Prisons
like holding a tiger by the tail
Why do we need prisons?
Do we really want a guy who enjoys killing running amok among us? I don't think so. Lock him up. That's why we need prisons.
Prisons, historically, have been seen as a humane way of dealing with criminals.
Once there were guillotines and public drawings and quarterings.
But prisons are harsh places that bring out the worst in the guards.
Given that we need prisons we need to make sure that they are as humane as possible. This is tricky given that one of the roles of prisons is to punish criminals for their crimes. I've felt the need to punish those who have harmed me.
But punishing a criminal doesn't help the person they killed or robbed and very often the victim is forgotten in the whole process.
And I think it's a well established fact that negative reinforcement is not as effective at changing behavior as positive reinforcement. Punishment can backfire and make criminals tough enough to not care about it.
Prisons are expensive. And the more humane they are, the more expensive they are. Free enterprise steps into the breach with private for profit prisons. The more prisoners the better. What could possibly go wrong?
America has a very high incarceration rate. I saw a chart the other day (now can't find it) that showed that USA and China were basically tied for the number of people in prison. That's quite shocking in itself; China is seen as a pretty repressive and oppressive regime. It's more shocking when you consider that China's population is 3 times as high as the USA's which means that the incarceration rate in the USA is 3 times the Chinese rate.
I don't have space to talk about just why the American incarceration rate is so high. I think that racism and poverty are involved but it's not simple.
There's a channel that comes up on Yahoo news that shows dashcam videos of cops chasing miscreants of some sort. The miscreant gets hit by a PIT maneuver that flips his care over. The whole sequences are dangerous to everyone on the road.
I'm like wow - why didn't the guy just pull over? Now whatever problem he had before is way magnified. When people act like that about the law then they do go to jail.
I admit that those videos are selected by the cops because it shows them in a good light and presented by the channel as entertainment. They are the contemporary cat videos.
I mention it because that sort of lawless behavior seems to be more common in the USA than here. In a way, as a Canadian, I'm not surprised. We never had a wild west. Gun duels on Main Street aren't there as part of our national identity. But we sure got to see it from Hollywood in the 50s and 60s. I had a little cap gun and would have play gunfights with my friends. (heh thinking about it - that cap gun was maybe the first tech thing I mastered.
The westerns would feature posters saying "wanted - dead or alive". The preference was for dead. If dead no trial is required nor jails.
I think prisons are a necessity and also a problem and a danger.
One of the ways to reduce the problem is to reduce the number of behaviours that require imprisonment if caught,
The drug prohibitions are an example - drug problems should be treated as medical issues and not criminal ones.
But prisons are needed and good. We need to offer maximum help to the guards so they don't turn bitter and brutal. And we need to be careful about what sort of behaviour demands imprisonment.
What do you think?