Prisoners are not mistreated when in prison. Abuse is the improper treatment of someone, usually for your own gain. Whilst there will be bad eggs in any career, prisoners are (on the whole) not abused.
Prison of the future?
- Thread starter RomanNose
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Prisoners are not mistreated when in prison. Abuse is the improper treatment of someone, usually for your own gain. Whilst there will be bad eggs in any career, prisoners are (on the whole) not abused.
Soldato
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I am surprised that there hasnt been any talk of oursourcing prisons. They do it for other things so why not send the most proflific offenders off to prisons in the far east like thailand/china/etc? Surely that would be a deterant for repeat offenders if on their 3rd convicted offence its off on a plane for the term of their imprisonment. While i understand that they wont be able to have personal visits but what about doing visits by skype? Anyway i am sure there will be people that say nooo we cant do that, human rights blah blah blah and i am not saying that its an answer but if overcrowding in prisons in the UK is causing sentances to be more leanient or even non custodial for offences that would usually be a custodial sentance then it puts the justice system in dissaray and makes it a complete joke..
Very valid point. At the end of the feudal system when property crime still hadn't quite become the primary focus of crime, most punishments were inflicted upon the body (we have a lot more fines today), and that didn't exactly do much. I think fear of being "pressed" or flayed or hung doesn't reduce crime. no one commits a crime intending to be caught, and being punished doesn't make you much less likely to commit another crime.
Rehabilitation is key, and the way we do it now is ****-poor. People come out having been identified as criminals, and adopt a criminal identity (ref Lemert and Becker re labelling theory), making them more likely to re-offend having been ostracised from society.
There doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" approach, just one better tailored to the individual at hand. Different offenders should be treated differently.
I think you'll find that most punishments would have been for religious reasons and just general authoritarian corruption. Basically just look at Saudi or North Korea for a picture of what it would look like. The crimes we are most bothered about today are violence and possession
Obviously doing something right aren't they.
Uk = Reoffending rates top 70% in some prisons, figures reveal
Reoffending is higher among criminals who are locked up than do community sentences – with 74% of ex-inmates at one prison convicted again within a year.
From - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/04/jail-less-effective-community-service
That doesn't compute.
The prisoners on that Island are the worst kind of criminals you can get!
Well that shows how much you know then doesn't it.
It depends on what you did, no point locking someone up for stealing a cola bottle.
Lots of people get locked up for small crimes.
I think it would work as effectively a halfway house (which is what it appears to be). ie it seems the norwegian system select those who are towards the latter stage of their sentence. They have already served some time in a penal institution. This sort of camp gives them a chance to start to readjust, look after themselves and train up. I think we shouldn't keep people in a normal penal institute and then suddenly expect them all to hit the ground running when they get out of prison. It's more effective rehabilitation to make them feel they have skills to offer and feel good about themselves. A bit of self belief, etc.
A couple of years ago, one of my Inspectors came to a shift training day and told me that they were going to implement a system of close monitoring / intervention with something like our top 20 repeat offenders in our area.
The idea was to deter them commiting crime, to work with them to build life skills and to stamp on them hard if they reoffended, stop check them with their mates whenever we saw tham and do out utmost get them remanded in custody / fast track them to court if they committed offences.
I was sitting there with over 20 years Policing experience, open mouthed, thinking "this guy has taken leave of his senses, he wants to give them flats and training courses?!?!"
Fast forward to today.
I haven't got the exact statistics to hand, but there was a drop over something like 60% in the reoffending rates of these individuals. These were perstent offenders who were career thieves, burglers, etc. and responsible for a large proportion of the crime in the area.
Now the cynic might say "well you're catchig them more / convicting them more and jailing them more so obviously there is a drop" - well sure, but in fact most of them were out, not inside prison.
Some of my collegues on the unit tell me that when you sit down with these offenders and listen to their life stories you realise it isn't as simple as he/she is dishonest.
Life has a horrible habit of messing up people and in many of the cases their problems stemmed from their home environment. They were physically/sexually abused by parents/siblings. There was often alcohol/drug misuse within the parental home. They were left to feed/cloth themselves. Their education was broken or non-existent and peer pressures/social environments added to the chaos.
The intervention teams ensure that when they come out they have a fixed address. They ensure that if they require medical treatment / drug or alcohol rehab etc. that they get it. They ensure that they get benefits that the government state they can have and they are helped on training courses / education courses as well. Jobs are located for them if they will take up the offer.
In short everything that they were missing in their lives is provided with a helping hand. If they want it, it is there. If they mess up and commit a crime they're slapped and sent down. Classic reward/punishment.
It takes a few tries with some of them, but over the last two to three years quite a few of the people who have been through the system have either stopped reoffending or markedly reduced their offending.
The knock on effect is that the high volume prolific offenders are reduced. This frees up time to deal with the bigger fish and as a result there has been a marked increase in these type of criminals being sorted out.
In short I'm a firm believer that we do need some sort of intervention in the Prison system. I'm not advocating that it works for all and indeed I think society needs to be protected from people who commit Murder/Sex Crimes/Gun Crimes and so on, but the net result of intervention could free up cell space for those that really do need to go there.
The idea was to deter them commiting crime, to work with them to build life skills and to stamp on them hard if they reoffended, stop check them with their mates whenever we saw tham and do out utmost get them remanded in custody / fast track them to court if they committed offences.
I was sitting there with over 20 years Policing experience, open mouthed, thinking "this guy has taken leave of his senses, he wants to give them flats and training courses?!?!"
Fast forward to today.
I haven't got the exact statistics to hand, but there was a drop over something like 60% in the reoffending rates of these individuals. These were perstent offenders who were career thieves, burglers, etc. and responsible for a large proportion of the crime in the area.
Now the cynic might say "well you're catchig them more / convicting them more and jailing them more so obviously there is a drop" - well sure, but in fact most of them were out, not inside prison.
Some of my collegues on the unit tell me that when you sit down with these offenders and listen to their life stories you realise it isn't as simple as he/she is dishonest.
Life has a horrible habit of messing up people and in many of the cases their problems stemmed from their home environment. They were physically/sexually abused by parents/siblings. There was often alcohol/drug misuse within the parental home. They were left to feed/cloth themselves. Their education was broken or non-existent and peer pressures/social environments added to the chaos.
The intervention teams ensure that when they come out they have a fixed address. They ensure that if they require medical treatment / drug or alcohol rehab etc. that they get it. They ensure that they get benefits that the government state they can have and they are helped on training courses / education courses as well. Jobs are located for them if they will take up the offer.
In short everything that they were missing in their lives is provided with a helping hand. If they want it, it is there. If they mess up and commit a crime they're slapped and sent down. Classic reward/punishment.
It takes a few tries with some of them, but over the last two to three years quite a few of the people who have been through the system have either stopped reoffending or markedly reduced their offending.
The knock on effect is that the high volume prolific offenders are reduced. This frees up time to deal with the bigger fish and as a result there has been a marked increase in these type of criminals being sorted out.
In short I'm a firm believer that we do need some sort of intervention in the Prison system. I'm not advocating that it works for all and indeed I think society needs to be protected from people who commit Murder/Sex Crimes/Gun Crimes and so on, but the net result of intervention could free up cell space for those that really do need to go there.
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