Weer'd World

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.

Now look at THIS!

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.