From: O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Date: Tue May 25 1999 - 22:43:03 MDT
>
>Well, we tried going the route that european prisons are: pretty much forced
>vocational education and psych treatment. Problem was, the recidivism stats
>showed that it was a failure here. Here, the stats seem to bear out that if
>you make prison life as unbearable as possible, a crook is far less likely to
>want to go back to such an institution, so they took out the weight lifting
>equipment (reduces guard costs, esp. medical bills) they are taking out the
>college courses, etc. except at the minimum security resorts.
>
>Mike Lorrey
I'm interested in clarifying something here. You have stated that you
are anti-government, and from the above you are also supportive of a
punitive (rather than rehabilitative) styles of prisons. I've got no
argument with someone holding these opinions, although I don't hold them
myself. There's some kind of common ground probably, because I wonder
whether there can really be a rehabilitating prison, and I imagine that
you would have some opinions on this subject.
The way I see it, if you don't trust the government, then you probably
want to have prisons which aren't too awful, because there would be a
fairly high chance of innocent people ending up there. Is this
fallacious reasoning? Do you see a seperation between the government and
the justice system which is relevant (ie: justice system is trustworthy,
government is not)?
I don't mean this post to be inflammatory (although it probably is). I'm
just interested in this juxtaposition of views.
Emlyn
We are borg
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:48 MST