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For more cheery prison reading, here's an article from a reporter who worked undercover as a guard at a private US prison: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2

• keiferski 9y ago
  I've always held to the "Sin City"[1] philosophy: society's needs change over time, while people fundamentally don't. The existence of prison is just a failure of society to accommodate the wide variety of human natures. Obviously this brings up questions of the "dangerous to society" variety, but a minuscule percentage of prisoners are dangerous psycho killers. [1] Most people think Marv is crazy, but I don't believe that. I'm no shrink and I'm not saying I've got Marv all figured out or anything, but "crazy" just doesn't explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he's retarded, a big, brutal kid who never learned the ground rules about how people are supposed to act around each other. But that doesn't have the right ring to it either. No, it's more like there's nothing wrong with Marv, nothing at all--except that he had the rotten luck of being born at the wrong time in history. He'd have been okay if he'd been born a couple of thousand years ago. He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an ax into somebody's face. Or in a roman arena, taking a sword to other gladiators like him. They'd have tossed him girls like Nancy, back then.
  • Koshkin 9y ago
    > a failure of society to accommodate the wide variety of human natures The raison d'être of the society (and the state) is not to "accommodate" anything, especially not some particular aspects of human nature, but rather to suppress them, limit the "natural" freedoms -- in order to create a semblance of order and harmony among humans, which, in particular, makes it easier to control (and protect) them.
    • _jal 9y ago
      Oof. That is one view. There are others, that tend to note that society exists without state institutions - in fact, society is a necessary precondition to a state. Some of these other views don't credit 'society' as something with a will or a reason, simply as an emergent property. That's not to say 'society' doesn't cause things to happen, but it does imply disagreement with the parent comment. I absolutely agree that states are primarily instruments of suppression and coercion. I just think that equating state and society is not only incorrect, but also heads down a potentially dangerous path. Societies emerge from being social animals in proximity, states emerge from negotiations, coercion, or some combination thereof.
      • RobertoG 9y ago
        Are you sure that states don't emerge automatically too? We are hierarchical creatures, even in a small group of friends hierarchy appears on its own. If you have a hierarchy the rest is just organizational details.
        • _jal 9y ago
          I never claimed they don't. My commentary was primarily about the importance of distinguishing the two.
  • jackhack 9y ago
    I can say I would not want to live in a society that "accommodates" the needs of rapists, murderers, child molesters as well as the various petty criminals. Sin City was a dark film, I never found it a model for cultural structure.
    • throwawayxbe8 9y ago
      What about one that accommodates people who possess marijuana? What about a society that accommodates people who have opioid addictions and need medical help? I think you have a rather skewed idea of the majority of our prison population. I'll give you a hint, though: most of them aren't rapists, murderers, and child molesters.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
        > I'll give you a hint, though: most of them aren't rapists, murderers, and child molesters. HINT = 15% of the prison population in California are sex offenders.
        • throwawayfdf 9y ago
          Which bass-ackwards definition of "most" are you using, friend?
        • alsetmusic 9y ago
          >> I'll give you a hint, though: most of them aren't rapists, murderers, and child molesters. > HINT = 15% of the prison population in California are sex offenders. Rapists and child molesters would both fall under the sex offender category, meaning 85% of prisoners are not convicted of those crimes (according to your post, which lacks citation). Are you indicating that more than one in three California prisoners are convicted of murder? It sounds like you’re making a case for more than 35% of prisoners as murderes (15 + 35 = 50%). I’m not comfortable with that assumption without links to data.
  • cm2187 9y ago
    But if don't have prison sentences, how do you prevent the next Madoff? Human nature is what it is, you just can't assume that all citizens are fundamentally good. There needs to be somehow a system of penalty/incentive to behaving well. It's not just about locking dangerous people away.
    • aleksei 9y ago
      Prison sentences can't prevent the next Madoff, in the same way that they didn't prevent Madoff.
      • cm2187 9y ago
        But it probably prevented hundred of Madoff wannabes...
        • geofft 9y ago
          "Probably"? If we're going to deny people the most fundamental human rights, we need a bit more rational reasoning than "probably".
          • kelnos 9y ago
            If prison sentences are merely a deterrent to other criminals, then sure, we need some evidence to back up the idea that deterrence works. (I would think it's pretty self-evident that there are a ton of minor/medium crimes that would increase in prevalence if there were no consequences, though.) But it's not. Prison is also a punishment for the person who committed the crime, and, if our prison system wasn't so messed up, could be a place for reform.
          • cm2187 9y ago
            The most fundamental human rights are to be able to live without suffering what the guys that are in these prisons do to the society. Living without fear of violence, rape, murder, being burglarized, conned, etc. These are human rights. Merely keeping someone in a cell is a rather gentle treatment compared to how other cultures or other times treat/treated criminals. Now we can discuss sentence lengths, prison sentencing for certain non violent crimes, etc. But I am sure I am not alone to have no sympathy for the idea that putting criminals in jail is violating their human rights.
  • jondubois 9y ago
    I disagree. If society always let people get away with their crimes, criminals would gain an evolutionary upper hand and soon crime and distrust would become the norm. Criminals would be popping out children and altruistic people would be picking up the bill. Also I think that our current system lets white collar criminals off too easily; they should be punished more severely. This type of evolution is especially dangerous in a modern context because technology and globalization have taken the humanity out of our daily interactions and have therefore reduced the importance of altruism.
    • everdev 9y ago
      Agreed. For many, morality is relative, especially in a competitive/capitalist society.
• gcb0 9y ago
  how to solve prisons in America: go full Liberal. states want private prisons. prisons should be to rehabilitate. so pay the prison business only if it delivers. i.e. pay private prisons on a rehabilitation rate instead of simply the number of inmates. it's not like you're expected to pay for damaged goods in a regular business transaction, so simply stop doing so with private prisons.
  • pc86 9y ago
    > prisons should be to rehabilitate A lot of people, regardless of political persuasion, believe that the purpose of prisons is to punish those inside. No more, no less, and any "rehabilitation" is just something that happens alongside (and often in spite of) the real purpose.
    • 7952 9y ago
      The trouble is that punishment and rehabilitation are seen as mutually exclusive. That a "soft" prison is less punishing. But really the removal of freedom in itself is a vast punishment. Going further than that is just unceccessary and counterproductive.
      • TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
        The problem is rehabilitation only works on some people, and punishment works on virtually no one. Prisons are a dumping ground for people with personality disorders. You can't fix a personality disorder with rehabilitation, or with punishment. (Arguably you can't fix a personality disorder at all.) Some people are relatively rational. They commit crimes for a variety of reasons, a good proportion of which are a direct outcome of poverty and/or economic abuse and/or racism. The best way to rehabilitate them is to rehabilitate society so it doesn't push them into a corner, or create subcultures where crime is a reasonable survival option. The people with psychological issues are much harder to deal with. Keeping them locked and away and occupied is more humane than trying to "punish" them, because the punishment is pointless and will have exactly zero effect. Running prisons as a for-profit industry instead of a social service is barbarism, and ultimately just puts more criminals on the streets.
• geofft 9y ago
  > IMO, the whole idea of prisons is inherently inhumane. We've really got to do better. At some point I reread Isaiah 61:1, "...to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound...," and it's been bugging me ever since that prison is, as far as I know, not a concept in the Judeo-Christian worldview. Isaiah doesn't want to proclaim liberty to the unjustly captive and release to the unjustly imprisoned; he's proclaiming release to everyone. All the examples of people going to prison in the Bible that I can think of - Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, John the Baptist in Judea, Paul and Silas in Philippi, etc. - are of "good guys" being thrown in prison by "bad guy" governments. I can't think of an example where God says to build a prison, or where a follower of God puts someone in prison, and the Bible says they did a good thing. (Maybe I'm forgetting something, though; I'd appreciate correction here.) For all that Western culture seems to be proud of our Judeo-Christian morality, did we inherit this one keystone of our whole thing from pagan concepts of how to run a justice system? And is it my religious duty as a Christian to fight for release for all the prisoners?
  • _petronius 9y ago
    > And is it my religious duty as a Christian to fight for release for all the prisoners? I think it probably is. Prisons are pretty inhumane: this has been recognized in the modern era by people as disperate as Johnny Cash and Eugene Debs[0] (and many others besides). The cloak of "rehabilitation" or "correction" is really just a way of making punishment more paletable -- and as others in the thread have commented, that is actually what many people (in the US and Britain certainly) believe prisons are for, and ought to be for. But punishment doesn't improve society: recitivism rates remain very high even with very brutal criminal justice systems, and obviously don't deter. Even the "Bloody Code" in the 19th century in the UK didn't work, otherwise crime would have died out. The causes of crime are various and complex. If we want to reduce crime and bring about justice and security for everyone, we need to address those causes. And as Debs wrote about rather eloquently after spending time in prison, all the American system has done for hundreds of years, by and large, is take people in desperate circumstances and make those circumstances even more desperate. It essentially exacerbates the causes of crime in countless instances. Thus the fight for real justice and real peace has to be the fight not just on behalf of victims, but on the perpatrators as well. It prevents more victims, for one. But Christian duty, and Christian compassion, also demands caring attention to everyone, even people that have done truly terrible things. This isn't easy, or even pleasant, but that's one of the real radical roots of Christianity. That struggle for justice and peace isn't as simple as "open the gates of the prisons, and let people do what they want." A lot of people would try to reduce such an argument to that. It's a process, and a path, and taken seriously, we could find ourselves at the end of that path with a society that is fairer, happier, more peaceful, and which has no need of prisons. (And as a further aside of personal interest, that question of radical Christianity and the very real attention to the precepts of the gospels was one of the things that led George Fox to found the Quaker movement, which was also for a long time considered insidiously radical, and violently surpressed: largely because the Quakers refused to swear oaths or participate in war. The Peace Testimony of the Quakers -- also often treated in reductive terms along the lines of "oh, so you don't fight to defend anyone then" -- is pretty powerful stuff, that acknowledges the complexities of conflict and violence[1], but also the causes of conflict and violence, and seeks to end violence by putting an end to the causes of it[2].) [0]: https://archive.org/details/wallsbars00debs https://archive.org/details/wallsbars00debs [1]: http://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/24-21/ http://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/24-21/ [2]: http://www.quno.org/areas-of-work http://www.quno.org/areas-of-work