SubJeff on 25/10/2012 at 15:33

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No punishments for anything then?

Interesting.

Rape-murder of your family? Oh, it's done now, no point in doing anything about it?

Up 'til now I was prepared to discuss things with you, but not anymore. And I'm not going to bother explaining to you why this idea is twenty types of wrong.



I really am out now.

june gloom on 25/10/2012 at 19:40

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nominating subjeff for republican office

Peanuckle on 26/10/2012 at 02:50

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Well DDL, 3000 dollars saved per prisoner, (keeping the medical like a civilized nation) times 2,266,800 prisoners (2010) is 6,800,400,000 dollars. Nearly seven billion dollars per year saved by not pampering monsters. Awesome, I say. We can put that seven billion towards social programs like feeding homeless people or making sure the poor and the mad get their medicine, or any number of worthwhile efforts. In fact, you could almost consider the fact that criminals suck up that much money a crime in itself, as they deny decent people the help they could get from it.

Just for the record, if we went gulag-style, they WOULD dig themselves because it'd be the prisoners digging it.

"Non-punishment based deterrents..."

Is there even such a thing? All deterrent function by making an action less pleasing to undertake. I suppose you could consistently offer superior choices, but as we know humans aren't always logical or rational, and may choose the less pleasing action just for the experience.

I was looking up alternatives to locking people up, and found this article that references a thing called Restorative Justice, where the offender is forced to view the effects of their acts on the victim's life and personally make amends. Sort of a perverted "It's a Wonderful Life" thing. The article claims that it's empirically proven to reduce recidivism, but other sources are conflicted. However, all sources seem to agree that the victims feel better, so that might help the "need for revenge" you bring up.

Article: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/16/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation)

Our real disagreement seems to be the monetary value of recidivism. Are nice, rehabilitation-promoting prisons economically valuable? Found an article that the country would save approximately 6.35 billion yearly if they cut ALL recidivism (that is, once a guy goes to prison he never commits another crime again, ever), compared to the 6.80 billion currently spent. Approx 500 mill. difference. Of course, that's assuming a total end to recidivism, which is fairly unlikely. The article also lists CA's recidivism rate at 57.8 percent. Comparatively, Oregon has a very low rate, 22.8 percent, which they believe is due to outside-prison sanctions. This might suggest that prison doesn't affect recidivism in ANY meaningful way, but only serves to keep them out of society. If that's true, then maybe besides making prisons better or worse, the true solution would be Oregon's sanction model.

Article: (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/opinion/28thu3.html?_r=1)

Anyone else feel like they're writing a term paper? I might need to type up a works cited section at this rate.

DDL on 26/10/2012 at 06:56

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I just like how subjeff seems to have spectacularly missed the point.








:tsktsk:


Peanuckle: you could save 16 billion by releasing half of the non-violent offenders of that prison population, like the report you actually linked to suggests. And apparently this has been assessed as having no significant effect on public safety, too. And you get to sidestep all the human rights issues you'd otherwise raise by becoming "a country that houses prisoners in deliberately shitty conditions, because it can". America simply imprisons people for stupid stupid reasons (three strikes law, for instance). The UK does it too, of course (offensive facebook post? JAILTIME BABY). I'm happy for violent offenders to be imprisoned (see "isolation to protect the population", above), but seriously
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Prisoner_population_rate_world_2012_map.png/800px-Prisoner_population_rate_world_2012_map.png

..that's not good. Especially since the actual CRIME stats are not significantly different from many of those vastly less prison-happy nations.

Or this one:

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/incarceration-vs-violent-crime-rate.jpg


Also, without prisoner access to things like education programs, libraries, or basically anything but rags and gruel, I can imagine 'incidence of prison riots' would display a sharp increase, so you'd have to funnel a decent percentage of that money back into extra security.
I'm glad you raised restorative justice though, as that does bear closer study as a potential means of lowering recidivism (and indeed generating genuine remorse) in offenders, and providing catharsis for victims. It also potentially lowers the "us and them" threshold by showing offenders that victims are people just like them, and showing victims that offenders are people just like them. One hopes this sort of thing could reduce the tendency to call prisoners "monsters" every other post, too.;)

Finally, regarding the value of recidivism: I don't know where you got your numbers from, but taking your values as stated, saving 6.35 billion vs spending 6.8 billion is not a 500million difference, it's 13.15 billion. Which (compared to the 16 billion saved by the 'release of 50% of the non-violent offenders' suggested by that report and your hypothetical 7 billion saved by shitty conditions, assuming the numbers for california apply across the country) is quite a lot!

SubJeff on 26/10/2012 at 09:38

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DDL - those quotes, look at them again. Then look at your quote of mine.

You are saying that people shouldn't go to jail for the crime, but to protect themselves or others.

The end result of this is people who commit a crime but who do not need to be incarcerated for their own and others protection. And forget mental illness please, that's a completely different thing.

People should be locked up if they commit a crime so that they get it that they've done something wrong. If you've met many offenders you'll know that a lot of them have no insight into this, they are often so messed up they just don't get how serving their own needs in the way they did is plain wrong.