From: draughn@iitmax.iit.edu (Mark Draughn)
Subject: Crime and Punishment
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 22:48:07 GMT

This looks like a good opportunity to toss out a couple of ideas that
have been floating around in my head regarding the role of prisons in
our justice system.  I don't have sources and statistics, just the
germ of a theory.  Please bear with me.

(Does anybody besides me think we need a group called talk.crime or
something to gather the discussions of how to handle the "crime
problem" that keep popping up in places like talk.politics.guns,
talk.politics.drugs, misc.legal, and talk.rape?)

In article <92274.112629U53734@uicvm.uic.edu> Wesley Bielinski
<U53734@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.203504.19269@gtephx.UUCP>, forda@gtephx.UUCP
>(Andrew Ford
>@ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) says:
>>!Next, make prisons a miserable place to be instead of a place that
>>!is better than life on the streets!  Eliminate all recreation
>>!facilities (having convicts come out of prison looking like Arnold
>>!Schwarzenegger does us all a lot of good, now doesn't it?);  Reduce
>>!the quality of food to edible, but bland (ie: grits for brkfst,
>>!steamed vegies for lunch, and beans for dinner);  Eliminate TV
>>!(Christ, I don't even get cable TV yet! -- there's not enough left
>>!over after taking care of the bills and the kids); Eliminate
>>!conjugal visits, cigarettes, "Christmas packages", etc;  Make them
>>!sweat like pigs all summer and shivver all winter.  In short, make
>>!prison an absolute *hell*hole*!
[...]
>IMO, a person who commits a crime against society or a member thereof, should
>forfiet the rights to belong to that society.
>
>In other words, Treat them like shit, they deserve it for what
>they did to someone else!!!

I just have to say that the idea of treating prisoners like shit and
making prison a hell-hole brings pain to my liberal bleeding heart. :-)
More to the point, I think it's counterproductive and somewhat immoral.

I think prisons have several legitimate purposes:

(1) Warehousing:  Putting criminals in jail keeps them from hurting
people in normal society.

One obvious policy derived from this purpose is that if prison
resources are too limited to keep all criminals in prison, then we
should make sure that the ones who are let out are those least likely
to commit crimes that are harmful to society.  In California, for
example, illegal transfer of an "assault weapon" will get you a 4-year
minimum sentence; rape will only get you 3 years.  What's wrong with
this picture?

(2) Vengeance/Deterrence: In the Old Days (TM), vengeance played a big
part in crime control.  A member of a reasonably large and wealthy
family could count on being avenged if he or she were murdered.  More
important, someone contemplating killing a member of such a family
would also know about the high likelyhood of vengeance.  This tended
to discourage murder.  (At least of people in such families.)  In
modern times, for a variety of reasons, we have given the power of
vengeance to the justice system, letting it do the job of deterrence.

(3) Rehabilitation:  Since the prisoners will eventually be let back
into society-at-large, we should try to change their behavior so that
they will be less likely to do further damage.  We should try to make
them better citizens.  More on this later.

I think there should be a few constraints on what may be done with
prisoners:

(A) Prisoners should not lose more rights than necessary.  Certain
rights must be given up as part of the nature of prison: the right to
bear arms, the right to travel, freedom of assembly, freedom from
searches, and a few others.  On the other hand, prisoners should
retain the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right
to due process, and maybe the right to vote.

(B) When you take away someone's ability to care for themselves, you
become responsible for providing care.  Thus, a kidnapper can be held
criminally responsible for the victim's health problems if the
kidnapper prevented the victim from getting proper care.  The same
ethic should be used in developing prison policy.

The most obvious consequence of constraint (B) is better health care.
I'm not saying prisoners should receive the finest level of health
care available, but they should receive care comparable with what a
non-wealthy person could get on the outside.  Some prison health care
systems are so bad that prison doctors aren't even required to have
licenses.  A twenty-year sentence should not become a death sentence
because it's cheaper that way.

Another consequence of constraint (B) is better law enforcement within
prisons.  Too many crimes against prisoners seem to be ignored.  The
rate of prison rape is far too high, and prisoners are often beaten or
stabbed.  As far as I know, being raped and maimed is not part of the
sentence.  If you take away a prisoner's right to protect himself, you
must protect that prisoner.

The lawlessness within the prison walls also undermines the
rehabilitation purpose of prison.  By letting the prisoners do what
they want to each other, you're teaching them the wrong sort of
behavior.  You're teaching them that the best way to look out for
themselves is to be mean and violent and to gang up on other people.

We should be trying to teach them respect for the law, but we can't do
that by putting them in an environment where the law is even less
meaningful than it was on the outside and where the only way to get
any kind of personal safety is to join a gang.  We may decide that we
don't care what happens to them in prison, but surely we should care
what kind of people we will eventually be letting out of prison.
-- 

Mark Draughn    | <draughn@iitmax.iit.edu> or <SYSMARK@IITVAX> on BITNET
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns