Should Prison Really Be Like It Is?

Question

As an ex con, I can speak from experience. Prison is far to soft and so therefore not a deterent. Cells have Curtains, Carpets, TV with Sky, Playstation, Kettle. Access to Microwave & Grill during assocciation time. Prisoners can wear their own clothing. Can spend £30 per week on shopping. I say prison should be a room, with a bed, a table and chair, and thats your lot. No TV, No Radio, No Shopping, Nothing but 23 hours a day bang up. 1 hours excersize, so long as the weather is good. The food should be basic, all priviedges withdrawn and lets get it back to basics. If its made a long horrible drawn out affair, then it becomes a deterent, a place people don't want to go to. Our Prison system needs a total overall, as they are all rife with drugs, bent officers & large amounts of violence that gets brushed under the carpet, so as not to affect that prisons statistics for the end of year report. What do you think our prisons should be like?

Answer 1

Let me ask you a question prior to my answer. If I took an angry man and caged him and treated him like a dog, what do you think he would be like when I let him out?
I think some changes could be made overall, but Even a criminal needs to be treated with some level of compassion if you want a better person to come out.

Answer 2

Hi, yes i do feel that our prisons are a little relaxed, but im not excusing the matter so dont anyone go off, but come the end of the day the person in prison they are serving their punishment by being there in the first place. Many people regret going to prison once they have been becasue of the lack of freedom and being away from family. I think that depening on they type and catogory prison then privilages such as t.v's etc should be goven depending on the type they are in, i.e if some one was in prison for 3 months for theft and they are i an open prison class C then they should be aloud, but for some one in a closed prison and class A for peodifillia then this should be thought about very carefully, being in prison the prisoner should have to EARN their privalages.

This is just my view, everyone has their own. so dont anyone have a go at me pls.

What is everyone elses view, do you agree/disagree??

Answer 3

Sounds like a reasonable description of part of UK prison life - but you forgot to mention sharing a fell with a nasty piece of work who wants to batter you because you are different to him/her in some way or wants you to commit a sexual act.

If prisons were like you suggest how would they be controlled. At the moment 180 prisoners can be out on exercise with 3 unarmed Officers and there are rarely problems. That is because everyone is treated fairly but firmly.

If the prisoners were subjected to the regime that you are suggesting it would be difficult to keep them fit and well and under control.

Also remember that Prison is not for punishment - people go to Prison as punishment and for rehabilitation.

All violence to a prisoner is reported to the Home Office - on a form which has to be signed by the Doctor. That just can't be covered up.

Surely you missed your family and/or partner. You may have enjoyed the benefits you had but you were not at home.

Answer 4

No, life is not "too soft" within the prison walls.
To anyone who says differently, I'd like to know What prison have you been visiting? I'd like to arrange for a cherished friend to be transferred there! The top notch medical/dental care I'm always hearing about would be nice!He had a small cavity in one tooth and the answer was to pull the tooth, he needs to see a doctor to renew a prescription for a chronic condition (no, it's not a drug with any recreational potential, it's Prilosec) but can't see the doc because he is not bleeding, and when he does get that script renewed, he'll be paying for it or rather either his mom or I will be doing so. The situation has gotten so bad with prison health care that a federal judge recently ordered the whole department into recievership.
He shares a 6 x 12 cell with one other man, and counts himself lucky that there are not 3 in that cell due to the amazingly overcrowded state of the facility, he gets to leave that cell about 4 hours a day, including shower, chow, dayroom and yard time... and THAT is when the facility is not on lockdown due to drastic understaffing, courtesy of a hiring freeze imposed by the Governor...on lockdown, it really is in the cell, 24/7, food passed through the door, etc the only thing that keeps going is the mail (and by the way, I send him paper,envelopes and postage, unless it is a letter to one's attorney of record AND there is no money on one's books, the prison does not pay for letters)....the educational programs, IF an inmate qualifies AND if there is a slot available in the class.....and surely you see the need to try to educate these people to improve the chances of their becoming productive citizens upon release?
The showers are hot and reasonably clean, but inmates buy their own soap, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.
Not only must inmates wear State issued clothing, but those prison blues are most often laundered in the cell, because they only issue 2 sets and only do laundry call twice a month... unless the facility is on lockdown, then there is no laundry call.
With winter having set in in the Sierra foothills, the temperature on the yard is below freezing and no cold weather gear has been released to the inmates... I hope someone files suit when they get frostbite while waiting outdoors to get into the chow hall.
The food is a joke, and is barely legal in quantity and quality... most inmates get VERY creative with the top ramen that is available at the commisary..."Undercooked veggies" would be a wonderful step in the right direction!
What Gym/weight room are you talking about? My friend does an aerobic routine in his cell each morning and spends about half his time in the yard running his usual 3 to 5 miles, but there's no equipment available...I'm not complaining about that, but I'd like to know where you get your information.

As to other recreational activities,No video games, ... Television in the day room where what to watch is decided by vote, and it's not cable or satellite, though many facilities do have an "in house" channel for educational programs and occassional movies (PG or cleaner)...any TVs or radios in the cells were not provided by the state, either the inmate or someone like me purchased them and like quarterly packages and phone calls (collect and incredibly costly) they are a privilige that is EARNED... Surely you can see the value of rewarding good behavior?


I could go on and on, but I really want to know what prison all these stereotypes of fun and games are based on, because it sure as hell is not in California!

Answer 5

Not all prisons are Martha Stewart prisons. White collar criminals get much better conditions.

The overall institution of incarceration needs to be reformed in the United States. Majority of the percentage of inmates are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or are serial criminals who spend their lives in and out of correctional institutions for petty crimes. For those, rehabilitate them while they are removed from the mainstream population so the recidivism rate decreases. I seriously doubt a life of crime is the aspiration of most inmates.

The incarcerated population, in the U.S. at least, has skyrocketed the past 20 years. Look into the incarcerated population and the rise in youth correctional facilities. Why is that? Is is because law enforcement is doing a great job at catching those who break the law?

Sure there are those who committ horifying crimes and should be permamntly removed from society because they cannot be rehabiltated under any circumstance.

Answer 6

You're an Ex-Con? Who are you kidding?

And don't even compare UK prison to US prison.

US Prison is a total waste of human life, and the taxpayers' money. Yeah, there are some people who don't deserve to live, but there are way too many others who have no business in prison. Americans totally fall for the legislators who promise, if elected, to "get tough on crime." That's fine, until it's their daughter who gets busted because she let her boyfriend use her cell phone for a deal, or their son who was with his rocket scientist friends at a party that got crazy. Then they start screaming, but once the doors shut, it's too late.

That's when "regular, good" people find out what the US justice system is really like. When they get their kid home in a box because he was gang-raped and died because there's only one doctor for 2000 men, it's too freakin' late to realize that just maybe they lie on the 6 o'clock news.

It's all politics, it's all corrupt as H---, and it's costing the taxpayers about $40,000. a year per inmate. Is that worth it? Elderly inmates cost three times that (per Federal CURE stats) because of their medical care. In US prisons, there's no curtains, carpets, personal TVs, and all that other crap you listed. My 65 year old husband sleeps on a mat that most people wouldn't give to their dog. American tax payers have supported his incarceration for 26 years. He had no murder convictions, never kicked the dog, never touched a child. But he was different, and a biker back in the 70's when that was scary, so he got 41 years for less than 4 ounces of coke.

In US prisons, they have little chance at rehab because most worthwhile programs have been discontinued. They lose their jobs, their wives, their homes, their families, and then get out and guess what? No one will hire them because of their record, no one will rent to them, no one will finance a car for them, so what do they do? Hey, they go back and live on your tax money!!!

Figure it out---sending half the population to prison is not the way to handle this. How many more people do you want to support? Canada already has a program offering controlled release for elderly prisoners. The U.S. needs to come up with something similar.

Answer 7

Sadly prison is the best life some of it's inmates have ever had and they'll be glad to get back in. this means we need to change how things work in our country, at the expense of money going overseas (instead of the opposite way it is now). It also means that those too dangerous to be paroled or risk an escape need to be kept in an unescapable prison colony like in all the sci-fi movies. Or simply execute convicted killers if there is no question of guilt. And by this I mean being a co-conspirator who only holds the victim while the other executes him, isn't "innocent" in the sense many of those executed for murder now claimed to be innocent because they were accessories, not the principal attacker. It doesn't need to be public, in fact I think it's catering to vengeance when they allow friends or relatives of murder victims watch a killer be put to death, it's not about punishment or vengeance, it's about protecting the rest of society from these killers. Let them exercise regardless of weather, let them read or do somekind of menial tasks and if they are getting out, teach them something useful in the way of a job so they don't have to go back to a life of crime to survive.

Answer 8

I agree with you, the way you describe it. it sounds like a haven rather than hell. A prison should be what it says on the tin, cold bare cell with iron gates. Bad eggs get released only to eat and shower. No priviledges at all as that defeats the purpose of punishment all together. That is what is wrong with the justice system, people no longer fear being sent to prison therefore are undetered to commit the crime as prison life now seems so easy. That is why crime figures keep rising and they will continue to do so until the government gets a grip and does something about it.

Answer 9

I concurr with you. Prison shouldn't be a 1 star hotel. A certain prison in Texas has no floor or walls. It's in the middle of the desert. They do hard labor. The real problem with prison is that it does not offer opportunities for learning productive skills like auto repair. Most people I think are in prison because they lacked other legal opportunies. Others maybe were just lazy looking for a quick buck.

Answer 10

Which prison would you have been to, again? Prisoners wearing thier own clothing? Even the jails in Utah don't allow that. If I were you, I would check out some Los Angeles - routing prisons real quick. Enough said.

Personally, I believe that prisons need to be made safer, so that drugs are kept out and those in there, who are not sentenced to death, are not killed.

Answer 11

it all depends on how you behave in prison if you are good and become a model prisoner then you get perks but if you fight the system and assault inmates and screws then your time can be very hard and lonely also these hard prison ways have used in the past more in the seventies look at Jimmy Boyle and Johnny Steele (one of the most punished men in the British penal system) they refused to give in and fought the system and the screws at all times as well as attacking guvnors all in all leading to riots look at strange-ways riot if you treat people like animals then they become animals maybe longer sentences would help at least in prison they cant hurt joe public.