Blogger Party

I think I love everything you write. This is a great topic. I did an article about the Death Penalty :
http://bloggerparty.com/the_death_penalty_for_it_or_against_it

and one fact in it is that it cost over $25,000 to house an inmate for a SINGLE YEAR!!!!

I have mentioned this before in my Legalize Marijuana blog -
My aunt was brutally murdered by a guy who wanted five fucking dollars to purchase drugs. He stabbed her in the chest 17 times. The only thing missing from her home was the twenty dollar bill she had in her purse. The most messed up thing was that if he just woulda asked she would have given it to him AND probably made him a glass of hot cocoa. That's the kind of woman she was.
Anyways, so this guy is in jail where he has access to fitness equipment, A SWIMMING POOL, skilled trade classes, flat screen tv's and more. Ya know what, I don't have a damn swimming pool I don't have a flat screen. I had to pay lots of money for my college education.
This is not fair. It's not right.
While my family mourns the loss of my fathers only sister some jerk off is enjoying watching movies.

It does seem like prisoners get a lot of luxuries...but being in jail also means the possibility of getting raped by a larger inmate. prisoners also have access to free-weights and other excercise equipment. (gee, let's build a stronger criminal!)

Dreams Matter.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/6562/pchan_stockton.html

I hate to be bitter over my aunts situation, but I am. I think this is why I sooooo support the death penalty. Like I said, it is unfair that murders, rapists and people who molest children are allowed to "have fun" of any kind. They destroyed lives, I feel that theirs should be destroyed in return. Ya know, this is kinda like that one blog I wrote about parentas spanking their kids. I put something in it about, "Sending your kids to their room so they can watch tv is NOT a punishment. Taking away your childs Ipod for a day is NOT a punishment..." hmmmm. If we can punish our children who have committed minor offenses, why can't we punish a 33 year old male who take the life of an innocent elderly woman over a five dollar bill?

I just watched this thing two nights ago on tv. It was about victims confronting the killer. A statistic said that if a murder/rapist has a one-on-one with the victim/victims family they are less likely to commit a second offense. If that is the best we can do to stop repeat offenders we have serious issues. As much as I would like to say that I would confront this man, I think I would probably do something I'd regret. The show just made me think a lot. You are right, people who comit these crimes truly have no idea of the ripple effect that they will cause. My seven month old will never get a chance to have his Great Aunt Dorthy attend his first birthday party. Sad.

So what are we going to do with prisoners? Who are in prisons that are massively overpopulated, with zero chance of getting political permission and funding from We the People for new facilities? Prisons that are understaffed with people far less well paid than the risks of the job warrant (see "political permission and funding", above)?

Put the prisoners to work? That seems obvious. Let them work off their debt to society. Breaking rocks. Chain gangs on the roads. Useful trades that might break the cycle of poverty and violence. That might, especially for first offenders, prevent the "crime" career choice from becoming fixed?

No way. We the People decided that was cruel and unusual. We the People decided that the costs of security for work parties was too high. We the People decided that having criminals learn useful trades was taking jobs away from the undetected criminals in our midst. (Read the criminal codes sometime. We are all crooks. We've all busted some law someplace.) What do we allow the convicts to do? Make license plates. Build ships in bottles. Try making a living on the outside with that, M. Jean ValJean.

Shall we let them sit on their behinds and rot like the scum that we think they are? As if they'll sit there. Idleness is famously the breeding ground of vice. Idleness promotes prison gangs. Vice rings. Guard murders. Riots. And it sure as hell cements the "crime" career choice in place.

Shall we judicially murder them? We can't find a way to do that which addresses all our sensitivities. Ask Arnie here in California. Besides, see Gandalf.

Shall we try to address the social problems that breed the crime? Ain't happening here in Berkeley, where the divide between rich and poor, white and black, is at least as large as it's ever been. "Progressive liberals" my fat ass.

Ask any kindergarten teacher how to settle a class. You plunk them in front of a TV. The mental activity dwindles down almost to the level of sleep. It's as good as a drug to somnulate the prison population. A wide-screen TV is one hell of a lot cheaper than constant lockdowns. And more effective for all but the most hardened cases. And you can concentrate scarce resources on the hardened cases if you can camp the rest in front of NCAA Basketball or video games and know they are (relatively) secure.

It is easy to criticize from the outside. I've done enough things to realize that direct knowledge makes a lot of criticism look, well, uncritical. I have (thank God) never been in prison, or knowingly given cause to wind up in one. But I am not prepared to whack those in prison (as inmates, guards or administrators) until I have shared a cell block with them.

None of this will help how you feel about your great aunt, Reality. The feeling is universal. It is why the Hebrews coded "an eye for an eye" into their Law. To be sure that vengeance took ONLY an eye for an eye, instead of an eye and an ear and a hand as was usual before the Torah came into being - a progression that has obvious, and frightful, consequences.

Oh - and it's written somewhere, I forget where, that the greatest deterrents to crime are the prospect of being seen while doing it, and of facing the victims after it's done. There have been, if I remember rightly, some halting steps in addition to the one you mention to put this principle into practice. Maybe someone could do some research ...