Our jails are pretty overcrowed, and there was a study that said crimminals tend to get worse after jail.  I think non-violent crimminals should have to under-go treatment, and/or do some community service.  Of course they would be watched.  \n\nI also think that when people get out of jail the state should help them get a job, find a place, and give them a little $$.  I just found out that jails charge the prisoners room and board.  I figured if we do it this way, less crimminals would feel the need to reoffend.\n\nTell me what think.  Am I way out of line?
206538
your not out of line, you are entitled to your opinion\n\nbank robbers arent violent, fraudsters arent violent, fraud is on the increase especially with the internet, and recently i got my bank details swiped.\n\nThese people arent violent, but are the scurge of society, and stil need to be imprisoned for some amount of time, AND THEN SHOULD BE TAGGED PERHAPS. or need a slap....\n\nI am sure some non-violent criminals who are serving shorter sentence could be let out earlier with tagging. However Tagging doesn't stop their need for drugs once they're back outside. And crime is how they fund a daily habit. As for drug dealers many just see prison as an occupational hazard.\n \nKeeping people in prison must be costing us as tax payers an awful lot of money\n\nThe prison system would not be as critical as it is now if the law was harsher on criminals. Some sentences are too lenient and to not deter people from re-offending. Also prisons are too easy once you are in there.\n\nAll those in prison are there for a reason - ie they've done something that incurs their loss of liberty. Prison should be hard, real hard. Sentences should be served in full. Many people have been affected by crime and deserve Justice.\n\nI do not think more prison should be built, because more prison will make more prisoners, Prison often serves as a school for criminals, especially first time offenders. Build more prisons, generate more prisoners.\n\nUnless we plan to lock criminals away permanently we need to devise a more long term strategy to prevent re-offending. The government needs to use its brains rather than brawn here.
658927
No.  Paedophiles admit themselves that they will reoffend.  They can't help themselves.  It's an overwhelming desire within them that drives them to such monstrosities.  However, it is possible that they are repentant, and that prison is extremely unmerciful for Paedophiles.  As such, they should be released from prison after their sentence is complete, and into full -time residential Psychiatric care, like a sealed community, into which no innocent children must ever venture.  It will remain a prison because it must be secure, but it will contain only child-molesters.  Psychiatric help should be available to these individuals as it may be that they have traumatic pasts themselves, but they should never, ever be released into society - ours or another.\n\nIt is true that this will rely on the tax-payer's money, but who would rather they roamed the streets amongst our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews than we paid a few extra quid to keep them locked away?\n\nP.S. Castration is a good idea in theory, but they still have hands and mouths... (sorry to be distasteful, but it's an ugly truth...)
490089
A very high percentage of the people in prison today, were once the little boys you are talking about.  (I worked at a state Corrections - head office - dealt with the Division Directors).\n\nYou might want to go to: http://www.csom.org/  This is the federal government's Center for Sex Offender Management.\n\n While inmates overall have a recycle rate of about 30%, sex offenders repeat at about 60%.  A few years ago, CSOM did a study of sex offenders which concluded that on average, a unsupervised sex offender sexually abused somebody every 8 days.  Sadly, they have learned to get a sexual release by abusing somebody.\n\nVery few people who go this route are able to stop.  What can - or should - be done with them?  Release them back into a unsuspecting society?  Lock them up for life - and then send low paid prison guards in to break up their fights - and by killing a guard the inmate becomes a prison hero?  Or do we execute these people, and take the money that would have been spent putting them in prison and use it to provide mental health services to young kids who have been abused - so they avoid becoming the next generation of abusers?\n\nIts not a easy question - and there are no easy answers.  But to me, the best answer that is available today, is to have people on-line who pose as young kids and if somebody goes after them - then the authorities should step in and prosecute the predator.\n\nSome states will have the offender serve prison time and when their sentence is up - have them declared mentally insane so they can be held longer.   I can see the reason for this, but it really gives me a peek at Orwell's 1984 life.
77890
I have some stuff to say on this: In a closed system some kinds of macro level insanity!  I was in mexican prison for a tad over two years for the offense of 'narcotraficante."  I studied the psychological components of the prisoner population.  A mini society of about 1500 males and 150 females.  Tensions of their particular blends of indidual frustration and impulsive too-long repressed anger fed into some people dying on several ocassions and this was studied from simple gangs killing one of each other's side over some trivial matter.  And another killing for one prisoner having been acused of a misdeed.  Ever more prisoners arriving and the crowding numbers reach for 1800 and on a calm warm day a clinic' drugged prisoner is shot dead between the fifteen-feet high brick wall and its paraelle twelve-foot chain-link fence.  Prisoners began to amass proximal the murder scene and within about twenty to thirty minutes the frustration and anger built to a crensendo.  A gun-tower guard had to be killed for sake of ballance and one was killed, in a most agonizing manner plus other injuries.  There's more on the gore but I'll spare you that data.  Americans know that they suffer immense frustrations with seemingly all implosive data pointing to how fu(ked we are and how we have apathy sublime.  The pot is a ways past warming and we have seen little pockets of social disorder in here and there in various city' riots.  We know that our society is gonna have to cycle a biggy one more time and when it does visit us it will but take the needed spark.  I'm sad we have let our society slip so far into our dung.  Our social-metality is producing few persons of reason.  History is ladden with examoles of these phenomena operant on macro levels.\nTreating the causes and less the symptoms could conceiveably place us into The Age of Reason and oh how a day we'd have.\nIt is taught that if you cannot learn from history then you are bound to repeat it.  After the adrenalin rushes are over, oh so spent and comfy.  The people having had enough blood letting we'd rather the dung would settle but it's all yet there.  It was diagnosed and treated and the causes but build back and entropy is operant once again.  What's the next ditty?
349921
Way to soft in my opinioin. Even the US prison system i believe is too soft. If prisoners do serious crimes, they deserve serious punishments. A few years in prison only means a few years of free food, water, and a place to stay. If a man rapes your daughter, will you be satisfied with him just going to prison and getting life easy?- or do you believe he deserves to suffer more and maybe even get a taste of his own medicine...
644360
Actual work details outside the prison they still have,just not in chains. I think the prisoners working outside picking up the roadside trash is a great idea too. More places should do it. They should legalize drugs and spend more on education and prevention of drug use. When someone is addicted and can't get their drug of choice they will become a criminal to get it. England legalized drugs and they have clinics people can go to, crime dropped quite a bit and alot of these people were able to work again. Not flying planes of course,lol or being doctors but a real job to pay for their own needs. They glamorize drugs in the media and violence so of course it will attract the disenfranchized and the poor. According to the movies it offers a rich life full of excitement ,what crap. They should see the hell these addicts really live in and the disease. Jail looks pretty good to some people, like those who can't get medical care or decent food or who are abandoned by their families due to mental illness.the jail here is installing color tv for the inmates and air conditioning, you think the homeless have that.Its a sad situation. Inmates have it better in prison then the working poor.
19540
This is a seriosu problem in ALL prisons. It seems that peopel seem to think it is added punishment for those that are sent to prison. The fact it is sactioned by many guards and wardens is appaling. It can often ruin the lives of inmates and make minor criminals worse by subjecting to beatings and rape.\n\nIt is not limited to Detroit, but nationwide.\n\nWrite your local Congress Rep and your Sentaors abot this topic.
305686
If the purpose of our prison system is incarceration, then it is doing a great job.  There are few escapes.\n\nIf the purpose of imprisonment is deterrence, then we're not doing an effective job.  Maybe we should do what the father "Red" on "That 70s Show" said was the Soviet penal system:  "First offense, they send you to Siberia for five years.  Second offense, fifteen years.  THERE ARE NO THIRD OFFENSES".\n\nIf the purpose of our current prison system is to rehabilitate criminals, it's doing exactly the opposite.  They learn better, more sophisticated criminal techniques in jail.\n\nI'm not some "soft on crime" liberal.  However, I believe that we could substitute VERY HARD PUBLIC SERVICE in lieu of jail time.\n\nBack in the Great Depression of the 1930's, unemployed people were offered jobs in the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Public Works Administration.  The projects they worked on are still enjoyed today.  Why not resurrect these types of work programs?  Just put tracking bracelet on their legs to discourage running away.\n\nGiving these people healthy, dignified work will be great rehabilitation.  With most criminals (maybe not some of the child sex offenders or rapists) you can combine punishment with rehabilitation.  We just haven't tried hard enough.
655730
I think there does need to be some sort of way to keep track of sexual offenders, and they do need to be kept away from children.  Research shows that most sexual offenders who victimize children continue to victimize children over and over again.  Those people need to be on the registry, and they need to be kept away from children.\n\nI don't think sexual offenders should be let out of jail as easily as they get out. I'd prefer longer prison sentences for them, with mandatory counseling while they're in prison.  \n\nAt the same time, I think there needs to be distinctions made on the sexual offender registry.  There needs to be a registry for those who commit crimes against children.  Not for someone who is on the registry because, at age 18, they had sex with their 16 year old girlfriend or boyfriend.  That person is guilty of statutory rape, but that's not of the same level as someone who victimizes a child.
432819
dont you wish now that you wouldnt have got into trouble? i think that its going to be terrible there for you. i dont know what you done or how old you are. that does make a difference. \nif i had to go to jail, i would write letters and sleep alot and i would keep to myself. that 6 months is going to seem like 6 years. make it a learning experience and dont ever commit any crime again. im sure there are people that love you, its going to be hard on them too. good luck to you
526516
No definitely not, and besides that, jail does nothing to reform juvenile offenders, it just integrates them into a culture of adult offenders.  I think the key to curbing delinquent behavior in kids starts with the family- we don't have the reigns as tight on our kids as our parents had on us, and it shows.  Kids need curfews, jobs, and a sense of respect in general, and no amount of threats will instill that.
30265
Some of the things that our Justice System does never ceases to amaze me.  I have sat through many court hearings and it always surprises me that many violent offenders would get probation and the non violent or victimless crimes had the book thrown at them.  The whole system needs to be looked at and have some real changes made to it.  We have too many repeat offenders on the streets and not nearly enough people who have committed a violent crime behind bars protecting society.  Our government's war on drugs may have something to do with prosecuter's and judge's thinking when it come to those kind of crimes, because statisticly it will look like we are really cracking down on the problem, when in fact we really are getting no place with it.  Fact is drug users will probably find it easier to score while in prison than on the streets.  Nobody wants a prison or jail in their neighborhood,yet with our growing population we need more of them to fit our needs.  There will always be a portion of the population that is not going to play by the rules and be in trouble.  Those that we need to change is the Prrosecuting Attorney who makes all the deals and the Judge's that accept them.  These people are elected officials and if they do not act as we need we can vote them out.  You will find that one individual has a lot more clout in local county political races and can do a lot more by constantly working on the local level.  You can take a whole state by taking it one county at a time.  You will be surprised by how many people one voice can affect, you started by asking the question now take it a step further.
351453
yes, it is a sad fact that it cost around £110 per prisoner a day whilst in custody. So why don't they earn there keep. This money could be put to better use, like care homes for those in need of nursing attention.\n\nWhy is it that murderer's are let out? surly they should remain looked up, that way the victims family and the public can be reassured.\n\nI am sick of hearing a criminal was given a 20 year sentence, which was reduced to 12 for 'good behaviour', are justice system is a joke.
382827
Well you cannot tar all Western prisons the same as some are hard labour others holiday camps. Most hardened criminals say they learnt the finer points of crime in jail.\nI myself believe it should be a deterent, not run in accordance with some minority group on prisioners rights, but by victims groups.
70982
I believe there should be a factory, manufacturing plant or a field connected to every prison. I think they should get paid minimum wage. (it would be hard to call that "unreasonable punishment since its what lawful people are expected to work for) With every prison sentence against a person place or thing there should be a debt to pay. When the prisoner gets paid he can pay his rent, (water, electric, gas and ground keeping services included) after he has paid his rent his child support will be taken out. After child support he can pay off his debits to the person place or thing he committed the crime against.
276289
Prisons need to get back to being a punishment for the crime committed.  Take away the free cable, free gyms, free Internet access, etc.  Make the prisoners work for their meals and clothing.  For those that will one day get out, make job training mandatory so they cannot use "I have no skills" as an excuse for not getting a job when they get out.\n\nGiving gang members a choice will only be acceptable if they complete their military training, if they get discharged then they are to go to jail.  And only offer the option for those who have NOT harmed or killed an innocent person yet.\n\nAnd for child molesters - use them instead of the innocent animals for product testing, so at least they can serve a purpose to society.
294359
NO, it does not. It's absurdly expensive as the sentences are so long. There's barely any rehabilitation going on, and for the most part too many ppl are admitted for very long sentences who have not done serious crimes. Once you go through hell that most jails are you won't come out the same! And usually you won't come out a better person either! On top of that recidivism rates are extremely high when compared to other countries, i.e. in Europe. Some state prisons have recidivism rates as high as 20-30%. So no, too many do not become productive members of society again. I think there's a problem how the system works in itself, it might be successful at punishing, but not rehabilitation, in either case it should focus in prevention, and not be just a reactionary system. Some states, I think Florida and California will be soon among them if not yet, are spending more, or at least the same for education as prison systems. Now, doesn't anyone think there's something wrong with that? Right now US is jailing more than 2 million individuals... That's equivalent to a small country! There's clearly problems with the system, as well as the the way that society sees it and how they regard crime itself. Putting someone in jail as long as possible is not going to change anything! It's what he does in that jail that matters, not how long he stays there. So, if you think it's a good idea to fill the jails up with criminals, - fill them up, then build more max security prisons at 10 grand a cell, and fill those up as well, just don't come to me when it's time to pay taxes. And pray that once those criminals get out they don't come to you for anything, cause they'll be pissed. It's something to think about when you see the next politician boasting how he'll be tough on crime just cause it's an easy way to get votes, and felons can't vote, so he got nothing to loose, it's the society that does.