But are prisons primarily for rehabilitation or deterrence?
If someone were to hurt or kill someone close to me, I would want him to go to prison for punishment, if we couldn't just kill him and be done with it.
When I think about this hypothetical person getting, say, programming lessons with my tax dollars, that only makes me angry.
I assume prisons are how they are in part because my attitude is fairly common.
None of the above diminishes the problems of wrongful convictions, cruel and unusual punishments, prison rape, victimless crimes, and so on.
> When I think about this hypothetical person getting, say, programming lessons with my tax dollars, that only makes me angry.
Option A) Person is put into the current prison system. Continues to offer no good to the world, potentially gets out and continues his violent crimes.
Option B) Rehabilitation. Show compassion and understanding, maybe make the guy a skilled tradesman. Now he's much less likely to kill again, because he has options aside from crime.
But are prisons primarily for rehabilitation or deterrence?If someone were to hurt or kill someone close to me, I would want him to go to prison for punishment, if we couldn't just kill him and be done with it
And this is why the justice system is about punishing people in regards to what is best for society and the community/public as a whole, not judgments based on the need for personal retribution.
True -- but don't forget that prisons exist as a replacement for retribution, which was often less accurate and had a tendency to escalate into open feuding between families, ethnic groups, or religious groups.
If prisons aren't an adequate replacement for personal retribution, but a need for personal retribution still exists, the public will either correct the prisons or revert to their previous practices.
I'm all for certain aspects of prison reform, but we mess with their role as punishment at our peril.
As a side note, I suspect that the United States' use of the death penalty and comparatively poor prison conditions is largely due to its relatively recent history of vigilantism, the increased tendency of its people to distrust the government, and the relative predominance of firearms. The punishment aspect of prisons needs to be more pronounced in the United States than, say, Europe, in order to keep its citizenry content.
I suspect there's also regional variations - in states where distrust of governmental authority is more predominant and vigilantism more recent and frequent, prisons are harsher and the death penalty used more.
The justice system is about the raw exercise of power and creating profits for Corrections Corporation of America and the like.
It is supported by the population which enjoys watching people get hurt playing football or smashed up driving fast cars in races, in lieu of gladiator fights to the death.
Speaking of which, in many prisons the guards stage gladiator fights* to the death between prisoners and take bets on who will win.
I think the retribution vs rehabilitation balance is heavily dependent on the crime and is not really reflected in our penal system.
If you committed murder, rape, kidnapping, and really have no chance of ever reentering society, then it should be retribution. Basically how do we house these people for the rest of their lives in a cheap manner? And I really could care less about their wellbeing/condition.
If you commit a property crime (lets say you were stealing from a liquor store) or a drug crime, what is the real thing going on here? Are you desperate because you have no money and the easiest way to get some is to run around with a gun and rob people? In that case, rehabilition is a lot more useful. The person is only going to jail for 3-5 years and is going to have to come back into society and find a job and a way to live.
They get out of jail, are a felon, and now nobody will hire them. What do you think they are going to do? Go back to the only way they know how to make money which is to steal or deal drugs or something illegal to get by.
So to say we have to rehabilate murders is unpalatable to most people, and to say we have to punish people who are only going to jail becuase they are desperate to begin with is ignoring the underlying cause.
Most rape convictions are for consensual statutory rape. Most kidnapping convictions are non-custodial parent abductions. Neither of these are violent crimes that threaten society.
They clearly are for both. You want the idea of going to prison to be on someone's mind when they seek out to commit a crime. And once they get there, you need to make sure a) they don't want to come back and b) they won't come back.
When you consider the socio-economic background of most crime (especially physical theft and violent crime) in almost every developed country, you kinda realize that not providing with them the skills to get employed when they get out is outright just daring them get back into the system.
You are right, there are limits. But these limits should not be set up by gut feelings. You gotta study the issue, and make the decision carefully to maximize good. Or else you end up with some hell hole of a system.
If someone were to hurt or kill someone close to me, I would want him to go to prison for punishment, if we couldn't just kill him and be done with it.
When I think about this hypothetical person getting, say, programming lessons with my tax dollars, that only makes me angry.
I assume prisons are how they are in part because my attitude is fairly common.
None of the above diminishes the problems of wrongful convictions, cruel and unusual punishments, prison rape, victimless crimes, and so on.