Agricultural Slavery, Still In The US.

[Kanastrous]

I don’t think it is enough to simply relocate the crime inside prison walls; I want to wipe it out altogether.

I agree that segregating criminals from the rest of the society is not a full addressing of the problem. But I believe that it's the first and most essential step: the law abiding need protection from crime. Segregating the dangerous and/or destructive people is the most important single thing one can do, to deal with the situation right now if one's priority is protecting the innocent from their depredations. Everything else can follow, or run concurrent to simply working to make the street safer for the good guys by getting the bad guys off of it. And in this case, 'bad guys' means people who commit crimes that harm other people. Maybe they're basically nice, decent folks deep down, but certain actions can't be allowed, whether or not you care to form a judgment about the 'goodness' or 'badness' of the individuals perpetrating them.

And if we only care about the "law-abiding" population,

Hope you didn't think I said that. Convicted criminals have rights, too.

why do we prosecute prisoners who murder other prisoners?

Because even a convicted criminal is still protected by law, from the crime of murder (or alternately, the crime of murder is unaltered by the victim's status as a felon, incarcerated felon, or free citizen).

Why do we even investigate the murder of a mobster?

Because there is a collective interest in discouraging murder in general, and in apprehending people who murder. And because the law makes no special allowances for murdering mobsters, specifically because they are mobsters.

Sectioning off groups of people and saying, "Those aren't the people we really care about" is a very easy way to create a disenfranchised underclass that will be far more likely to commit crimes.

I'm willing to section off certain classes of criminal, and admit that I don't much care about what happens to them (as long as it's within the law; I *do* care if prisoners are being treated in an unlawful manner). If you find that you particularly care about what happens (for example) to child molesters and murderers, to pick a class of criminal that's tough to romanticize or excuse away, well, that's your call to make.

Locking up a person for committing a crime doesn't address the underlying cause of the crime itself,

In some crimes (I'm thinking mostly of sexual predation, but I suppose others might qualify too) opportunity is the key element that the offender must be denied, in order to re-offend. Again, if you believe that for-real sexual predators - for example - can be safely 'rehabilitated' and released back into general society...well, I hope you're willing to invite them to live in your neighborhood, rather than mine. But keeping them locked up permanent-like certainly appears to be an effective method for denying them opportunities to offend again.

and when they are released (often because they are costing too much to keep locked up) they will have received no aid in reform, possess no skills they can use to support themselves, and will likely fall back into a crime-inducing environment, and the cycle will continue.

Unless you're stealing food in order to avoid starvation, you're inducing the crimes you commit, yourself. Well, unless you are mentally damaged, in which case you may belong in some institution other than a prison, but you still may not belong out on the street.

There are people in this world who can never be a member of society. Those people are rare and should be locked up for their whole lives for their own safety and for the safety of others.

Agreed.

But there are so many more who are weak,

Maybe a stint in lockup will help them cultivate a degree of moral character. Hey, quit laughing; a well-deserved fear of going back to prison is going to keep some number of people from doing things to get sent back. Otherwise we'd have an 80-100% recidivism rate, if people were happy to contemplate going back...

who are hungry,

Stealing in order to eat, or to feed your family, is an act in a special class all its own. Maybe people who are reduced to stealing in order to eat should be obliged to make some kind of eventual restitution, but I certainly don't think they belong in prison.

who don't think they can ever do better or be better, and so commit crimes of necessity or desperation.

Outside of avoiding starvation or matters of self-defense, I can't think offhand of a 'crime of necessity.' And desperation does not impress me as excusing the commission of a serious crime, no matter how sympathetic I might feel, toward the perpetrator.

Those deserve every amount of aid we can muster, not only because it is the humane and moral thing to do, but because it is the smart thing.

Seems to me that the people in desperate need who don't commit crimes, are more deserving of our sympathy, aid, and resources, than people who do. I think that's smarter, too; I'm more sanguine about people taking best advantage of the aid, who didn't settle on criminality as the solution to their problems, to start with.

You think the only reason people rob convenience stores, murder others, shoplift DVDs, and use drugs is because they are sociopaths? You don't think maybe there is an economic factor involved for some?

I think that I have made clear that I see a distinction between people who commit crimes in order to survive, and people who commit crimes that are not crucial to their survival.

The only thing lifetime incarceration does is create lifetime criminals.

It also removes certain criminals from society on a permanent basis. That can be a very good thing, for the larger society and its other members who now benefit from getting to live out *their* valuable life-times, free of victimization by the individual who's locked up. I will agree that aside from being fed and kept out of the weather I am not very interested in the criminals' perspective on the matter. Don't want to get incarcerated? Your best defense is not committing any crimes.*

If a person knows they'll be spending their whole lives in prison, what drive will they have to reform themselves?

I don't know. Some probably feel no such drive, at all. Other engage in prison ministries, education, become paramedics (one lifer I heard of, some time ago) and serve their fellow prisoners, etc. But sometimes the primary issue is not whether or not the criminal will in some sense be rehabilitated - the primary issue is protecting everyone on the outside from his or her further anticipated criminal behavior.

Crime doesn't stop just because you lock someone up.

Their crime against people out-on-the-street stops, while the perpetrator is locked up. I'll take crime-behind-prison-walls over crime-in-the-streets, any day of the week. The former is bad, the latter much, much worse.

Plenty of people (yes, prisoners and prison guards are people too) are murdered, robbed, raped, tortured, exploited, deal drugs, and fall victim to all manner of crimes while they are behind bars.

That's preferable to the same mayhem being spread beyond the prison walls. Again, if you wish to avoid going to prison, avoiding crime is a very, very good way to dramatically enhance your odds of staying free.

I didn't know what you meant with the Holocaust crack until I remembered using the word schutzhaft. I'm not going for a Nazi analogy - in fact, if I were I should think you'd approve, since if anything I would have been comparing all just incarcerations with Nazi detentions - I'm using the word because 'protective custody' in the sense that it's the larger society being protected, is the perfect term to use, and the German word works best.


*Yes, factually innocent people sometimes go to prison. I said that it's the best defense, not that it's a perfect one.

[eion]

...I’m saying we need to change how people spend their time in prisons.

I don't advocate NOT sending people to prison. The first step in controlling the spread of any disease (social or otherwise) is the isolation of those affected. I'm saying we could be spending our $20,000 a year (a good average cost of keeping an inmate locked up for one year), or a little bit more, more effectively on rehabilitating those that can be rehabilitated, by which I mean helping them learn job skills for the outside world, employing them in jobs inside the prison that keep them occupied and further their job training, and on post-prison relocation and reintegration.

If any other industry had failure rates of upwards of 75% within 3 years of servicing we would call for serious reengineering and regulation.

[Kanastrous]

I wonder how labor unions respond to the idea of moving skilled industry into prisons. I suspect they wouldn't like it.

[eion]

I wonder how labor unions respond to the idea of moving skilled industry into prisons. I suspect they wouldn't like it.

That has nothing to do with whether or not it is a good idea and will reduce crime and recidivism.

In practice, there are many ways to allay the concerns of labor unions. For one thing, that's why the labor unions AND corporations pushed for Ashurst–Sumners. With that law remaining in place, it is impossible for prison labor to overtake private industry.

What you can do is job training. Open a furniture shop and in addition to paying inmates a wage of some sort, use profit sharing to give those whose furniture sells well an incentive to further improve their skills. Run a telemarketing office, run tech support, any service really that can be done over the phone. Not only does that provide inmates with job skills they can use outside of prison, it will also boost the US economy in general by reducing the export of phone-jobs. Train inmates as veterinary technicians and open a prison animal shelter.

But even more important than what happens to the inmates in prison is what happens when they leave. The transition back into society must be gradual and controlled. Minnesota’s Challenge Incarceration Program is a good model to start with: gradually decreasing levels of control and discipline to reintegrate people into society. And while it didn't reduce the rate of recidivism, it did increase the time until rearrests, and the program saved millions of dollars to boot.

[Kanastrous]

Train inmates as veterinary technicians and open a prison animal shelter.

That's very appealing. Although you'd have to keep a mighty close eye on the instruments, supplies, and meds.

Minnesota’s Challenge Incarceration Program is a good model to start with: gradually decreasing levels of control and discipline to reintegrate people into society. And while it didn't reduce the rate of recidivism, it did increase the time until rearrests, and the program saved millions of dollars to boot.

It's interesting that it did not affect the rate of recidivism. I guess you could interpret that in more than one way: either the felons' proclivity toward perpetrating arrestable acts was reduced, or the social training enabled them to evade detection and arrest, for that much longer...

[The Yosemite Bear]

yeah, and then the guards will start arranging bestisorium...

[Simon_Jester]

Minnesota’s Challenge Incarceration Program is a good model to start with: gradually decreasing levels of control and discipline to reintegrate people into society. And while it didn't reduce the rate of recidivism, it did increase the time until rearrests, and the program saved millions of dollars to boot.

It's interesting that it did not affect the rate of recidivism. I guess you could interpret that in more than one way: either the felons' proclivity toward perpetrating arrestable acts was reduced, or the social training enabled them to evade detection and arrest, for that much longer...

Correct me if I'm mistaken, having a felony on your record makes it difficult to put your life back together afterwards; the Minnesota program wouldn't do anything about that. So the long-term incentive to commit crimes as a way of getting some damn income when no one will hire you (especially in this economy; would you hire a recent ex-con with so many people banging down your door looking for work) is still there.

[Kanastrous]

It's extra incentive to avoid acquiring a felony record, that's for sure. Or at least, you'd expect that it would be.

[Samuel]

It's extra incentive to avoid acquiring a felony record, that's for sure. Or at least, you'd expect that it would be.

People aren't very good at long term planning. Especially in situations where the life expectancy is low (which is generally poor people in violent areas who, not surprisingly, often become criminals)- it makes discounting the future even more likely.

[Simon_Jester]

It's extra incentive to avoid acquiring a felony record, that's for sure. Or at least, you'd expect that it would be.

People aren't very good at long term planning. Especially in situations where the life expectancy is low (which is generally poor people in violent areas who, not surprisingly, often become criminals)- it makes discounting the future even more likely.

This. Also, you find environments where an honest calculation of someone's chances, based on the information they have available, make them want to take up crime. Sure, theoretically, random poor kid could study his butt off and maybe make it into college and maybe grow up to do... well, whatever college grads do, because they probably aren't even very clear on that. In practice, they may conclude that they've got a better shot of becoming a meth/crack dealer. And I'm not sure they're wrong.

[Kanastrous]

I'd almost certainly...no, I'd certainly be much wealthier, if I had chosen over the last several years to resort to certain criminal acts in order to make more money. I suspect that the temptation to illicitly enrich one's self is not confined to people living in poor neighborhoods, although I expect that being in that situation makes alternatives much more difficult to pursue.

[Simon_Jester]

It's the lack of readily available alternatives that's the (fixable) problem. It's a lot easier to say "no, that's a bad strategy in the long run" when you honestly think you've got a good shot at a steady career for the next forty years followed by a reasonably comfortable retirement.