can vote after release, in others they never get the right to vote back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_the_United_States
That's what makes the war on drugs so 'great'. It removes millions of potential voters from the system.
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United States40772 Posts
On August 14 2019 23:53 Pangpootata wrote: Well, criminals could get normal rooms instead of an extra-nice ones. It does seem unfair that law abiding people are paying for the upkeep of law breaking ones.
Sitting in comfy rooms the whole time does nobody any good.
Most prisoners (except uncontrollably violent and uncooperative ones) can be put to do manual work 8/hours 5/days a week. Some part of the proceeds can be used to fund the prison, and the rest can go to the prisoner after release.
This lowers the burden on the taxpayer, provides the prisoners with actual training and skills so that they can reintegrate into society more easily, and gives them some money to start their new life after prison. Skills they can’t use because the prison slave labour industry has no outside competitors. If you’re great at making the thing that slaves make then freedom is the opposite of job security. Also society doesn’t hire ex cons so the entire exercise is futile, they go back to crime because it’s the only source of income we allow them.
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On August 15 2019 02:25 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2019 23:53 Pangpootata wrote: Well, criminals could get normal rooms instead of an extra-nice ones. It does seem unfair that law abiding people are paying for the upkeep of law breaking ones.
Sitting in comfy rooms the whole time does nobody any good.
Most prisoners (except uncontrollably violent and uncooperative ones) can be put to do manual work 8/hours 5/days a week. Some part of the proceeds can be used to fund the prison, and the rest can go to the prisoner after release.
This lowers the burden on the taxpayer, provides the prisoners with actual training and skills so that they can reintegrate into society more easily, and gives them some money to start their new life after prison. Skills they can’t use because the prison slave labour industry has no outside competitors. If you’re great at making the thing that slaves make then freedom is the opposite of job security. Also society doesn’t hire ex cons so the entire exercise is futile, they go back to crime because it’s the only source of income we allow them.
That's ok because then when they reoffend you end up having more manual workers, right?
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