From: den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Date: Wed Jun 16 1999 - 06:37:28 MDT
----------
> From: Sasha Chislenko <sasha1@netcom.com>
> Still, I am sure one could do something to alleviate problems.
>
> Allowing married couples to stay in one cell, allowing people
> books, TVs, and maybe small PCs (should help with intellectual
> skills and later socializing, and can be donated), and probably
> choose cell mates among their friends, could prevent thousands
> of rapes at much smaller costs than it would require outside of
> jail. And of course, not persecuting people for victimless crimes.
Yes, and of course automated prisons with no *forced* physical
contact between inmates, minimal guard presence and heavy
surveillance (of both inmates and guards) with direct links to the
outside world. This would be relatively easy to implement, and
would finally bring the prison system into the 20th century (and
would at least partially compensate for the abhorrent flaws in
the legal system). Perhaps it would even be commercially
interesting to design and run such "model prisons"...
Something else: though it's a long shot, it might be a good
idea to try to get the/a government interested in cryo prisons;
a "humane" alternative for long-term imprisonment, and a
solution to the only real drawback of capital punishment (the
irreversibility). The goverment(s) would get a cheap, safe,
easy and "humane" way to store criminals and suspended
animation research would achieve its goals (much) faster
due to the unprecedented funding, so that cryonicists could
get much better suspensions (just rob a bank if you can't
afford to sign up ;). Everybody a winner, and as a bonus the
immortality meme would spread much faster through society.
Yes, this idea has been used many times in SF, but has
anyone ever seriously tried to get the gov interested?
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