Should prisoners have three square meals a day, T.V., games rooms etc.?

Question

Surely prisoners shouldn't have all these luxuries, doesn't sound like punishment to me, doesn't sound like a deterrent either. Except for freedom, don't they have a better lifestyle than some pensioners say.

Having read through 50 answers, it seems to me that prisoners in the U.S.A. are treated more severly than ones here in the U.K. Over here paedophiles are placed in open prisons and then escape, we recently 'lost' scores of immigrant murderers and rapists who were released back into society to re-offend when they were supposed to be deported. In the U.K. criminals sometimes have more rights than theyr'e victims. A prisoner is now suing the Home Office because he fell off of his top bunk, it infringed his human right apparently. What about the human rights of the victims of crime or do the bleeding heart lobbyists have no thought for them. Makes you wonder.

Answer 1

We should go back to the chain gang days

Answer 2

Yes and no. Three meals a day, but bread and water, maybe a small chocolate bar if they are really good.
They shouldn't get TV's or a games room. I don't mind them having a library do go in for an hour. They should spend the majority of the day locked in a small cell.
People will think this idea is Draconian. However I ask for an open mind. Criminals forfeit their human rights the second they go against someone elses by hurting them or killing them.
Try sitting in a room a doing nothing. You'll go mad in an hour. Criminals should be forced to do that for the whole day and night, to think about the crime they have committed. That is punishment.

Answer 3

What jails are you talking about? Here in the county jail, Maricopa County, Arizona they have no "luxuries". This jail serves not only Phoenix, but other cities such as Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, and more. Currently it houses over 4,000 inmates.

As for luxuries, the MCSO (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office) does not even provide the essentials. Let's start with the first thing on your list, meals. Here they receive TWO (2) meals a day. The first one is given mid-morning and contains 6 pieces of bread, 2-3 pieces of some sort of lunch meat, and usually 1 or 2 unripen fruit (usually grapefruit or orange) and 1/2 pint of skim milk (warm). This is supposed to last you until dinner.

Dinner is served anywhere from 6-9 p.m. depending upon which facility you are in. Yummy, unidentifiable "meat, along with some sort of carbos swimming in a brown paste. Vegtables are generally minced zucchini (raw) with a shredding of lettuce they consider as a salad. Dessert is ALWAYS jello. Only problem with that............it's always melted and totally liquid. The food is always cold where it should be hot and visa versa. Sounds good, huh!

Now about T.V. Each "pod" or unit, houses about 130 inmates. There is 1 T.V. and it is only on for a few hours a day. Usually you cannot even hear it because of the amount of people in the room. Games, oh yes! Sometimes someone has a deck of cards, that's it. You left out recreation. Occassionally, maybe one a week, inmates are outdoors in a "courtyard". There is nothing to do, just stand around.

Visitation is limited to 3 days a week, no contact. Only video camera visitations. Telephone calls are to collect numbers only, and that is when you are not in a restricted pod.

Did I forget to mention that over a thousand are housed in tents outdoors, even in the summer? Should I mention the chain gangs for work detail? Sounds like a vacation to me.

Suggestion, don't think all facilities are the same. Come to Arizona, or as we here say "Come on vacation, leave on probation".

Answer 4

I'm dutch, so over here it sound more like a paid holiday then anything else. How hard I also want a person to really suffer when a crazy offence was committed, The basic things in live they should be entitled to, why you ask? Well if you take away all basic things from someone, a person tends to get even more angry at the world, and yes that is any ones problem when he gets out.Treating them like a human, might lead to get insight of what he/she had done, and taking away the chance of having an excuse for his/hers behaviour.

Taking away someones freedom, is already the worst thing in life. Even if you have all the luxury in the world... that's a fact!

When someone goes into jail, you don't want a frustrated mentally even more confused coming out now do we?
The logical way to think is that we sort of shut the door, and throw away the key, and if it concerned me or my loved ones, I would want him/her dead! We are not allowed to kill someone, so we won't. But think about it, in most cases "revenge" if you want to call it, is making it hard for someone to blame anything for it, and hope that he'll live to be 100, he/she has also to look in the mirror each day...

Answer 5

If you have ever seen the movie Murder In The First, you will see what happens when you don't treat prisoners with respect and dignity. The point of prison is to deny freedom as a punishment and to hopefully one day rehabilitate. In all but the most extreme cases, we should aim for this.
Poverty within the elderly is about lack of Government funding for pensions and is a separate issue entirely.

Answer 6

I definitily agree with thi up to a certain point. Yes I agree that they have broken the law and need punishment, but I must point out one thing- they are human. As a socialist, I believe prison being made into a living hell will only serve to harden criminals.
I must also point out that many prisoners don't get the help they need in prison in the current system. Up to half of prisoners in some prisons are mentally ill, but do not receive the help they need due to financial cuts and understaffing. Similarly, many prisoners are sharing cells originally designed for one, sharing scarce facilities. So it isn't easy to live in prison.
If prision is truly necessary, bring back such tasks as the treadmill and the crank (wherethe name 'screw' for a prison officer comes from) . The original purpose of the treadmill was to pump water for the prison machinery. Modern technology could mean that it could be used to generate electricity by turning a turbine axle, the crank also being used like this.
I think that the focus in prisons needs to focus upon finding ther cause of the offending and tackling this. This could be encouraged with supervised work outside of prison walls which would teach them the value of work and also keep them out of prison, which is simply not necessary in many cases.
As for the argument that prison life is better than that of pensioners, I must point out the stigma that a prison sentence leaves. Ex-cons find re-employment after the end of their sentence difficult, and so often are forced to go back to crime. It is far easier for pensioners to gain benefits and financial aid, and medical help is more focused on pensioners than prisoners, as I have already said above.

Answer 7

I wonder which prison you have seen the inside of?

Prisoners with serious offences to be paid for live in a world where their personal identity is taken away from them on a moment by moment basis and one where peace and quiet is replaced by the torment of constant noise.

Even if all the things you mention are granted,and they rarely are, they are not luxuries, they are a small deterrent to stop them slipping into madness.

As to prisoners with minimal offences, I cannot say knowing nothing about their prisons.

Answer 8

There is no such thing as rehabilitation or deterrant. Only keeping criminals off the street so that they can't get new victims.

What is needed is a new focus in our court system away from rehabilitation and reintegration into society (which is the current focus of the system) and toward a model of protecting society from these people.

Note that as long as people think liberals are misguided do gooders who want to help people like criminals rather than dangerous marxists who want to give criminals every opportunity to hurt people and sow chaos (hoping to bring down our democracy with that chaos), nothing will change. Like most social problems, liberals are the root cause and the solution begins with getting rid of them.

Answer 9

No, they should have to earn it if they do. For example, they should hire con's to do road work under supervision instead of paying some jackhole 20 something bucks an hour to stand around with a sign for 3 months while a road is fixed. 1 week of work equals one hour of television time.

And to add to it, for anyone defending the cons, convicted felons are in jail/prison for a reason. They broke a law they knew existed and that is why they are there. So don't give me any bull about how they have any rights, or how prison is torture. It is PRISON, it is not supposed to be a good time. You did something WRONG.

Especially in regards to TV. I know a lot of people out of prison who work the butts off and can't even afford a television.

Answer 10

All people criminal or not should be properly feed.

While some prisons are feeding too well most feed the bear min requirements, you and I would never want to only eat the small amount of bland food they get.

And in the various prisons I have toured or worked in, the majority don't have TV, ( of if they do it is one TV for 30 or more inmates to share in one TV room. And I know of no game rooms in almost all of them.

Many inmates sit all day in a cell with nothing.

Answer 11

Yes, they do, which is why some criminals break the law on purpose because they know they will have a place to live. If you've seen the Shawshank Redemption, that is a perfect example of how some people are unable to function outside of prison walls...that is, after they've been locked up for many years.