Prisons

[nampigai]

Well we have had several attacks on prison personal in Denmark. The inmates are allowed to use weights weing around 50 kgs, this is handweights we are talking about. This however will be changed.

Still I think the danish prison system is a pathetic parody. The ammounts of drugs being traded in them are very high and I have a hard time seing any of them being rehabilitatet.

Last night I saw a documentary on a high sec american prison. Wich seems to have created some very good results.

I'ld like to see a similar system taken in use in Denmark. In Denmark the prison personal have a hard time controling the inmates and to be frank I'm getting pissed. So maybe it's time we started using more drastic measures.

This just a kudos to the documentary and that particular prison (can't remember the name) and a rant towards the danish prison system, wich is more a kindergarten than a prison. 

[Egeides]

Kindergarden? How are your prisons more exactly? They make them live in some kind of "community village" or what?

[Edric O]

The problem is that prisons often turn into schools for crime. Instead of letting inmates build up their muscles and prepare to resume their life of crime, you should train them in various jobs, so that they can make a living as honest citizens when they get out.

For the serial offenders, however, harsher punishments are the only way to go.

Everyone deserves a second chance, but not a third one.

[Acriku]

Edric, that seems a little too much to put into a prison. Maybe a rehab facility.

And since when does job training make prison inmates an honest citizen wanting to work for a living? I'd hold out until I see positive results before making this all over the country.

[Dante]

Come back the days when a few months in a dank dungeon were the answer...

[SurlyPIG]

The most obvious solution to me is to let the prisoners do volunteer work for any NPOs that want to establish projects in the prison.  For example, local homeless shelters could have volunteer prisoners make new and repair used clothing for people who can't afford it.  The work would always be voluntary, though, we don't want it to be labour camp obviously, but to me, not only do prisoners owe a suspension from society, but they owe a debt to society and this is how they should pay it off.  The alternative to volunteer work should be time in their cell.

This is already happening in some places.  An example I know of I saw on a documentary of a Los Angeles prison that had a partnership with the LA Humane Society (affiliate of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).  Several days every week, an SPCA worker would drive a truck full of new-found stray cats to the prison compound, to this building where the prisoners did their work, and they would wash and groom the strays to prepare them for adoption.  They would give each cat a bath, trim its claws, brush it, give it some anti-hairball goop (NOT an easy task, BTW) and collar each cat.  I think they even tagged the cats and vaccinated them.  And the image of a roomful of hardened criminals washing and brushing teeny weeny meowing kittens was a sight I'll never forget.

Anyway, the program has only been operating for a couple years, but it has already made two veterenary assistants and a pet store employee out of a thief, a drug dealer and a John (someone who pays prostitutes for their 'services').

I think this is the ultimate solution to the vast majority of repeat offenders.  They overcrowd prisons and cost too much money.  Volunteer work gives convicts something productive to do in and out of prison, and its at no cost to the state since any training and any tools/materials are provided by the NPO.  Most prisoners fall back into a life of crime because that's all they've really ever known.

[nemafakei]

"Edric, that seems a little too much to put into a prison. Maybe a rehab facility"

You mean that prisoners aren't given the opportunity to develop practical skills so they can make a decent living when outside?

[Acriku]

Perhaps Edric could clarify what "various jobs" meant, as I took it to include jobs beyond that of normal blue-collar jobs (which require a proper education).

[Digital Guerrilla]

There is not one "person" here who has ever been to a prison to know what really takes place behind a prison's walls. There are those in prison who chose to learn but readjusting one's self to open society is not as easy as you may think. Prison is a controlled society what they take for granted (if there is such a thing as taken for granted in prison) is not provided in free society. Some of you that have posted here are just letting your so-called intelligence speak for yourself but really you are only text book smart. What you sould do is have an closer look at the prison systems before you make a judgement on what could and could not be done.

[Acriku]

What are you talking about Sandwraith? And how do you know who hasn't been in a prison?

[Digital Guerrilla]

It is easy to tell who has not been to prison by the way you talk you know nothing of the penal system and why it fails to rehabilitate most who enter it's system.

::) Acriku your "bluffing" no offense but I know for a fact that everyone who has posted here has never recieved any sentencing to a prison (maybe detainment by your local authorities but nothing beyond that).

Some prisoners who are in the penal system have been life "long criminals" not "first time offenders". I am talking about people, who live crime they think in criminal terms their whole thought pattern is centered around crime. How do you rehabilitate something so inbreeded within individuals. Frankly for the most part prison may seem to be about rehabilitation but really it is career education in a life of crime.

   

[Acriku]

First of all, it is amusing to see how confident you are in your psychic abilities.

Second, what am I bluffing? I am simply asking how you would know that. Especially since this is an online forum, which allows easily manipulated personalities to be portrayed.

About rehabilitation in prison, I think it is the most important thing to do, to give them a chance to become better citizens. Much like Edric said, but I find it limited to blue-collar jobs (which may or may not have been what Edric meant).

[Egeides]

I know that Scandinavs have a very different incarceration system. They build some sort of "cities" where prisoners live freely within the walls, in a bunch of houses. Apparently, they get good results in rehabilitation. But I have no idea of the cost/prisoner for the society (is it lower than a prisoner stuck all his life in crime?), and don't really know which proportion are considered successfully rehabilitated.

[Digital Guerrilla]

First of all, it is amusing to see how confident you are in your psychic abilities.

It has nothing to do with psychic abilities.

[nampigai]

I know that Scandinavs have a very different incarceration system. They build some sort of "cities" where prisoners live freely within the walls, in a bunch of houses. Apparently, they get good results in rehabilitation. But I have no idea of the cost/prisoner for the society (is it lower than a prisoner stuck all his life in crime?), and don't really know which proportion are considered successfully rehabilitated.

Well Ege, that's the "open" prisons. We have closed prisons aswell.

As for Sandwraith, no I haven't been to jail and I don't plan to, but it's a pathetic joke that when a man is send to jail he comes in as a bull and when he gets out he's even bigger. It's so freeking obvious that lots of steroids are flurishing around in the jails, the inmates grows to large monsters and their temper is very high.

Lots of prison personal are being threatened but fortunately the very heavy weights will now be removed from the prisons.

Ace: I agree on a lot of the stuff you're saying, however people like Hells Angels and Bandidos, don't really fit into that picture IMO.

[Edric O]

Sorry for the confusion, Acriku. Yes, I was mostly thinking about blue-collar work when I said that prisons should train their inmates for various jobs. However, the opportunity of white-collar work should not be denied to them. Prisons should have libraries with the appropriate textbooks so that inmates may educate themselves if they wish.

A balance must exist between re-habilitation and punishment. On the one hand we want prisoners to start living honest lives and integrate in society at the end of their sentences, but on the other hand we don't want to go easy on them and make a prison term look like a vacation.

Ace has some very good ideas, and I agree with him.

[Dude_Doc]

I used to joke about this before... about my own country's prisons.

Joke: What would I do if I lost everything and had to live on the streets?

Answer: I would rob a bank.

Catch: Except finding a weapon, the whole point is very easy. Either, I succeed, and I get away with the money, or, I fail, and get to spend some time in jail with: cable TV, computer, movies, good food and nice clothes, and fresh air. Of course, we don't have prison-mates here, so this means that I will spend time in prison alone, and not with some muscular dude... you know what I mean.

[edsbrick]

There is not one "person" here who has ever been to a prison to know what really takes place behind a prison's walls. There are those in prison who chose to learn but readjusting one's self to open society is not as easy as you may think. Prison is a controlled society what they take for granted (if there is such a thing as taken for granted in prison) is not provided in free society. Some of you that have posted here are just letting your so-called intelligence speak for yourself but really you are only text book smart. What you sould do is have an closer look at the prison systems before you make a judgement on what could and could not be done.

[edsbrick]

the biggest punishment in a penal system is removal of freedom and choice.

you/we take so much for granted being 'free' but being told when to shave,shit,sleep and work,that is the punishment.

seeing touching  your loved ones when the officials say....not as and when you want.

i have been in open prisons and closed prisons,in an open prison its phsycologically  [phew]  harder because at any time you can abscond,just walk off.then what?re-arrested and into a closed nick.

few skeletons in my closet,better stop there

ed

[Digital Guerrilla]

And being so what would you say about others who are in the penal system, how many can you say honestly will even reform "themselves" because it is the choice of the "individual" to reform.