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Thought experiment: What would happen if the laws were amended so that, should someone be sentenced to prison time, and all prisons within a reasonable radius
by Karunamon 11y ago
Thought experiment:
What would happen if the laws were amended so that, should someone be sentenced to prison time, and all prisons within a reasonable radius are at capacity, that either the person with the lowest amount of time to serve in that prison (barring violent offenses) is automatically set free, or the sentence is commuted to probation or such?
There's an argument to be made here that cramming two people into a parking-space-sized cell is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, so the state really should have to decide if placing Joe Potsmoker in for a year is worth releasing Bill Burgalar five years early. Just saying "fuck it, throw 'em all in" shouldn't be an option.
(This is assuming that prison has any reformative value at all, of course...)
- superuser2 11y agoThis happens. Not on a 1:1 basis, but early release to alleviate overcrowding somewhat is not unheard of. The careers of the politicians responsible are eviscerated, spectacularly, when the people they released go on to commit violent crimes.
- gcb0 11y agothen you get a interesting, new, prisoner dilemma puzzle. if you are the leader of a big gang, and still have power on the people outside, you can make enough gang-newcomers go to jail until you are free.
- Dylan16807 11y agoThousands of them? And they'd all have to get longer sentences than you? Not going to work.
- brianwawok 11y agoHow about shifts? Prison holds 1000? Make a gang of 4000. You can each serve a week a month to criminalize with impunity.
- Dylan16807 11y agoFines, community service, probation, a possible rule for minimum months served, the off chance that the system isn't run by idiots and they spread out the load with other prisons, the other off chance of judges not being idiots and giving a non-minimal sentence to someone that has no remorse. Also 'Make a gang of 4000', sure...
- gcb0 11y agothe boss usually gets nabbed by things like tax evasion, so easy to get then on top of the list.
- tacostakohashi 11y agoIf the laws were amended as you suggest, what would happen is it prison capacities would be constantly redefined, rather like the debt ceiling. You'd need the law to impose a hard limit on prisoners per square foot or something to make it reasonably hard to evade. Also, if it's easier and cheaper to change the law than build a new prison, it won't work. You've definitely identified the crux of the problem, though - prison capacities need to be treated as hard limits not to be exceeded, and not some nominal "design" number, which is routinely exceeded without limitation. If more people need to be incarcerated than there is capacity for, the solution needs to be building a new prison. To be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, a punishment needs to be well, cruel and unusual. Prison overcrowding may be cruel, but it's not unusual.
- kazagistar 11y agoWe should call it the Kanban Prison System.