Please give your positive or negative feedback for this idea!!! Thanks :)
The idea is to create a prison that mimics a regular town. Inmates would have jobs, apartments, and they could start families with other inmates. (So, the prison would be male and female.) There would be rules and security, and the inmates could not freely leave the town (they would be stopped by fences or other means). The idea is to try to introduce the inmates to normal living, so that they can serve their time and make an easy transition back to free society.
REALITY CHECK: So this would obviously have to start as a test program on a small scale with hand-selected inmates who had a high potential for succeeding. It would take a lot of funding as well, but some funding issues could be offset eventually by the products the prisoners produce in their jobs.
There are a few main benefits of this system:
1) With over 2 million people incarcerated in the US, prisons are overcrowded and ruled by violent gangs. Also, many mentally ill people are housed with the general population (rather than given treatment in a mental hospital). The town model would first alleviate the overcrowding issue.
2) Prison is a violent place because they are filled with violent 20-something males who have raging testosterone and nothing productive to do. These guys need girlfriends and jobs.
3) You could pay the inmates lower than market wages. Depending on the savings, you could maybe funnel the additional proceeds to a mental health facility that could care for some of the mentally ill inmates in regular prisons.
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This seems to me the proper attitude but it seems that much of the public hungers for revenge against convicts so it might be very difficult to get into operation. The inhabitants would have to be very carefully selected to prevent the growth of a gang dominated social system.
Put it in the middle of the desert.
The purpose of the parole system is pretty much the same as your suggestion, and there are opportunities for job training in the existing system. Half of all criminals return to crime, mostly for reasons which cannot be undone by halfway programs or training.
Aside from effect of the economic environment, the only way to significantly reduce crime is mandatory family planning, in which dysfunctional people, or those with criminal histories, would not be allowed to reproduce. Criminals make lousy parents.
Responding to sand:
Yes, I also thought of the revenge/punishment problem. You are right that some people would argue that the inmates should be punished. However, you could also argue that teaching criminals to lead normal lives is the most self-serving thing we could do, because they will have to live amongst us at the end of their sentences. Which is better for us...even more hardened criminals than before, or people who have learned how to hold jobs and have normal lives? It could be argued that this is more self-serving than the satisfaction society gets from punishing the criminals.
I personnally believe the best 'punishment' aspect of prison is that it does take away the freedom and satisfaction people get from an every-day life. I believe that prison should be boring. So every time people suggest a work-related punishment, I think about how much satisfaction I get from work.
Also, people in prison have violated the social contract. They've not respected that we all need to cooperate for any of us to survive. Therefore I think they need to be shown that every link--their link--in the chain counts and when people don't respect the rights of others, they get no rights.
I don't advocate slavery and I don't think it would be fair for people incarcerated to be paid a lower wage when they're doing any activity that could compete with a legitimate business on the outside that doesn't have that advantage. If the government learned that they could make money off of prisoners, they'd incarcerate as many as possible so they could sell the work while the taxpayers pay the bills. Our governments are notorious for enforcing the laws selectively to achieve the most revenue, example speeding and drug laws.
this is dream land.
these are the solutions to your problems:1. violent gangs - any one who is violent gets drugged into submission2. testosterone - they get neutered3. nothing productive to do - they work and produce things that society needs. this is how they repay their debts, not by going to some make believe world and living a nice life.
Wasn't this tried with Australia? And look how THAT turned out!
You are confusing Aussies with those French guys in that movie with Steve McQueen. Devil's Island or something.
I said on another post some time ago that convicted felons should be surgically sterilized, and I still believe that. Most people said it would be against the constitution, etc.
We can no longer afford the existing crime/punishment cycle system, in which crims are caught, warehoused for a while, and then released, triggering a 50% recidivism rate.
At this time, prison offers little deterence, partly because prison life is better than what many law-abiders have on the outside.
It's time for a revolution in our thinking about criminals.
There are many good things that can come from this idea. For one, increasing the control the inmates would have on their lives would help rehabilitate many. Peer pressure is more efficient than guard pressure, and cheaper as well. I'd suggest trying many different small scale approaches & seeing what works & what does not. Prisons are expensive to run, we should be able to improve things. My guess is the govt has not had an incentive to make things better.
Our entire country has become the "Prison Town". Almost everyone is touched in some way by our current Judicial system. If only real treatment was available for those doing time for drug use or mental issues, we could cut the current membership in half. Let's get our sons and daughters real lives, not 10 cent an hour jobs in a warehouse setting.
Wouldn't this idea ultimately become in some gang town where people killed and died every day?
It seemes to work well in Australia. Also, why not simply punish first time, non violent, billionaire financial offenders with a 90% levy on their net worth- which could go towards (duh) : sustainable energy, effective homeland security, education, social security, you name it!
I find the idea quite interesting.What do we do if there are any children born in prison?