Address the root causes of crime or build more prisons?

Question

This is a fundamental issue that separates the left and the right. The left would like to place more focus on rehabilitation and early intervention. The right would like to place more focus on punishment. What do you think?

Answer 1

Im not sure but people really need to be held accountable for their actions. The more people try to interfere in others lives ie:early intervention, the more society becomes dependent on government for everything. Unfortunately, there are some people in the world that are going to do bad things, and all of the intervention and rehabilitation in the world will not help. It will just cost us tax payer lots of money!

Answer 2

I am a believer in early intervention. Put your money up front and save in the long run.
I read about a city in California in the 70's that did just that.
Starting with the family before the child was in school.
They decided to fully support early intervention and their study showed a marked reduction in crime, related court time, and incarceration. The social welfare system also had a reduction in cases handled.
The article was in a newspaper some time ago and unfortunately I didn't cut it out or now remember the name of the city. Not much hard proof that I can show, but at that time it apparently worked.
There is probably some question about how it would work today with the increase in drug and youth crime compared to that time.
However, I am still a believer that it could work.

Answer 3

You need to balance out the two

The simple truth is you need tougher punishments and more rehabilitation and prevention programs.

Our prison system is even more a disaster than our foriegn policy, since its anything but rehabilitative. Yet its been allow to continue for decades.

Its merely a survival kingdom where only the strongest can survive -- truly barbaric.
And since not enough politicians have the stomach to hand out the death penalty, what you have created is a scenario that criminals are forced to adapt to, where the strong only prey on the weak, and no one really ever gets rehabilitated.

If you get through your sentence, thats enough.
But prison, in its current from hardly addresses any rehabilitation on a massive scale.

YOU NEED to stop this no death penalty B.S.
a person kills more than one person intentionally, BAM -- death.
A person kidnaps and/or molest little kids.
repeat offenders BAM -- no one would want to live next to him -- rightfully so.

Repeat killers -- bam death penalty.
Brutal murders -- BAM -- death penalty.
Along with the rest of the most heinous crimes.

What are we saving them in cages for anyways?

Only with a hope for escape or having them adjust and prey upon the weak is what someone given a life sentence will do in a cage.

Answer 4

I think that we should focus more on preventing the harmful environment which then leads to crime. Punishment does nothing for society. Its just a way to sweep the proplem under the rug when it really needs to be addressed. The prison system also costs A LOT more money than it would to change the problem before it happens.

Answer 5

More prisons, but start making them places that criminals would not want to go. One 3' x 3' cell per prisoner with a mattress and a bucket. No outside contact. No contact with other prisoners. No visitors. No recreation time. No TV's. No weight rooms. Food is slid under the door. They drag you out once a day and hose you down, then it's back into your cell.

I think if we made prisons more like prisons and less like summer camp for psychopaths, crime would drop significantly.

Answer 6

Both will not work. One would give the government the excuse to tax us more and give out less in return while paying lip service about addressing crime when actually doing little or nothing about it and the other merely becomes a breeding and training ground for people to become worse.

So the real question is; Is there a 3rd alternative?

Answer 7

Hmm...I would choose both, but to choose one, I would say build more prisons. Crimes are going to happen regardless of what "early intervention" happens. Laws are made to be broken, and when they are I think we should actually PUNISH them rather than send the criminals back into the world after serving 1/4 of their sentence because the jails are overcrowded. Jails are made to be a deterrent, after all.

Answer 8

the underlying psychology of most criminals is so powerful that no ordinary rehab and intervention will have any effect.

which is why recidivism is so high.

it isn't that criminals don't understand the laws, or the likely consequences, it is that the thrills and challenges, the dares and in-your-faceness, are far too important to them.


Only some experience as powerful as prison or military training can possibly bring about the profound shift in underlying psychology necessary to achieve what the left thinks it wants.

Answer 9

Focus on the former and make sure you have enough prison space until we as a society can make crime a thing of the past.

Answer 10

Your question is slanted, and right this is why: the 2nd state of affairs mentions "Christian values". Why does it must be "christian values"? on the grounds that while is "do no longer scouse borrow" completely christian? the ingredient is this one hits right away on the guy, via coaching and making optimistic human beings do no longer scouse borrow. Your question is designed so the 2nd selection seems the main useful, while rather existence is a ways greater complicated than that. maximum thieves ARE taught on the grounds that formative years to no longer scouse borrow, they are taught values, yet in a detrimental financial concern and poverty crime seems to thrive, the two because of the fact they have faith that a cost-pushed existence finally ends up in no longer something or out of financial necessity, as is the case in lots of situations. the real answer is a mix of the two helping the economic equipment of poverty-afflicted cities and neighborhoods AND coaching human beings so they do no longer attempt to scouse borrow or dedicate crimes.