Should there be two different types of prisons? One that's unpleasant to punish people and another that's more humane? Maybe a one size fits all approach is not the best for justice. There are a few cases where prisoners have to be kept behind bars for the rest of their life to keep the rest of society safe, but the prisoner doesn't really deserve a lifetime of punishment. (For example, maybe he suddenly snapped and killed two people, but there was a very understandable reason why he lost it) Maybe the jury could even have input on which tier of prison the prisoner should be sent to. I just think this would be a lot more humane and less cruel, because there are a lot of prisoners with effective lifetime sentences who don't deserve to "rot behind bars" like other prisoners do. Maybe they could also send the prisoner to the more pleasant prison tier if they are convicted of a killing, but there's a tiny shred of evidence they might not have done it. Just to make sure the punishment isn't too cruel if there's a possibility it could be an innocent man. This two-tier system will still allow maximum punishment on those we know with absolute certainty committed heinous crimes.
We have different types of prisons within the US and even within the same prison, they may have different units in which the inmates operate under very different sets of rules.
There are several types of prisons, ranging from minimum security country club prisons to federal supermax prisons. Basically speaking, the less secure, the cheaper they are to operate. Non-violent criminals get sent to lower security prisons, in general. Locally, we have a minimum security federal prison. It's not quite a country club, but the prisoners can often get weekend furloughs, and they aren't supervised by guards 24/7. It would be easy to escape from these, and they have an escape every few years. The thing is, when they escape, they go to a higher ecurity prison when recaptured.
There are 3 kinds of Homicide: Deplorable, Justifiable and Praiseworthy. I am rather liberal on crime & punishment, as I do not support warehousing prisoners for years and years. For lesser crimes, first time offenders and younger criminals, a hardcore boot camp prison training sentence of around 6 months should be given. For second-time, repeat violent felons and other career non-violent criminals, around 6 months in a prison work camp with chain gangs should be prescribed. For all 3rd+ time repeat violent felons over 16 and those convicted of heinous crimes on hard evidence, death by hanging within 6 months. Even on the flimsy chance a repeat violent felon was actually not guilty of their latest crime they were caught doing, I say "So What? You really should have been executed after your 1st rape, kidnapping, shooting, assault or other such behavior. Our mercy is now at an end."
I think that drug addicts and users shouldn't go to prison. Drug dealers are another matter. The people who should always go to prison are the most dangerous. I know that it's not about death penalty, but I have many reasons to be against death penalty : From the most important to the lesser one : _ Innocent people are sometimes executed, and the life of an innocent worth the life of one million criminal. _ I don't trust either judges, politician and barely trust people, I don't think we should give them a that huge responsibility. _ The last one, and by far the most important, I don't think it send the wrong signal to people. But, otherwise, I agree with you that most criminals should be treated extremly harshly.
The life of one repeat violent felon who has already been through the prison system at least twice is NOT innocent and not worth keeping alive to harm one more innocent person.
I don't care that much of a violent felon, and everytime one is killed by the police rather than put in prison, I'm rather happy that we will not waste money on that scum. I'm still opposed to death penalty for the reasons I mentionned. I'm not against death penalty for the sweet eyes of murderers, rapists, and other human waste, I just don't trust human nature enough. Sometimes, some taboos are necessary.
Save your tears for the victims, not the effing criminals who made them victims ffs. Jeez what makes these liberals tick?
Prisons should be prisons. They shouldn't be too comfortable. They also shouldn't have criminal subcultures running the social structure. Any active gang members should be removed from the general population in order to allow the rest the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.
I had a relative (non-gang member) in prison. He stopped some guy trying to steal his shoes. He got transferred to another prison because of the threat of gang retribution.
Privately run prisons are a small minority of prisons overall (8% of prisoners in the U.S., about 125,000, were held in privately run prisons). It's one of those liberal myths that we keep people in prison to keep the prison corporations in business. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf See p. 16 of the above:
I mean, known gangbangers from the street, are in special housing. Gangs INSIDE flourish in Gen. Pop., & yeah, some bangers from the street "slip through" too, but generally, (and admittedly, when financially able, depending on state) it's special monkey-housing .
Ah, so it's because it's a myth that the profits of the CCA have increased by 500% over the last two decades? Or that the private prison industry made a revenue of about 5 billions in 2011? Yeah, just a myth!
Show proof for your contentions (i.e. links). I showed proof that destroyed the idea that for profit prisons are the major part of our system. I thought you liberals were concerned with facts..... Not sure about in 2011, but in 2016, CCA (it's been renamed CoreCivic) had a revenue of $1,849,785,000, of which about $220 million is profit. They've been in business since 1983, so I would expect that their profits have grown in the last two decades. That's why they are in business. http://www.cca.com/investors/financial-information/annual-reports Regardless, 8% of all prisoners is a small minority. That means that 92% of prisoners are in government run prisons. Private prisons are a minor player in prisons, and they are on the downslide.
Stop with the flamebait and I absolutely will. Though you'll have to wait until Sunday, because I don't have access to my computer right now
What flamebait? I was simply making a pointed comment. Regardless, I proved you wrong. Privatized prisons are a small part of the overall prison population. Not even 10%, and dropping. It was an experiment that was tried, but is slowly phasing out.
As I said, you'll have to wait until Sunday, but I am curious about what you actually think you contradicted. I never claimed that private prisons held any majority of the American prisoners. You just started arguing against things I never said. Frankly I am not going to waste time defending a position that I only have in your imagination.
Today I was reading story about two individuals who together killed 10 innocent people. One of them was 17 years old at the time and had committed at least one the murders, possibly more but they are not sure, and was sentenced to life in prison. Now there are several people trying to petition to resentence him because they say a life sentence is too harsh and he wasn't yet an adult when the murders occurred. Why are these petitioners putting all the focus on how long that person will stay in prison? What about the conditions inside the prison? Maybe it wouldn't be as harsh if the conditions inside the prison were better. They could focus on that instead of trying to have him released from prison at some point. But that would require two different types of prison. This is just one example, but you can think of all sorts of other scenarios of child killers that should remain forever away from the rest of society, but where we can feel some sympathy for them and don't particularly want them to be punished for the rest of their lives. In cases like this they could put them in the uncomfortable prison for several years and then eventually move them to the more comfortable prison.
Some people need to be put in a cage, with the door welded shut, feed them through a hole in it. When they stop moving for a couple days, cut the welds, shovel them out, hose the room down, and put in the next one.
There should be only one kind of prison: Extremely horrible shatholes that offer the harshest conditions on earth. And if you rob a bank, convenience store, McDonalds, carjack, etc., with a gun, you never get out. That's the kind of time Martha Stewart should have done.