A question I keep thinking about. My position at this point is that prison should be considerably less used than it is today. I am certain we can devise non-prison punishments for most crimes. I would like to see prison reserved strictly for people who need to be separated from society.
Even if we do use prison as punishment, I don't know that there is all that much difference in most cases between a few months and a few years. I'd guess it takes less than a day to decide this is the worst thing to happen to you, and it quickly reaches a point where it can't really get a lot more convincing. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems kinda meaningless to differentiate between 1 year, 10 years, 25 years.
We cannot really expect to send someone away for a few years and have them just slip back into society and continue to be successful. Not with all the non-judicial punishments we inflict on convicts. That is another thing I keep thinking we need to figure out a better answer for. A criminal record is a huge hinderance to gainful employment, maybe we should be a lot more circumspect about who is allowed to see it, or require it for employment or housing.
Prison removes people from society. That should be the only time it is needed -- when someone can't be reintegrated. And then in that case, we need to try to understand why we've made that decision. Is it a mental problem? If so, they're not to blame and should be housed at a non-punitive facility that can (maybe) make them well enough to be free.
Also agree that we need to rethink criminal records in a major way, although the Internet is the arbiter of your background now. It doesn't matter if we sealed something up legally when it is already out there. "It's like trying to take the piss out of a swimming pool."
> Prison removes people from society. That should be the only time it is needed -- when someone can't be reintegrated.
I'd argue that once we've hit that point, why bother with keeping the person alive at all? If they truly cannot be reintegrated into society, there is a simpler solution than indefinitely locking them into a facility.
That is pretty cold, but I understand the sentiment. I do not think I would go so far as to make capital punishment quick and easy, but I have sometimes wondered if it would not be humane to offer people who are in prison for life-without-parole an option to check out early. Here, have a big overdose of heroin, night night. (along those lines, I wonder why we try so hard to contrive chemical cocktails to execute people -- is it because we need some way to make potassium chloride painless, so we can say we executed them? Why not just a huge overdose of fentanyl or heroin. Almost certainly painless, reliable, and inexpensive.)
For some people simply being alive is worthwhile even in prison, but other people commit suicide rather than face a lifetime of that.
I speak to some people with life-without-parole cases from time-to-time. I think the one thing that keeps all of them alive is that they all have an optimistic viewpoint that their case or sentence will be overturned.
One guy I knew very, very well. I say this about almost all the murderers I spent time with though: they were by-and-large some of the nicest people I've met. I rarely met a murderer I didn't like. This particular guy was convicted of a double murder at 19. It is likely if he can find the right lawyer that he'll get the sentence reduced to something where he'll one day see the outside world again.
A question I keep thinking about. My position at this point is that prison should be considerably less used than it is today. I am certain we can devise non-prison punishments for most crimes. I would like to see prison reserved strictly for people who need to be separated from society.
Even if we do use prison as punishment, I don't know that there is all that much difference in most cases between a few months and a few years. I'd guess it takes less than a day to decide this is the worst thing to happen to you, and it quickly reaches a point where it can't really get a lot more convincing. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems kinda meaningless to differentiate between 1 year, 10 years, 25 years.
We cannot really expect to send someone away for a few years and have them just slip back into society and continue to be successful. Not with all the non-judicial punishments we inflict on convicts. That is another thing I keep thinking we need to figure out a better answer for. A criminal record is a huge hinderance to gainful employment, maybe we should be a lot more circumspect about who is allowed to see it, or require it for employment or housing.