On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 11:29:33AM -0800, Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> What's wrong with people who commit crimes serving their full
> sentence?
Three things:
1. It makes it hard for prison officers to maintain order. (If your
prisoners hope to get time off for good behaviour, they have
a positive incentive to behave themselves. This is a very useful
lever if you're thinking in terms of getting criminals to reform.
It also makes it less likely that an inmate will attack a prison
officer.)
2. Where parole is abolished, it is seldom accompanied by a reduction
in sentencing guidelines. If a regime exists where parole of up to
25% of the sentence is available, and parole is then abolished, this
is almost never accompanied by a 25% reduction in sentences handed
out by the courts. Thus, the net effect is to increase the severity
of sentencing significantly.
3. It also _really_ pisses off and demotivates any inmates who've been
behaving themselves in hope of qualifying for early release, just in
time to be shafted by a change in the law -- see outcome #1 above.
Basically, as long as an inmate has something to *hope* for, they have
an incentive to reform, behave themselves well, and return to civil
society. Take away all rewards for cooperation, and why should they bother?
-- Charlie
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:26 MDT