Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
While I am sure some of them have lost their fear of prison, that is not the reason most re-offend. There are many other reasons including the fact that once you are a convicted felon there is a stigma that hangs over you and it becomes very hard to get a job, much less make a life for yourself. Not to mention many of these people go into prison with no life skills and all they learn while in prison is how to be better criminals. Add in institutionalization syndrome, a system looking for any reason to send them back, and the fact that when people are released they are released right back into the environment that they were in before and it is no wonder most of them end up back in inside.
Let me ask the question like this: If you have two dogs and they are both behaving badly and you take dog number 1 to obedience training. You treat the dog with sympathy and work with the dog to socialize it and train it to be a good dog and you take dog 2 and lock it in a cage, feed it as little as possible and yell at it every day, which dog do you think is going to end up being the better pet?
I believe there are some people who can't be rehabilitated. Pedophiles, rapists, murderers etc. But someone who sold drugs or robbed a store or stole cars likely can. Most of us have a glorified ideal of what prison is and would hate every second we were in there. Clearly the current system isn't working, but when you look at other countries who treat criminals in a different manner and actually do try to rehabilitate them they have a much higher success rate.
|
(my bold to emphasize this post has fuck all to do with donny, and is to agree with kane's general post)
90% of people here saying how prison is a country club wouldn't last 5 minutes without pissing their pants "3 square meals a day" etc... l m f a o, taste that shit and see if you keep your "I wish I was given 3 square meals a day" thoughts. Everyone is different of course, and you are never going to rehabilitate everyone, but I'd sooner be part of civilised society than a knee-jerk reactionary who lets emotions override intelligence.
The very fact you are incarcerated is supposed to be the punishment part of it... you can't hang out with your buddies, go to the store if you feel like it, grab a snack, have an impromptu fuck with your missus, take a phone call from one of your kids who needs a hand with something, ring up your mates/kids, go for a drive, sit in the garden for 5 minutes to chill out, and a thousand other things that everyone takes for granted but rest assured, you would fucking HATE to lose. And that's how it should be, because you lost your liberty, so tough shit.
While you are in there they run workshops, courses, and attempt to give/mould skills that prevent reoffending - because the whole point is you want the behaviour to change right? You don't punish your kid by locking them under the stairs with bread and water and expect them to change their behaviour.... you take away their ps3, or ground them for a week as the punishment, and do what you need to do to change their behaviour so they don't just come out from under the stairs after 2 days and then do the same thing after a week, and keep repeating that stupid procedure because you are too much of an emotional knee-jerk idiot to see it isn't working.
Again... that isn't going to work with every inmate obviously, but how is it most people understand that it's better for 10 guilty to go free than 1 innocent to be imprisoned, or 10 to escape the chair than 1 innocent to die, or 100 torrent users go unpunished than 1 innocent to get penalised, and so on, but can't grasp the notion that with rehabilitation you can and do change people, and those that you can't are the ones that are going to re-offend and be career criminals anyway, regardless of whether you punish them by removing their liberty, or try Rochards dumb as fuck reactionary method that's akin to a hormonal facebook mom sharing a 'share if YOU hate cancer' meme.