"O'Regan, Emlyn" wrote:
>
> >
> >Well, we tried going the route that european prisons are: pretty much forced
> >vocational education and psych treatment. Problem was, the recidivism stats
> >showed that it was a failure here. Here, the stats seem to bear out that if
> >you make prison life as unbearable as possible, a crook is far less likely to
> >want to go back to such an institution, so they took out the weight lifting
> >equipment (reduces guard costs, esp. medical bills) they are taking out the
> >college courses, etc. except at the minimum security resorts.
> >
> >Mike Lorrey
>
> I'm interested in clarifying something here. You have stated that you
> are anti-government, and from the above you are also supportive of a
> punitive (rather than rehabilitative) styles of prisons. I've got no
> argument with someone holding these opinions, although I don't hold them
> myself. There's some kind of common ground probably, because I wonder
> whether there can really be a rehabilitating prison, and I imagine that
> you would have some opinions on this subject.
The only common ground is that the population of criminals we are discussing has been produced by a social welfare state in a mercantilist economy. That qualifies my opinion quite a bit. In the kind of world I would like, criminals would get what they deserve at the crime scene at the hands of the people they sought to victimize. Eventually the genes for criminal tendencies would be weeded out of the population by natural selection. Non-violent offenders would pay the costs of their crimes in non-violent ways (IMHO, imprisoning a human being is a violent act). Obviously this calls for a population of citizens who are fare more interested in personal sovereignty and responsibility than the current one.
>
> The way I see it, if you don't trust the government, then you probably
> want to have prisons which aren't too awful, because there would be a
> fairly high chance of innocent people ending up there. Is this
> fallacious reasoning? Do you see a seperation between the government and
> the justice system which is relevant (ie: justice system is trustworthy,
> government is not)?
So long as the jury pool is made up of responsible intelligent, informed citizens, I need fear no government with respect to the justice system. Obviously you see my dilemma.
>
> I don't mean this post to be inflammatory (although it probably is). I'm
> just interested in this juxtaposition of views.
>
> Emlyn
> We are borg
Hell no, we are not....
Mike Lorrey