One time not a felony. Time in jail a couple weeks. I've known people who have worked in the system, state and Federal. If you want get a little insite about hard time watch "Lockup" by MSNBC, or some of the documenatries on other cable stations. You will quickly see that life in the serious prisons is like nothing you imagine.

@dexter morgan I agree and than some. Plus most adults have no ideal what happens in any of those places.

@dexter morgan What would we call the class?

lol. Reality 101 would be cute, I guess. It ought to be considered part of life skills, perhaps. People should be required to take a class that tells them about how to deal with banks, how to deal with contracts, landlords, employers, etc. I know such classes exist... I think they should be mandatory.

I know parents should be providing such guidance... often they are not. My wife teaches in a poor area... and you wouldn't believe some of the stories. Kids are left with no guidance and exposure to all kinds of crazy crap. It would be a good investment for us a society to go ahead and provide it... rather than simply complaining that parents *should* be doing it. Oh - and by the way, my wife used to teach in an affluent area - and they had parallel problems - yuppies are often no different than some of the blue collar folk or welfare cases about ignoring their kids, putting them in front of T.V.s and thinking that buying them stuff will fill their needs.

The difference is that the Yuppies have no excuse. After all they have all that education that is often claimed as the answer to everything.

@figle "Hibis: "Abortion: Yes unless there is an objection by a parent."
Are you saying that if a girl gets pregnant, HER PARENTS should be allowed to choose if she has the kid or not? That's her life being decided right there..."

No. I'm saying it's up to the woman, unless there is a man involved who wants to keep the child. I don't think abortion is right in that circumstance but I certainly don't think it's the governments business to make any law restricting it.

Perhaps actively offering and denying privileges like television could be used to control behavior.

I've never been imprisoned.

Are school classes the best way to teach experiential knowledge?

@ DIGID First you miss the point. The classes dexter was talking about was to teach kids what may happen to you, if you cross certain lines. This applies to crime and other issues such as DWI (the morgue), drug abuse, missuse of an auto etc.

That makes more sense, sorry Hibis!
So, what rights do you think a woman should have if she wants an abortion and the prospective father doesn't?

@DIGID "Perhaps"? It's all ready in use in every prison, some pyscotherapies, and on most kids 2-3yrs old and older. "Expermental" It's not expermental and it works in a majority of cases. It is not an infallibale control but punishment and reward works. You have not come up with a better way and control over prison population is needed to maintain safety and some order. What would you do have a nice chat with some prisoner who just beat another inmate or an guard to a pulp, and would just as soon use you as his bitch. I suppose you'd tell him he was a naughty boy and let him continue his activities as if nothing happened.

Our prison system is broken. For one, it's so overcrowded that people are starting to question the constitutionality of some prisons. Another is that some prisons lack a defined reward/punishment incentive, which means that prisoners are likely to misbehave and are also more likely to return to prison. Also, prisons are required to be racially integrated. While segregation is bad, it beats interracial gang violence any day of the week. Now I'm not suggesting my favor of complete segregation of our entire penal system, but I would be in strong favor of segregation of known members of gangs with racist tendencies. I'd also be in favor of a protection-and-early-release program for gang members who want to leave their gang and want to turn their lives around.

The point is, we need to keep our prisoners safe and stop treating prisons as time-outs. We need to treat prisons as rehab centers for people who have screwed up their lives and train them to be successful when they reenter society.

We don't treat prisons as time-outs you dumbass

Segregation in prison speak is when you isolate prisoners for their, or others protection. Time outs? weeks, months or more in segregation is not a time-out. I was talking about reward and punishment inside to control activities in the prison. No need to be concerned about the mixing of racies, the prisoners take care of that, and most prisons do not force the issue. alot of the violance is mostly pure gang. It can be black on black , hispanic on hispanic, white on white, or any combination. Than there are real or percieved personal slights, and the plain crazies, or bored inmates. Most prisions already try keep the gang leaders away from the the rest but they still get the orders out anyway.

@TMW In general you want to go in the correct direction, but I don't think you understand all the problems inherent to the system and in making the changes that are badly needed.

@Draugnar: "Torture <snip list of dictionary definitons...> ....Not a single one of these definitions even implies that imprisonment without liberty of any sort is torture."

I generally think that when people start quoting dictionary definitions, it's a sign that they are losing the argument. But in my opinion, if you lock someone away and deny them any form of mental stimulation, to the point of not being allowed to read a book, with the knowledge that those conditions will never change - the rest of their life will be void of mental stimulation - that is torture. If you put me in those conditions, I am almost certain I would go insane. My insanity would have been caused by the conditions you had imposed on me - a result of your mental torture.


@ Draugnar: "But we make our children sit in a corner for ectended periods with no TV/phone/radio/whatever and think about their actions, so why not make an inmate sit in his cell the same way and think about his actions?"

With our children, in this example, we make them 'think about their actions' in the hope that they will change their future behaviour. The same is not true of a life-sentence prisoner, who will effectively be given no opportunity to change his future behaviour because he has been condemned to life in a cell. Therefore, what is the benefit of having him 'think about his actions' ?

It's all so in the best interest of the guards to keep prisonors occupied. One of most difficult problems they have is staying ahead of the all the ideals the prisonors come up with. They have all the time in the world to think up a new way to outwit the system, and have nothing to lose. Prolonged boredom can also cause people to do thinks just to break it, such as killing the guard, ("Wack the Guard" sounds like a video game). Than you have to think about the ones who cannot ever regret doing the crime just getting caught.

We do treat prisons as time-outs. We say "Bad! No! Go to prison for five years and think about what you did." How is that any different then a parent disciplining a child? We need to say "You did something bad. You know that. Now we're going to give you a chance to turn your life around. Don't blow it."

When we put our children into time-outs, it's unlikely that they're going to be forcibly sodomized or have to join a gang to protect them from the other children in the corner who are trying to stick a homemade knife into their kidneys. Unfortunately, that's pretty much SOP in the American prison system.

That's a really scary thought Nostradumass!

I might know too many corrections officers, but I have a pretty bleak view of the prison system ... enough to never want to end up in it.

Are you American?

Yes. I used to live near one of the Michigan state prisons (Jackson). I knew a few people, and some were friends, who worked in the prison. Within a couple of years, all of them were pretty burned out except for a couple who seemed to enjoy it. Those were assholes.

It's a scary reality. The onething we can all say is that the system is messed up.

figlesquidge Your a Brit correct? What is your perspective?

A hazardous time-out, yes. But still a time-out.

@TMW: "We do treat prisons as time-outs. We say "Bad! No! Go to prison for five years and think about what you did." How is that any different then a parent disciplining a child?"

But Draugnar was referring to life prisoners, serious murderers etc who will never be released. They don't get released so 'thinking about what they did' is fine, but they can't act on it, because they'll never return to the real world. To lock them up without even the mental stimulation of the odd book to read, is torture.

Yes, of course. I was referring to prisoners that will be released. Penning someone up for years with no mental stimulation is torture, because they'll grow slowly insane day by day.

I'm glad you agree with me. It would, over time, drive them insane. Draugnar was arguing that it is ok to deny prisoners books and other forms of mental stimulation, and that this was not torture. I think he's wrong.