'Radical' prison changes.

It's quite simple, we need to make prison somewhere that people don't actually want to go to.
This needs to be coupled with effective policing and very tough sentancing. We do not need to be paying in excess of £30k a year on each prisoner. It's ridiculous.
Once prisons become a tough, harsh and disgusting experience and prisoners are locked up for years then it will begin to work better.

There are many people that are career criminals, and no matter how much you 'rehabilitate' them they will never change. These people need to be locked up long term on a cheap rate.

Finally, implement the US system of 3 strikes for all and any criminal crime. This would make many 'casual' criminals think twice about breaking the law and hopefully stem the cull of younger criminals replacing the older ones.
 
britboy4321 said:
In America they tried the death penalty (currently postponed I believe) and it ended up costing more than just keeping someone banged up for 20 years. Execution is surprisingly expensive.

You've also got a slight problem when you hang someone and then 5 years later they find through new DNA technology there is no way they could have possibly done the crime. It leaves a bad feeling with all involved, and opens the door for family litigation.

Your shower example - well, every time I go to the gym I have no idea of the personal backgrounds of anyone there .. but I don't 'not shower and go home smelly' in case I'm rodgered and my car is stolen!!
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Nice One.

I can't believe that hanging people as Albert Pierpoint did was more expensive than keeping someone on death row for twenty years. Albert had a day job too (well two times a day, they had licencing hours back then). My system would NOT allow for lengthy appeals - just a lenth of rope! (Pound Shop?)

5 Years later and DNA, well.................. We have Hawkeye, Snicko,White spot, a third umpire and OUR batsmen are still given out! They have to walk too and I don't recall any of them being given a second chance! :)
 
anticonscience said:
I think you are the one living in a fantasy world britboy.

It just wouldn't work at all, even with the best intentions. People would not have any dealings in a normal business relationship with murderers/serious offenders.

Oh and does Leslie Grantham fall into any of those catergories? Yes he did some pretty strange stuff but he hardly murdered anyone/raped anyone did he? He was just disgraced for having sexual perversions.
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LOL.

Sorry to bring this back from the first page but this post shows how uninformed people are.

Leslie Grantham served 10 years for murder.
 
it is too soft these days. At the end of the day they committed a crime, it should be punishment, it shouldn't be nice. Most of the time it seems the criminals get more protection and rights than the victims.
 
I don't think the stigma should be removed from a criminal record, but, mabey there should be a way of punishing repeat offenders and a way getting past crimes spent if the original crime had special circumstances and a long period of no other offences.

For example one of my uncles friends who worked with him as an accountant was out on a work doo in London and a row broke out in a bar about a drunk man who had thrown a drink over my uncles friends wife after she had asked him to stop bothering her. This led to my uncles friend confronting the drunk man who started to push him, when the friend pushed back the man fell over, banged his head and died of a brain hemmorage.
My uncles friend was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison for X amount of years and has since been released but in the process missed his kids growing up and can't get a decent job due to his conviction which has had a massive effect on his familys life, whist in prison he's wife couldn't keep up the mortgage payments due to looking after his kids so they lost their house, car etc... It has been devastating for them.

I accept a family has lost their son and I can't deny their greif must be much larger than the family of my uncles friend. I know some of you guys will say he commuted a crime therefore must be punished but, what would you do if a guy was has hasseling your wife then chucked a drink on her? He was very unlucky and did what anyother person would do but unfortunaly someone got killed.

Should this mans past offence stop him from being given a job?
 
Society needs to ask the question "Why do people commit crimes?"

As the majority of people on OcUK seem to be science minded, it always amazes me the attitude people take towards criminal behaviour. The level headed logic driven arguments that you find in other threads seem to go out the window and are replaced by ones that are mainly emotionally driven.

As far as I'm concerned crimes happen for two main reasons:
1. Mental illness or dysfunction
2. A removal from your sense of place in a community. The feeling of either being below or above the law.

Healthy minded people who have an active role in their community rarely commit crimes. Money should be spent on scientific research into mental dysfunction and in ensuring children are brought up in communities that install a huge sense of personal responsibility.

Once a crime is commited it's too late, society has already failed.
 
Ahleckz said:
It's quite simple, we need to make prison somewhere that people don't actually want to go to.
This needs to be coupled with effective policing and very tough sentancing. We do not need to be paying in excess of £30k a year on each prisoner. It's ridiculous.
Once prisons become a tough, harsh and disgusting experience and prisoners are locked up for years then it will begin to work better.
Click to expand...

At the risk of begging the question - would you agree that prisons in the 1800s were thoroughly unpleasant places to be? If so why did crime continue to exist there and then?

Ahleckz said:
There are many people that are career criminals, and no matter how much you 'rehabilitate' them they will never change. These people need to be locked up long term on a cheap rate.

Finally, implement the US system of 3 strikes for all and any criminal crime. This would make many 'casual' criminals think twice about breaking the law and hopefully stem the cull of younger criminals replacing the older ones.
Click to expand...

If you don't up the detection rates then it's largely irrelevant how harsh or undesirable the punishments are even if we allow the premise that harsh punishments are a deterrent which is far from proven aside from the "stands to reason doesn't it?" approach.

Belly said:
Nice One.

I can't believe that hanging people as Albert Pierpoint did was more expensive than keeping someone on death row for twenty years. Albert had a day job too (well two times a day, they had licencing hours back then). My system would NOT allow for lengthy appeals - just a lenth of rope! (Pound Shop?)

5 Years later and DNA, well.................. We have Hawkeye, Snicko,White spot, a third umpire and OUR batsmen are still given out! They have to walk too and I don't recall any of them being given a second chance! :)
Click to expand...

The idea that such an approach could ever get near the justice system in any civilised country is not one I'm at all comfortable with. "Whoopsie, turns out you didn't do it" is not an adequate response to executing someone who wasn't guilty of the crime.

Killing people may be cheap but the supporting structure is not and without the appeals system behind it being of adequate rigour then your whole justice system is rendered worthless.

Brian8bit said:
Anyone commenting here actually been to prison or work as a screw?
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There's a few people I know of on OcUK who have spent time in prison and at least a couple of prison officers.
 
semi-pro waster said:
At the risk of begging the question - would you agree that prisons in the 1800s were thoroughly unpleasant places to be? If so why did crime continue to exist there and then?
Click to expand...

I'm sure they were thoroughly unpleasant places to be, and there are various theories as to why crime happens in this age and in ages past. One that you need to look at is the availabilty of opportunity and social welfare. Whilst I'm not a historian (I'm a law & political science student) I'm sure that the welfare package that is in place now to assist those who are in need was not available in the 1800s. Due to this, crime would often be the only option for many. This simply is not the case nowadays.

semi-pro waster said:
If you don't up the detection rates then it's largely irrelevant how harsh or undesirable the punishments are even if we allow the premise that harsh punishments are a deterrent which is far from proven aside from the "stands to reason doesn't it?" approach.
Click to expand...

I said that we need to up detection rates.

Ahleckz said:
This needs to be coupled with effective policing and very tough sentancing
Click to expand...

Yes, it is not proven but nor are any particular crime fighting systems. Yet many places pump huge numbers of resources into following one theory or another. NYC with the Broken Windows is one such example.
My point is, what we are doing is not working. We need a change.
 
britboy said:
Cool. 3 years work? 19? Just GCSEs? I'd say 'pretty good' would mean to me with those stats .. er .. > 20K a year. Not bad if you are ... not bad at all ..
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Blackhawk47 said:
Your arrogant, narrow minded insults don't have any effect on me because you don't even know who I am. :mad:
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It wasn't an insult. After 3 years work having left school at 16, if I worked hard and considered myself 'doing well', I'd expect 20K. No insult intended.
 
Interestingly, the Scottish Conservatives (I know, I know) are against the policy that the UK Conservatives are planning.
The Scottish government are also scrapping a Labour plan to jail people who carry knives for 6 months. A daft scrap, in my eyes as this is an ever growing and serious problem up here.
Finally, the criminal responsibilty age is being raised to 12 up here. Another daft thing. You are easily aware of what you are doing and the repercussions of such actions at aged 10, perhaps even 8, and therefore you should be able to be tried as such.
There are also to be new offences for 'extreme pornography'. Expect to see a rise in 'spec me encryption software' from the Scottish in coming days :p.
 
Ahleckz said:
I'm sure they were thoroughly unpleasant places to be, and there are various theories as to why crime happens in this age and in ages past. One that you need to look at is the availabilty of opportunity and social welfare. Whilst I'm not a historian (I'm a law & political science student) I'm sure that the welfare package that is in place now to assist those who are in need was not available in the 1800s. Due to this, crime would often be the only option for many. This simply is not the case nowadays.
Click to expand...

It's worth being careful about not encouraging welfare dependency although in some cases it may well be cheaper than not providing welfare and having further increased crime. However that's a pragmatic approach, much like the idea of having televisions and games consoles in prisons - while it's great for the headlines of "prison's too soft" it's actually a valid approach to occupy prisoners and requires much less expense than "hard time" which a number of people advocate. A proportion of crime may well be caused by a lack of opportunities but it is of course far from the only reason for criminal behaviour.

The basic point is that harshness of prison routine doesn't necessarily have any impact on criminal behaviour.

Ahleckz said:
I said that we need to up detection rates.

Yes, it is not proven but nor are any particular crime fighting systems. Yet many places pump huge numbers of resources into following one theory or another. NYC with the Broken Windows is one such example.
My point is, what we are doing is not working. We need a change.
Click to expand...

Perhaps we do need a change but that doesn't tend to come cheaply and it requires to be implemented correctly to achieve the desired results. However I still remain to be convinced that harsher punishments will lead to any improvement in the numbers being incarcerated initially or re-offending. Criminology (which I'm sure you've also studied as a law student) is a lovely thing for expressing theories but if you put 4 criminologists in a room you'll get 5 theories for explaining criminal behaviour - trying to achieve a one size fits all approach seems fundamentally flawed to me.
 
Ahleckz said:
Interestingly, the Scottish Conservatives (I know, I know) are against the policy that the UK Conservatives are planning.
The Scottish government are also scrapping a Labour plan to jail people who carry knives for 6 months. A daft scrap, in my eyes as this is an ever growing and serious problem up here.
Finally, the criminal responsibilty age is being raised to 12 up here. Another daft thing. You are easily aware of what you are doing and the repercussions of such actions at aged 10, perhaps even 8, and therefore you should be able to be tried as such.
There are also to be new offences for 'extreme pornography'. Expect to see a rise in 'spec me encryption software' from the Scottish in coming days :p.
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We've got to be careful we don't go the way of the states:

wiki said:
more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison. The United States has less than 5% of the world's population[25] and 23.4% of the world's prison population.
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The US has a BAD crime problem, and for decades 'even harsher on crime' politicians have been voted in and made punishments worse and worse and worse for criminals (a US criminal for example recently got 50 years inside no parole for stealing $153 of videotapes link on request! :( ).

They do virtually no prisoner rehabilitation, and have virtually no social state once these guys get out. They just can't seem to wrap it round their brains that their system isn't working. Worse - people in this country think their system is the way forward! Criminals need to be punished more more more more more. Er .. no mate .. look at the US. It solves nothing.
 
Moley said:
The focus is already determined - it's rehabilitation. The problem is lack of resources being provided to the prison service to actually carry out this mandate.

If the country wants to reduce re-offending it has to take away the reasons for offending - top of the list of which is usually the need to offend to make money because ex-cons have no other way to get cash.

In order to do this we have to take a few "radical" steps:

  1. Ensure no prisoner leaves prison unable to read and write.
  2. Ensure no prisoner leaves prison still addicted to drugs.
  3. Support prisoners upon leaving prison to find accommodation and work and stay away from drugs/crime triggers.
  4. Remove the stigma associated with having a criminal record - make it actually a positive thing for companies to employ people with a criminal record so ex-cons can be seen to be rebuilding their lives and companies can be seen to be socially responsible.

There are obviously more things that can be done, but these four alone would go a long way towards fixing things.
Click to expand...

Dream on.
 
semi-pro waster said:
There's a few people I know of on OcUK who have spent time in prison and at least a couple of prison officers.
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Just didn't seem to be many voices from the experienced or those who work in the job saying anything as I read through the thread. Someone in my immediate family was in the service for about 20 years, got out a few years ago because they'd become disillusioned with how the whole thing was being run. Mostly lack of money being put into rehabilitation and other schemes for the lifers. A relative got into trouble while in the army and did a stint in Colchester MP too before being moved to Maghaberry to be closer to home. Thankfully I've been lucky and avoided it, despite getting into trouble a few times. But it was extremely close. The threat of it and the sentence that could be given made me take stock of where I was going and change my life.

It always makes me laugh though when people talk about how easy it is. Usually those people are the ones who've never seen the inside of a courthouse or they're doing a couple of nights over a weekend for a non-payment of a fine, or on the low / quick turn-around wings for a few weeks/couple months out of the main population. Anyone that has done a proper stint will tell you it's ****ing hell and it's the last place you want to be. The repeat offenders that people claim don't see prison as a deterrent are the people who've never done more than 6 months. I had to do community service once with a former joyrider. He'd done all his hooding when he was in his teens and done stints in the YOC at hydebank, he said it was a breeze as a kid, like a holiday camp. You're in there with all your hood mates etcetera, etcetera. But when you're old enough and hit the adult prison and main population and get a proper sentence, you quickly change your tune and it's the last place you want to be.
 
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