Now being a gun owner, you can fairly easily get some serious felony charges leveled against you. It can be as innocent as running errands with your carry gun and stopping into the post office, or not noting a binding “no weapons” sign, and getting caught in the act. Or it could be a fiasco like George Zimmerman who I suspect is innocent of all charges, or other gun owners who have faced murder charges when defending their lives.
It can lead to thinking about “What if I get thrown in Jail/Prison?”
Its not high on my list. But as you know I also spend a LOT of time reading crime stories, and I spend a lot of time in Boston, occasionally I find myself in the more shady locations. Now I live in a fairly nice house, in a safe, quiet neighborhood (The biggest noise disturbances are the train going by, the softball games at the public park, and local kids setting off fireworks), and since my wife and I are both scientists, we can afford a lot of nice creature comforts.
But now look at the slums where the gangs rule the streets. You might get shivved in the prison-yard, but somebody might shoot, stab or beat you on your street for “Disrespecting” or for a gang initiation. You’re packed into shitty cells, but think about that compared to a small section 8 apartment with your brothers and sisters and whatever dude Mom’s sleeping with currently, and it wouldn’t surprise me if an aunt, uncle, or grandma might be there too.
Now look at American prisons. Prisoners get cable TV, they often get a weight room/ heath club. They have the prison yard with various sports equipment. Many get internet access and email. You get 3 hot meals a day, you can get a job if you want, likely without the hassles of resumes, interviews, and references, and you can work on your GED or College degree.
Now for most of us, these conditions are abhorrent, but for the poor people in the slums, its likely a step up, and you hear about career criminals INTENTIONALLY getting caught because they’re cold and hungry and wouldn’t mind a few months of prison food and a bunk.
Accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s Norwegian prison cell is more spacious than most New York City apartments.
The confessed killer, who will receive his sentence Friday for killing 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage at a youth camp, was transported Wednesday to Norway’s Ila Prison, just outside Oslo.
The high-security prison offers Breivik not one, but three 86-square-foot cells. One cell functions as a bedroom, another as an exercise room, complete with treadmill, and the third is a study, where Breivik can use a laptop computer.
Officials at Oslo’s Ila Prison say the goal is to eventually transfer Breivik to join other prisoners at section of the jail that offers access to a school that teaches from primary grades through university-level courses, a library, a gym, and allows inmates to work in the prison’s various shops and participate in leisure activities. It’s all about a philosophy of humane prison treatment and rehabilitation that forms the bedrock of the Scandinavian penal system.
Now I’m not one of these “Fire and Brimstone” guys who believe that prison should be a dank oubliette where the only joy a prisoner is given is when the food isn’t TOO maggoty, and the shower rapist says “I Love You” while he blows out your O-Ring. But one must consider what modern “humane” prisons like this are accomplishing.
Some claim that prisons are “rehabilitation facilities”, but certainly NOBODY thinks Mr. Breivik will ever be a functional member of society, and even just a quick glimpse of Sean’s “Felons Behaving Badly” aggregation will show us how often people who ALREADY have spent some time in prison will do things that send them right back.
We are doing it HORRIBLY wrong, and the end result is really an insult to both the safety and the dignity to all of us who work HARD to stay on the good side of Johnny Law.
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Humane” prisons are supposed to be the adult equivalent of the “time-out” you’d give a child for misbehaving. The key to making it stick is that the child gets NOTHING while in time-out. They stand with their face in a corner (call it what it is: sensory/social deprivation), no food/drink, no toys … nothing to do but stand and face the thoughts in their head for the duration, which should be one minute per year of age (older kids should know better, so the punishments are harsher). If you send a kid to their room for time-out and they can spend the time watching TV or playing, how is that a deterrent to future transgressions?
Not a true “fire and brimstone” guy here either, but jail is supposed to suck. It needs to suck enough that nobody wants to be there, and will work their asses off to not be there. My idea of “humane” prison is one where basic needs are met – they won’t face “cruel or unusual” punishments, they won’t contract TB or gangrene, they get 3 square meals a day, and I’m OK with schooling and education – but contact with the outside is strictly and severely limited. It needs to be a bubble (call it what it is: sensory/social deprivation), and it needs to NOT have the creature comforts available on the outside.
IMHO, here’s the cut-and-dry: prisons, like time-outs, are supposed to create feelings of guilt and remorse, and that means the prisoners need to dwell on their thoughts and deeds. No (or very few) creature comforts, or there won’t be much “rehabilitation” going on; they’ll be too distracted by American Idol.
Yep punishment should be UNPLEASANT! BTW talking about “Time Out”, it got me thinking about my own childhood. I was born in 79 so my childhood was at the tail end of spanking, but pre-time out. My folks never spanked or otherwise used negative re-enforcement of pain much with me. I will say the few times they did, I deserved it, and KNEW it, and I think that was the VERY best punishment at the time.
But most of my childhood the “rod” of parenting was my Nintendo. And punishment came in week increments. I’ve said to my folks many times, if I had been given the choice of getting a spanking and losing my Nintendo privileges for a week, I would take the beating EVERY TIME. They knew it, and that was my punishment and I got it A LOT, and I turned out to be the man I am today because I did NOT want to incur my parent’s wrath. I got good grades, I stayed out of trouble, and the mischief I did get into was VERY minor. I also quickly learned to not hang out with stupid people doing stupid things.
Eventually I matured enough to understand WHY those rules were set for me and I did the right thing because it was the right thing to do.
When kids grow up with no discipline they do bad and worse things (I’ve seen so many of these kids that went from bratty children, to drunk and druggy teens, to out-of-control loser adults. Mom and Dad *or more likely just Mom* tired to intervene when it was too late and the kid had no fear or respect for them, and their lives suffered, and they grew up to be losers, or jail birds) until it becomes the government’s problem, and even then Jail is still better than their life on the outside, so what’s the damn point?
Born in 1980 here. My punishments involved a wooden spoon to my rear end until we HAD a Nintendo (X-mas 1988). Then Mom would stash the controllers somewhere for days or weeks at a time as punishments. In a lot of ways, that was psychological (and highly effective, I might add): the TV was there, the Nintendo and all the games were RIGHT FREAKING THERE, but there was NO way to play!
It went both ways, though; I’d get a new game of my choosing (even the brand new, high demand, high price ones) every time a report card came back with straight As. A good chunk of my collection (which I still have and play, and my son joins me 🙂 ) was built that way, because I got good grades and stayed out of trouble.
My son is what’s known as a “strong-willed” child (tries to argue and debate everything), and prefers PlayStation over Nintendo, but taking the controllers works pretty well for him, too. It’s there, he can see it, but there’s no way play. He’s a good kid, and I credit finding effective discipline methods for that.
That should have been a response posted above. Oops.
They knew of the taking controllers trick, but they never had to do it. I was too terrified of what they’d dream up if that little tactic didn’t work.
So the games were there, the TV too, AND the controllers, but I didn’t dare touch it!
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http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom/the-vice-guide-to-norwegian-prisons–60
Watch this and then decide if you still feel the same about Anders Breivik and Norwegian prisons. Maybe you will or maybe you won’t, but educate yourself before you judge.