America's Prison-Industrial Complex

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Well they had better legalize marijuana if you are proposing making prison as hellish as possible, I do not deserve hell for smoking a little weed. But really what exactly would that solve? I am open minded so go for it.....I am just of the opinion the focus should be helping people get back on the right track. some people are born into terrible circumstances and thus turn to crime so things like that have to be adressed.

Americas prisons and people would be a better place if we'd rehabilitate the 'bad guys' rather than this sick useless punishment. Our prison system helps no one other than the general publics disgusting want for the worst punishment possible. We have more people in our prisons than anyone else on earth, and our prisons are worse than some 3rd-world-countries, it's too expensive to allow all of this. We're literally wasting billions a year to maintain hundreds of mini Guantanamo Bays when we easily don't have to.

We have not the foggiest notion of how to "rehabilitate" evil doers. We do know how to punish them, however. My proposal is kill them all and let God bury the bodies.

ruveyn

Actually we do have an idea of criminals that can be rehabilitated and normally they are people that stole some food to survive, or something of that nature. Usually, it would be a minor that is the culprit whose parents are drug users and spend all their money on drugs. An individual like that probably wouldn't be sent to prison, more likely they would be put in foster care.

Did you read the kids for cash article on the previous page?

I'm against the Drug War, legalize weed, ecstasy, and coke and decriminalize everything else big time so that it doesn't warrant being thrown behind bars but being thrown involuntarily into rehab. And no the majority of crooks do not turn to crime out of sheer desperation but out of choice which is motivated by selfishness, lack of impulse control, manipulativeness, pathological obsession with status, and lack of emotional control. Rehabilitation hasn't done jack s**t for this reason so the consequences of their lifestyle must be made to be so intolerable that it sets them straight but this isn't a guarantee since it is up to them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-mjDBKG0w&feature=g-vrec&context=G2316243RVAAAAAAAABA[/youtube]

So someone should not go to jail for smoking a little weed they should be forced into rehab? I thought rehab was for if someone actually develops an addiction problem with a drug. But yeah are you 100% positive the majority of people considered 'criminals' by this society are motivated by those things.......or is that just easier to belive that they are all inherently evil and nothing can be done to rehibilitate any of them?......that seems to be what our prison system thinks as well.

Also lack of impulse control actually does not make someone evil, it is actually a symptom of quite a few psychological conditions, I do not think trying to make peoples lives as horrible as possible is going to set them straight.

Define evil doers.........when it comes to child molseters and murderers I wont lose sleep about them being killed even though I am not the biggest fan of the death penalty. However if we are talking anyone who commits any crime in general then no they certainly should not all be killed.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension. Notice I said weed, ecstasy, and coke should be legalized and that everything else should be decriminalized. Also, notice rehabilitation pertains to the stuff I think should be decriminalized

Are you sure it's me and not you that wants to believe something? Such as the majority of them being poor little victims of societal oppression? And I didn't say the majority of them are evil. The majority of them are in it for selfish reasons, but I am aware that the majority of them aren't sociopaths.

Is there any reason you're putting criminals in quotes or is this just pointless semantics? The reason they're labelled criminals is because they commit crimes against other people. Which is why I don't believe drug use should be a crime.

Notice I included lack of impulse control among all the other traits. No one trait makes someone prone to committing crimes.

btw, you're responding to a post that is months old. I've come to be a lot more lenient in my views and I don't believe that making prison hell is the solution anymore, but I still maintain that most crooks aren't poor little victims of societal oppression. Hell neither rehabilitation nor deterrence are solid solutions. We're gonna need to keep looking...

Alright well based on your idea that a criminal is someone who commits crimes against others, I can mostly agree with that as well.

It's been my experience that deterrence can work to an extent, but it needs to be immediate and visible to have a result. The idea of being caught, convicted and jailed is fairly abstract, but seeing a gun on the hip of someone you're sizing up as a mark is very solid. I know, I know, again with the guns, I just can't stop myself with these things.

I've always had a sort of unformed idea floating around about rehabilitation, a scheme of offering prisoners schooling or trade school behind bars with the additional reward of sentence reduction offered for better grades or advanced degrees and perhaps even some sort of expungement of criminal records under certain conditions. You'd have to have include a whole other suite of industry reforms like real accountability for the prison staff and a cultural shift in towards how prisoners are treated, but I'm always looking at how the final reintegration into society is going to function. As it is, prison breaks people and tends to only make them worse off and unable to function in the normal world, and that's something that really needs to change.