From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 14:46:39 MDT
"Charles Hixson" <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> Wrote:
>prisons are just one place on the edge of society, and the
>people there are basically the same as the people everywhere else.
I don't believe that for one instant.
>Slavery has always made people more violent.
Probably a lot of truth in that, after all if it's not the environment then
it must be the genes, but from the point of view of prisons it's all
irrelevant. Knowing the reason a man turned into a monster does not change
the fact that he is in fact a monster and the prison system must deal with
the resulting creature.
>I consider one of the primary debasing influences on
>prisoners to be their interactions with other people.
I agree.
>I am personally in favor of a rather extreme form of solitary,
>which would even forbid interactions with the guards.
It sounds quite logical and was in fact tried in the first half of the 19'th
century in the USA, it was called "The Pennsylvania System". The trouble was
it was very expensive (large cells were needed) and the inmates had the
unfortunate tendency to go insane. The competition was called "The Auburn
System", there inmates mixed freely and ran a workhouse. Auburn caught on
because it was cheaper to operate (sometimes it even made a profit) and had
a less astronomical suicide rate, some might consider that an advantage.
Neither system reformed anybody, to do that you need to get some electrons
moving. I am thinking of that fellow in the news who raped and murdered a
little girl; 6 or 7 thousand volts at 2 amps would dramatically improve his
character and personality in about 50 seconds.
>The suffering would probably be sufficient that current
>sentence lengths would need to be reduced considerably.
Letting them out when they're angry depressed and above all young is a very
bad idea. The closest prisons come to making better people is by just
letting them get old, for some reason old people tend to be less violent
than young people.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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