The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
As I've already gone into my feelings concerning the death penalty, there is no need to belabour the point on that issue. However, whenever someone is executed, there are numerous calls for mercy from the many opponents of the death penalty. By mercy, they were presumably talking about life imprisonment which doesn't seem particularly merciful to me, but that is by the by. Having addressed capital punishment previously, I think perhaps a glance at the alternatives is warranted. I can't claim to be an expert on the American prison system, but I do have a certain level of knowledge of our own and so I shall limit myself to that.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal out punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed (does anyone really imagine that odious little bag of decayed tampon-clots Jeffrey Archer has received anything other than preferential treatment? He was only one prisoner category away from getting Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal out punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed (does anyone really imagine that odious little bag of decayed tampon-clots Jeffrey Archer has received anything other than preferential treatment? He was only one prisoner category away from getting Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.
unknown kernel wrote:
> Lockdown is written from a left-wing perspective, definitely, but it's
> a long way from the Marxist economic reductionism that review makes
> out. It's good, but maybe you'd be better off getting it out of the
> library - I don't want to get the blame when you hate it.
Probably take a look at it then, thanks,
> I've read bits of The Skeptical Environmentalist: my former flatmate
> was an ecology student so I know from long and boring experience that
> there are a lot of logical arguments against that book. Interesting,
> though. What's the Jesse Jackson book about?
The Jesse Jackson book is one I'm only about a quarter through, I tend to buy a pile of stuff from amazon and work through it. It essentially looks beyond ihs image as self appointed good guy, and exposes his defrauding of the US government, and how he gets successive administrations to ignore it, his less than rosy private life, his proven financial ties to various dictators and regimes around the world, and how he has used corporations, businesses, idividuals and agencies fears of being branded racist for his own ends. Whilst the book is controversial, the author provides all the information to back it up and so far no one has proved otherwise.
> As for the geography of videogames - nice work if you can get it :P
> There's a thread in FOG Chat you might want to avoid about the
> over-academisation (is that a word?) of games. I hope you'll post a
> draft, though.
Yup, I'll post a draft up when I get further along with it. Over academisation of games is a valid point, but it's also one of the ways to get past the bad press they receive and sevral universities already do courses in them, and an electronic journal exists at www.gamestudies.org . It may be seen as taking the fun away, but if anyone wants to see less "videogames are evil" style headlines its one of the few ways to do it. As it is, the more people which study games the closer we getto really understanding what a good game is, and how to produce them. Yes, Halo rocks, but for it to appeal so widely there has to be more than graphics, gameplay e.t.c and, why did it not work in Japan ?
~~Belldandy~~
> Lockdown is written from a left-wing perspective, definitely, but it's
> a long way from the Marxist economic reductionism that review makes
> out. It's good, but maybe you'd be better off getting it out of the
> library - I don't want to get the blame when you hate it.
Probably take a look at it then, thanks,
> I've read bits of The Skeptical Environmentalist: my former flatmate
> was an ecology student so I know from long and boring experience that
> there are a lot of logical arguments against that book. Interesting,
> though. What's the Jesse Jackson book about?
The Jesse Jackson book is one I'm only about a quarter through, I tend to buy a pile of stuff from amazon and work through it. It essentially looks beyond ihs image as self appointed good guy, and exposes his defrauding of the US government, and how he gets successive administrations to ignore it, his less than rosy private life, his proven financial ties to various dictators and regimes around the world, and how he has used corporations, businesses, idividuals and agencies fears of being branded racist for his own ends. Whilst the book is controversial, the author provides all the information to back it up and so far no one has proved otherwise.
> As for the geography of videogames - nice work if you can get it :P
> There's a thread in FOG Chat you might want to avoid about the
> over-academisation (is that a word?) of games. I hope you'll post a
> draft, though.
Yup, I'll post a draft up when I get further along with it. Over academisation of games is a valid point, but it's also one of the ways to get past the bad press they receive and sevral universities already do courses in them, and an electronic journal exists at www.gamestudies.org . It may be seen as taking the fun away, but if anyone wants to see less "videogames are evil" style headlines its one of the few ways to do it. As it is, the more people which study games the closer we getto really understanding what a good game is, and how to produce them. Yes, Halo rocks, but for it to appeal so widely there has to be more than graphics, gameplay e.t.c and, why did it not work in Japan ?
~~Belldandy~~
Belldandy wrote:
> I would add that another deterrent - one which I can offer no certain
> way to implement - would be for the chances of a criminal being caught
> to be increased,
Electronic tagging and tracing is the obvious way to do this, but that depends if you can morally justify doing it. Personally, I have no problem with the idea that serious offenders should lose any rights they may have had, and be monitored in this way. Many would disagree.
> I would add that another deterrent - one which I can offer no certain
> way to implement - would be for the chances of a criminal being caught
> to be increased,
Electronic tagging and tracing is the obvious way to do this, but that depends if you can morally justify doing it. Personally, I have no problem with the idea that serious offenders should lose any rights they may have had, and be monitored in this way. Many would disagree.
I'll add Lockdown to my good intentions list!
The Skeptical Environmentalist is a good read, but it's lost a lot of it's power since a panel of his peers found that he basically hadn't understood the science behind what he was talking about. I wouldn't say he's now entirely discredited, but it's certainly a lot more difficult to point to his body of work as proof that global warming etc isn't happening.
The Skeptical Environmentalist is a good read, but it's lost a lot of it's power since a panel of his peers found that he basically hadn't understood the science behind what he was talking about. I wouldn't say he's now entirely discredited, but it's certainly a lot more difficult to point to his body of work as proof that global warming etc isn't happening.
Lockdown is written from a left-wing perspective, definitely, but it's a long way from the Marxist economic reductionism that review makes out. It's good, but maybe you'd be better off getting it out of the library - I don't want to get the blame when you hate it.
I've read bits of The Skeptical Environmentalist: my former flatmate was an ecology student so I know from long and boring experience that there are a lot of logical arguments against that book. Interesting, though. What's the Jesse Jackson book about?
As for the geography of videogames - nice work if you can get it :P There's a thread in FOG Chat you might want to avoid about the over-academisation (is that a word?) of games. I hope you'll post a draft, though.
I've read bits of The Skeptical Environmentalist: my former flatmate was an ecology student so I know from long and boring experience that there are a lot of logical arguments against that book. Interesting, though. What's the Jesse Jackson book about?
As for the geography of videogames - nice work if you can get it :P There's a thread in FOG Chat you might want to avoid about the over-academisation (is that a word?) of games. I hope you'll post a draft, though.
Hmm, had a look as I'm going to order a pile of books related to my dissertation this weekend, is it true what the reviewer on Amazon says about the Marxist stuff ? I find that outdated stuff somewhat boring and tedious....
Three books on Belldandy's bookshelf;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /1400046610/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/202-7539832-9836635
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /0895261650/ref=pd_bxgy_text_2_cp/202-7539832-9836635
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /0521010683/ref=pd_sim_b_dp/202-7539832-9836635
Incidentally I'm happy today because my dissertation thing at Uni has been given the go ahead ! The topic ? The Geography Of Videogames :)
~~Belldandy~~
Three books on Belldandy's bookshelf;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /1400046610/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/202-7539832-9836635
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /0895261650/ref=pd_bxgy_text_2_cp/202-7539832-9836635
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN /0521010683/ref=pd_sim_b_dp/202-7539832-9836635
Incidentally I'm happy today because my dissertation thing at Uni has been given the go ahead ! The topic ? The Geography Of Videogames :)
~~Belldandy~~
Ooops, the link to that book is:
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859843034/ ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-6529624-5470852
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859843034/ ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-6529624-5470852
Light wrote:
> In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of
> thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America
> until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing
> are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
I did a module on early colonial Australia at university and got to read a load of convict idents from the courts here, the ships, and the penal colonies down under (what a treat!). It was pretty terrifying stuff: 15 year olds packed off for stealing a pigeon. And that sort of thing was very, very common: I can't remember the stats but the proportion off people transported for violent offences was really low.
Have you read Lockdown America? It's excellent; another one of those books where you end up despairing of modern life. Even you might like it, Belldandy, despite it being written by a pinko pacifist liberal :P
> In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of
> thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America
> until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing
> are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
I did a module on early colonial Australia at university and got to read a load of convict idents from the courts here, the ships, and the penal colonies down under (what a treat!). It was pretty terrifying stuff: 15 year olds packed off for stealing a pigeon. And that sort of thing was very, very common: I can't remember the stats but the proportion off people transported for violent offences was really low.
Have you read Lockdown America? It's excellent; another one of those books where you end up despairing of modern life. Even you might like it, Belldandy, despite it being written by a pinko pacifist liberal :P
Hey, for once I actually agree with you Light.
I would add that another deterrent - one which I can offer no certain way to implement - would be for the chances of a criminal being caught to be increased, and I would also add that the current courts system is totally set up in the criminals, sorry accused's, favour. Whilst some people do commit crimes because of their past, I am rather fed up of nearly every single criminal having some insane sounding defence from their lawyers along the lines of "Your honour, my client only held the knife to the teenagers throat because he needed money to fund his crack cocaine habit" or "Your honour, my client was only found with about 20 000 images of indecent material on his hard drive because he waa trying to catch those responsible for it, by downloading it of course" and similar.
~~Belldandy~~
I would add that another deterrent - one which I can offer no certain way to implement - would be for the chances of a criminal being caught to be increased, and I would also add that the current courts system is totally set up in the criminals, sorry accused's, favour. Whilst some people do commit crimes because of their past, I am rather fed up of nearly every single criminal having some insane sounding defence from their lawyers along the lines of "Your honour, my client only held the knife to the teenagers throat because he needed money to fund his crack cocaine habit" or "Your honour, my client was only found with about 20 000 images of indecent material on his hard drive because he waa trying to catch those responsible for it, by downloading it of course" and similar.
~~Belldandy~~
As I've already gone into my feelings concerning the death penalty, there is no need to belabour the point on that issue. However, whenever someone is executed, there are numerous calls for mercy from the many opponents of the death penalty. By mercy, they were presumably talking about life imprisonment which doesn't seem particularly merciful to me, but that is by the by. Having addressed capital punishment previously, I think perhaps a glance at the alternatives is warranted. I can't claim to be an expert on the American prison system, but I do have a certain level of knowledge of our own and so I shall limit myself to that.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal out punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed (does anyone really imagine that odious little bag of decayed tampon-clots Jeffrey Archer has received anything other than preferential treatment? He was only one prisoner category away from getting Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the British Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal out punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed (does anyone really imagine that odious little bag of decayed tampon-clots Jeffrey Archer has received anything other than preferential treatment? He was only one prisoner category away from getting Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.