Recently in an online think tank the issues of the treatment of prisoners came up; the issues including degrading of criminal prisoners in the United States. It was noted that the US has more people in prison per capita than in any other nation. One think tanker asked the group; do we want them to be better people or do we just like to degrade people and so we have a complicit agreement that this segment of society is acceptable to degrade? A third option, we just want them to go away and stay away and/or stop causing problems. Or eliminate them. Additionally the think tanker quoted Warren Burger, but most Chief Justices are lawyers, so it is hard for me to wish to listen to any quote or advice on how to run society from a lawyer as they seem to be the biggest culprits of abusing society for their own self-interests. So, can you come up with another quote and no disrespect to Warren Burgers quote? The think tanker further stated that; There is a lot of research out there that shows that our current [prison] model is pretty much a total failure. Indeed it is a total failure and thus the expenditure of time to discuss the issue is more than relevant. It does not work, the system seems to ruin people and turn them into life- time criminals rather than a mistake they may have made along the way. And so I agree the system is so botched it is not working. What can we do to straighten out our prison systems so they rehabilitate rather than cause recidivism? Consider all this in 2006. |
