Philosophy Now Forum

Stuart Greenstreet on the abysmal failure of theories about crime and punishment.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/102/Prison_Doesnt_Work

So you would therefore favour locking up just the "career criminals"?

Yes. And you only give very small jail sentences for others, as punishment and deterrence. The long sentences are what clogs up the prisons. It's called 'warehousing' - you put the guys who just keep doing it over and over in prison for long stretches to get them out of the community. In the old days, they might be banished to the colonies or sold into indentured servitude. Today, we pay for them to stay in expensive prisons. No amount of 'rehabilitation' makes a dent in their psyches. They are given programs to help them on the their first, second, third offenses (and more) and they just keep coming back.

arm the populace and let them defend their property with deadly force

graveyards work better than prison

rehabilitate?

-Imp

Men are sent to prison by judges not connected socially or even geographically to those they sentence, and who are thus insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

I suspect if judges were more closely connected socially or geographically to those they sentence, their inclination to issue custodial sentences would be greater and those sentences longer. Law-abiding folk who live in areas high in crime are the people most likely to want to see criminals locked up.

The assumption the article is based on is that the purpose of prison is to prevent re-offending, and as as it fails to achieve this it 'doesn't work'. What we don't know is how many people who obey the law do so because they are deterred from offending by the prospect of prison.

I think punishment is a measure of justice, not a means to directly reduce or discourage the commission of crime, although in the long run, justice prevailing has an overall good effect on society.

Once about 16 years ago, I saw a doc about a south american prison with 2 criminal gang leaders that everybody was afraid of, even all the staff and prison chief.

A woman with some shrink background or something summoned these 2 gang leaders to undergo a confidense test (can't remember exact name), in the end they both cried like babies, that feeling of unconditional trust was something they had longed for all their life, but suppressed in the criminal world.

I believe in most cases if the person has a strong "normal" side they have suppressed, it can be recalled and nurtured with the right treatment, unfortunaly in all cases such tasks falls to utterly incompetent social workers who are totally clueless.

Just what is the purpose of prison? If it's to teach a career criminal not to commit a crime, it doesn't work. But if it is to keep the career criminal out of society and committing crimes, then it does serve that purpose.

It's also to satisfy society for the need of see fit punishment.