5 ms·

My theory is that drastically reduced sentences using solitary confinement might be more useful than sticking people in jail cells for longer periods of time.

My theory is that drastically reduced sentences using solitary confinement might be more useful than sticking people in jail cells for longer periods of time. For example, for minor offences have 1-2 days of solitary confinement, and increase it meaningfully as the violence of the crime increases and for recidivists. The benefit is that you can isolate the prisoners completely, so that they don't engage in gang activity, drugs, etc. It's also much safer for prison guards and you can get by with less. You can also pack in a lot more convicts into a small area, but also the turnover will be much quicker, so you can handle more convicts. Solitary confinement is much much harsher, so for first-time-offenders, they will get scared straight, but they also can't get indoctrinated into more criminal activity from gang members, etc. First time offenders will get scared straight much quicker (spending only a few days or a week in solitary) vs much longer sentences.

lallysingh 9y ago
I don't disagree. There's another aspect to this: the deterrent aspect (for some) of spending time with hardened criminals. Also, sometimes 1-2 days completely alone sounds pretty good.
- gpm 9y ago
  > the deterrent aspect (for some) of spending time with hardened criminals. I think getting rid of this is one of the biggest benefits of these alternative schemes. It is otherwise phrased as "the deterrent aspect of being put in a situation where you (believe?) you are likely to get raped and otherwise abused". It's cruel, unethical, and has no place in modern society.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Also, sometimes 1-2 days completely alone sounds pretty good. Thereby showing that it's not an effective deterrent?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- craftyguy 9y ago
  1-2 days != 3 years
iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
Does punishment work as anything but a deterrent? Can we actually change adult behaviour positively through our penal systems?
- rosser 9y ago
  There have been some interesting, if not entirely consistent, results from "restorative justice" efforts.
- ExactoKnight 9y ago
  Americans might realize this was proven if they look beyond their own borders and to Norway, which has the lowest recidivism rate in the world.
Y_Y 9y ago
But what about the effect of removing criminals from society? Or the perceived harshness in the eyes of the public ("he only got a three week sentence!")?
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  I think people will learn quickly how harsh solitary confinement is and they can readjust their expectations. Also, the sentence should be moved up meaningfully depending on the level of crime. So 3 weeks for rape would be too little, in my opinion.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    People do not commit crimes expecting to be caught. If the death penalty is not a deterrent, how could you expect anything less to be?
gpm 9y ago
I have a similar theory but with torture. For minor offenses instead of imprisoning people just subject them to extreme pain for a short period of time and send them on their way. It has all the benefits you listed and it will interfere less with any job they may hold which should substantially reduce social harm (self explanatory) and recidivism rates (which have been shown to strongly correlate with employment). For anyone who likes parents theory and dislikes mine, I'd be very interested in knowing why. (I don't really think this theory is correct - but it does seem plausible)
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  They do this in some countries like Singapore or the Middle East, where they whip or cane criminals for minor offenses. I don't like the idea, because it's violent and we can't claim the upper moral hand. The beauty of solitary confinement is that it's completely non-violent but it's very harsh mentally. You can make the case that it's mental torture but it's just an edge case of regular prisons, where the number of prisoners N = 1, and the prison is the size of a cell.
  - gerbilly 9y ago
    >The beauty of solitary confinement is that it's completely non-violent it is violent. Violence does not have to be a stimulus that you present to the subject (hitting, etc...). It can be a collection of stimuli that you withhold from the subject as in this case. Someone even coined a term for it: structural violence.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      I understand what you're saying, but I reject this usage of the word "violence". I'm using the term violence in the traditional sense, meaning causing actual physical harm, vs "preventing a basic need". Punishment is inherently restricting basic needs of some sort. If that were the case, you could argue that my disallowing my children access to Youtube Kids is "violent." I don't want to confuse the terms for the purpose of my point, which is actual physical harm.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chki 9y ago
In my opinion this is exactly what prison should NOT be. There are of course different theories on why we put people in prison but the main thing to achieve should not be to punish and scare people. The aim is to keep crime rates low and therefore to properly resocialize prisoners. By putting them in solitary confinement you are doing the exact opposite: not helping them but actually turning them further away from society because you are actively hurting them. Changing the prison environment to a place where criminals can actually get out of the vicious cycle they're in is the way to go. Not putting the failure to do so on them. Apart from that I also strongly believe that solitary confinement is inhumane in itself and so are life long prison sentences. (Corporal Punishment is wrong on a completely different level) The only time that people should be locked up for life is if they are mentally ill or pose a concrete threat by the time they would be released.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  That's why the solitary confinement sentences would be drastically shortened, especially for first-time criminals and non-violent criminals. My other hypothesis is that people commit crimes for only 2 reasons: 1) They don't think they will get caught. For these types of people, the punishment won't be a deterrent because they believe they will never suffer the consequences. You could literally raise the punishment level to death and it wouldn't affect these people from committing the crime because they don't believe they will get caught. 2) They don't care if they get caught (ie. they don't think or care about the consequences of their actions). This can be split into 2 subgroups: a) They simply don't care about the consequences (ex. acts of passion or they are ignorant to the consequences). b) They think the consequences are "worth" it. Punishment really only will affect group 2B. The other two groups (1 and 2a) won't be deterred no matter what. So the question really is, how do we optimize deterring group 2B? Solitary confinement, to me, is a more cost-efficient way of increasing the scale exponentially while still not being drastic. Some might say that 90 days in solitary confinement is worse than a few years in jail. If that's true, then it's really cost efficient, and would serve as a cheap, quick deterrent and might prevent recidivism.
  - ExactoKnight 9y ago
jacquesm 9y ago
What a ridiculous comment. Really. Where to start: Solitary confinement is something that can really mess up the people that you inflict it on, ideally it would not even be in the repertoire of any normal prison. We are social animals and to deprive a person of any kind of interaction is really brutal. Having the ability to move around of your free will taken away is already pretty harsh and people commit suicide readily when faced with this possibility (which is the reason they take away your shoelaces and belt even for the shortest spans of confinement where I live), solitary confinement is several degrees above that and could very well permanently affect the psychological state of the victim (word used with great care) of such treatment. Obviously any kind of imprisonment has risks as you note but your remedy seems much worse than the original problem.

lallysingh 9y ago

I don't disagree. There's another aspect to this: the deterrent aspect (for some) of spending time with hardened criminals. Also, sometimes 1-2 days completely alone sounds pretty good.

gpm 9y ago
> the deterrent aspect (for some) of spending time with hardened criminals. I think getting rid of this is one of the biggest benefits of these alternative schemes. It is otherwise phrased as "the deterrent aspect of being put in a situation where you (believe?) you are likely to get raped and otherwise abused". It's cruel, unethical, and has no place in modern society.
icebraining 9y ago
Also, sometimes 1-2 days completely alone sounds pretty good. Thereby showing that it's not an effective deterrent?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
craftyguy 9y ago
1-2 days != 3 years

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

Does punishment work as anything but a deterrent? Can we actually change adult behaviour positively through our penal systems?

rosser 9y ago
There have been some interesting, if not entirely consistent, results from "restorative justice" efforts.
ExactoKnight 9y ago
Americans might realize this was proven if they look beyond their own borders and to Norway, which has the lowest recidivism rate in the world.

Y_Y 9y ago

But what about the effect of removing criminals from society? Or the perceived harshness in the eyes of the public ("he only got a three week sentence!")?

pfarnsworth 9y ago
I think people will learn quickly how harsh solitary confinement is and they can readjust their expectations. Also, the sentence should be moved up meaningfully depending on the level of crime. So 3 weeks for rape would be too little, in my opinion.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  People do not commit crimes expecting to be caught. If the death penalty is not a deterrent, how could you expect anything less to be?

gpm 9y ago

I have a similar theory but with torture. For minor offenses instead of imprisoning people just subject them to extreme pain for a short period of time and send them on their way. It has all the benefits you listed and it will interfere less with any job they may hold which should substantially reduce social harm (self explanatory) and recidivism rates (which have been shown to strongly correlate with employment). For anyone who likes parents theory and dislikes mine, I'd be very interested in knowing why. (I don't really think this theory is correct - but it does seem plausible)

pfarnsworth 9y ago
They do this in some countries like Singapore or the Middle East, where they whip or cane criminals for minor offenses. I don't like the idea, because it's violent and we can't claim the upper moral hand. The beauty of solitary confinement is that it's completely non-violent but it's very harsh mentally. You can make the case that it's mental torture but it's just an edge case of regular prisons, where the number of prisoners N = 1, and the prison is the size of a cell.
- gerbilly 9y ago
  >The beauty of solitary confinement is that it's completely non-violent it is violent. Violence does not have to be a stimulus that you present to the subject (hitting, etc...). It can be a collection of stimuli that you withhold from the subject as in this case. Someone even coined a term for it: structural violence.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but I reject this usage of the word "violence". I'm using the term violence in the traditional sense, meaning causing actual physical harm, vs "preventing a basic need". Punishment is inherently restricting basic needs of some sort. If that were the case, you could argue that my disallowing my children access to Youtube Kids is "violent." I don't want to confuse the terms for the purpose of my point, which is actual physical harm.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

chki 9y ago

In my opinion this is exactly what prison should NOT be. There are of course different theories on why we put people in prison but the main thing to achieve should not be to punish and scare people. The aim is to keep crime rates low and therefore to properly resocialize prisoners. By putting them in solitary confinement you are doing the exact opposite: not helping them but actually turning them further away from society because you are actively hurting them. Changing the prison environment to a place where criminals can actually get out of the vicious cycle they're in is the way to go. Not putting the failure to do so on them. Apart from that I also strongly believe that solitary confinement is inhumane in itself and so are life long prison sentences. (Corporal Punishment is wrong on a completely different level) The only time that people should be locked up for life is if they are mentally ill or pose a concrete threat by the time they would be released.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
That's why the solitary confinement sentences would be drastically shortened, especially for first-time criminals and non-violent criminals. My other hypothesis is that people commit crimes for only 2 reasons: 1) They don't think they will get caught. For these types of people, the punishment won't be a deterrent because they believe they will never suffer the consequences. You could literally raise the punishment level to death and it wouldn't affect these people from committing the crime because they don't believe they will get caught. 2) They don't care if they get caught (ie. they don't think or care about the consequences of their actions). This can be split into 2 subgroups: a) They simply don't care about the consequences (ex. acts of passion or they are ignorant to the consequences). b) They think the consequences are "worth" it. Punishment really only will affect group 2B. The other two groups (1 and 2a) won't be deterred no matter what. So the question really is, how do we optimize deterring group 2B? Solitary confinement, to me, is a more cost-efficient way of increasing the scale exponentially while still not being drastic. Some might say that 90 days in solitary confinement is worse than a few years in jail. If that's true, then it's really cost efficient, and would serve as a cheap, quick deterrent and might prevent recidivism.
- ExactoKnight 9y ago

jacquesm 9y ago

What a ridiculous comment. Really. Where to start: Solitary confinement is something that can really mess up the people that you inflict it on, ideally it would not even be in the repertoire of any normal prison. We are social animals and to deprive a person of any kind of interaction is really brutal. Having the ability to move around of your free will taken away is already pretty harsh and people commit suicide readily when faced with this possibility (which is the reason they take away your shoelaces and belt even for the shortest spans of confinement where I live), solitary confinement is several degrees above that and could very well permanently affect the psychological state of the victim (word used with great care) of such treatment. Obviously any kind of imprisonment has risks as you note but your remedy seems much worse than the original problem.