Penology (was Microsoft as Slave Master?)

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 13:43:56 MDT


Charles writes

> [John Clark wrote]
> > I'm sure there are some splendid fellows in prison who I'd love to marry my
> > daughter, but not many. Most would slit my throat for a couple of packs of
> > cigarettes.
>
> This may be so, I don't know. But how many were so debased before they were
> enslaved? Slavery has always made people more violent. (Well, not really.

I also suspect that they were pretty debased to begin with, and
I object to your tendentious use of language---there is really
no point that I can think of to describe the prisoners in jail
(even in Castro's or the former U.S.S.R.'s) as slaves. I support
the habit of moderation in language.

> This is a more severe form of the effect normally seen that causes lower class
> bars to be so much more violent than those patronized by the upper classes.
> (You didn't think that the people who went to them were intrinsically
> different did you?)

Yes (though off the most interesting topic here)

> The reactions to power and dominance in constrained situations is a quite
> complex topic, and I'm certainly no expert. But prisons are just one place
> on the edge of society, and the people there are basically the same as the
> people everywhere else. If they tend to go in a certain direction after you
> put them there...

I really am amazed that you could think they start out the same as people
not convicted of crimes, and only then become different. Oh well.

Here is where your post gets really interesting:

> FWIW, I consider one of the primary debasing influences on prisoners to be
> their interactions with other people. I am personally in favor of a rather
> extreme form of solitary, which would even forbid interactions with the
> guards. I would place each prisoner in a sound-proof box the size of a large
> apartment, and weld the door shut behind him. There would be an exercise
> machine available. Probably there should be a cheap computer, but no-TV, no
> radio, no e-mail, and no internet, except that pure text messages should be
> [securely] transmissible between the prisoner and his lawyer...

> Food should be supplied by bellamy tube, and be healthy but uninspiring.
> There should be no phone...

> Note that this proposal would immediately eliminate all prison gangs. It
> would eliminate drug smuggling. etc. It would increase the probability of a
> life threatening medical crisis, but it would eliminate being beaten up. And
> it would make in not profitable in any major way for anyone to cause the
> number of prisoners to increase. This is, perhaps, the major benefit, even
> if it appears indirect.

> I will grant that this system will cause people to feel intense loneliness,
> and isolation.

It has been claimed by many, especially in earlier centuries,
that this is very good for the "soul" of the wrongdoer, and
that it brings about the most healthy form of contemplation
and reflection on his actions.

You mention other advantages as well. There is only one objection
that I know of, namely, that even in the most brutal of the very
large scale penal institutions we know a whole lot about of---that
is, the Gulag Archipelago, prisoners received an hour of outdoor
exercise each day. Now why did the Soviets, who as Alexander
Solzhenitsyn so amply documented in the three volumes of his
massive "The Gulag Archipelago", cared at bottom nothing for the
sake of the prisoner, bother with daily exercise in the yards?
I am afraid that your (and my) faith in solitary confinement may
reflect a lack of knowledge on our parts.

Lee

> The suffering would probably be sufficient that current
> sentence lengths would need to be reduced considerably. But isolated islands
> are hard to come by these days, so we must improvise. And this would be a
> lot cheaper to operate than the current system, no guards (well, minimal,
> perhaps 10 per prison, one shift only). No exercise yards. No social areas
> of any kind. This would truly be a warehouse for people. Minimal corridor
> width between cells, just sufficient for reasonable access by the welders.
> Minimal furnishings.
>
> Now there might need to be special provisions made for those with preexisting
> medical problems. But generally I feel that their medications could also be
> delivered by Bellamy tube. And certainly no tendency toward violence would
> be being reinforced during the period of isolation.



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