That seems like a bit much, but I’d be for it if it truly works. I believe they should be treated fairly well. Better than how they are treated now for sure. Our whole system needs changing.
“There are no life sentences in Norway. The longest sentence a person can receive is 21 years, although that can be extended by five year increments indefinitely if authorities decide that the prisoner has not been rehabilitated.”
With no life sentences you have to totally focus on rehabilitation.
“Norway spends about $90,000 a year to house each prisoner. That’s three times as much as the U.S. spends. But its recidivism rates are among the lowest in the world at about 30 percent — half that of the U.S.”
With that said, I like the way Norway treats their prisoners. There are statistics to prove their system works, and ours doesn’t.
Having witnessed a death by lethal injection in February of 1996, when it was brand new in the state of California, I saw it was so peaceful a death that I would prefer lethal injection over a hangman’s noose.
“Treating criminals not with a view to punishment, but only with a view to remediation and deterrence is the end of justice and the seedbed of tyranny. It is dehumanization with a gentle face.” – John Piper
“It is essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case.’” – C.S. Lewis
Let’s remember that we are talking about just one aspect of the rehabilitation structure in a country very foreign to us.
And that there is huge bias and agenda in the original offering (“Cracked” as a credible social tool??
Effective jurisprudence needs to be a healthy mix of deterrent (which includes aspects of punishment) and rehabilitation. Currently it is lacking in both; and leaning more towards punishment-retribution: vengeance, but bizarrely mixed with the social rights . . . of the offender?!!
Those wanting to rehabilitate should be given every reasonable chance possible. Perhaps including moving the more promising of them into facilities like that one picture from Norway.
But those with little remorse, with little desire to rehabilitate and with high recidivism rates do function very much like a cancer within our society. There needs to be a sharper cutting-edge between what is amicable for them and what is fair and just for the society.
Many have had tragic pasts, mental illnesses, stresses and trials without turning to crime against the society. Should they be punished and the whole society forced to care for a toxic element, just so we can feel “fluffy” about ourselves?
Consider this: a full set of “rights” from the society should only be expected when a certain degree of “responsibility” to the society is lived up to.
Failure in this responsibility to the society in criminal endeavor, should result in a time of “disqualification” from the rights the society grants.
This is just effective parenting; but for those who perhaps did not get it in their formative years.
All citizens automatically get full rights; but can have them restricted through actions freely taken against the greater society granting the rights.
But the greater society would also have to learn to curb its zeal for punishment retribution and vengeance. We would have to learn to simply let Justice be Justice; and not try to turn it into our entertainment and emotional play thing.
In my work as a paralegal, I got to interview many inmates. I got to type up reports on how they were doing in the rehabilitation program. I was kept up to date on how they were doing once they were released, the crimes they got back into, and their re-arrest. It seems that the rehabilitation program was just the means of getting back out and getting back into a life of drugs and crime. I cannot think of one case that did not end in re-arrest. If any did not get rearrested, I have not known any of them. —- Why? Because they learned not to break the law.
I am sure that there are inmates that make it to freedom and never do wrong again
In my paralegal work on San Quentin State Prison’s Death Row, the inmates plot a new story to get a new trial in hope to be released from the death sentence. Nothing has been done to stop their thoughts of killing. They are simply housed to wait to be put to death.
If they did get a new trial and released, the killing will still go on. The killing instinct is still untreated.
I tend to agree with Immortal Pirate. He has spent many years working in the prison as a Correctional Officer. He has talked with countless inmates. He watched them come and go — and some return. There is no rehabilitation that will keep them from making the same bad choices that got them imprisoned in the first place. They learn new tricks while they are in prison and trading information and techniques with other inmates.
Give the inmate a nice bed and a modern wooden chair and he will use the bed springs and wood splinters from the broken chair to make a shank to attack the other inmates and Correctional Officers. It is a zoo on the other side of those locked doors.
maybe once a year we wipe out everyone on death row.
no more trials, no more appeals, no more inmates.
maybe that would be a deterrent, knowing if you got to death row, the most you would serve is a year, unless of course you were sentenced right before ‘Hanging Day’? then I agree with @immortal_pirate – hang em, bag em, tag em, bury em.
That might work. I was working on a case of a man on Death Row (Douglas Danial Clark aka Sunset Slayer or Sunset Killer) who has been on Death Row for 36 years and he is still awaiting either a new trial, or death. In his case, the complicating factor is that the real murderer was Carol Bundy. She even confessed to the murders and told everyone — even at her interrogation — “Killing is fun!” The murder weapons in the Sunset Murders belonged to Carol Bundy and the list of facts point only to Carol Bundy. But, Douglas Clark is on Death Row because Carol fingered him and she was the ONLY witness testifying against him in his trial. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, no other facts pointing to Doug Clark. Even his vehicle, a motorcycle, was testing negative for blood traces. The sperm found in the throats of the victims belonged to Carol Bundy’s boyfriend Jack Murrey. All the blood evidence was found in Jack Murrey’s white van. Carol bragged that she was copycatting the Ted Bundy Murders because he is her hero. Yet, there Doug sits awaiting death for murders there is proof he did not commit.
“He who defends himself in court, has an idiot for a client”
From Wikipedia:
Clark was immediately arrested and the guns were found hidden at his work. Bundy was charged with two murders: Murray and the unknown victim whose killing she confessed to having been present at. Clark was charged with six murders. At his trial, he acted as his own defense and tried to blame Bundy for everything, portraying himself as an innocent dupe. The jury did not believe him; he was sentenced to death in 1983. He still sits on California’s death row. Bundy on the other hand, made a plea bargain and, in return for her testimony, only received a life sentence.[6] Bundy died on December 9, 2003 in prison at 61 from heart failure.
I remember the part of his trial where the judge told Clark that he was not allowed to defend himself and if he continued to shout and argue, he would be taken from the court and placed in a holding cell. This infuriated Clark!!! He was taken from the court and placed in a cell that must have been just on the other side of the Judge’s bench. Within that cell, Clark began to kick the wall. It made such a loud banging that the Judge shook his head and the courtroom broke out in laughter. Clark’s Public Defender Attorney was asleep in a seat in the back of the room, just across the isle from where I sat. He smelled like booze and looked like he had spent the night in a dumpster. Then, the trial went on without Clark and while the Defense Attorney slept in the back of the courtroom. This is when I first saw Clark — or anything in his case. I had entered the courtroom by accident. The trial I was there for was being held in the next courtroom. It was the William George Bonin (Freeway Killer) trial. At one point in that trial, Bill Bonin described his murders in a court confession. I got sick to my stomach, ran out of the courtroom to vomit in the Ladies room. Then I got lost when returning and entered Clark’s trial courtroom by mistake. I sat down in the back to figure out what I did wrong. I stayed to watch the railroading Clark got. Then I had to return to Bonin’s trial because I was there to sit with his mother (Alice Bonin Benton) and hold her hand through her son’s trial. I came to meet Douglas Clark after both men were on Death Row. I worked in an Electronics firm in those days and did not get into Legal classes and Paralegal work until after William Bonin was executed and I had scattered his ashes at sea, 5 miles out from the Golden Gate Bridge.
I got out of the case in 2011, because it was going nowhere and besides that, even if Clark could be innocent, he has become very angry and argumentative. His thoughts and attitude are dark. He is old and sick. Now he is blind in one eye. Speaking to him is always upsetting to me. Then I fell in love with a Correctional Officer in Arizona and there was a large conflict there. So, I got rid of my files and dropped my work on the case.
I think criminals should be treated as humans. I don’t think they should receive luxurious lifestyles, but I think being allowed time with family, time connecting healthily with others, time receiving occupational training for when they get out, and educational opportunities can be critical to returning to society as productive forces for good. I think solitary confinement is extremely harmful, and I think actively seeking to hurt people who’ve done wrong (or wound up on the wrong side of laws that are wrong) is better at motivating them to do the same to everyone else than it is at getting them to behave better. Humanization, therapy, education, chances at meaningful and legal employment, and community engagement are how to reform behavior. Connecting prisoners to their community makes the community accept them better and makes prisoners less likely to harm their community. Harming prisoners on behalf of the community makes prisoners resent the community.
@Lucifer Rising look at any dictionary… that would be proven patently false. The moment you said “By definition” you lost that argument because definitions are defined by (gasp) the dictionary!
@Lucifer Rising waitwhat? atheism loves evil and not good? I attribute kindness to humans and cruelty to circumstance controlled by god. Good is the act of humankind.
“Again, atheism says fuck you to good responses to criminality… and blessed be to bad responses to bad.”
Bullshit. Howso? Just because I hate 12 step programs doesn’t mean I think sobriety is evil.
Hello @jear77. This might not be a fair comparison. I wonder what kind of cultural issues they had to overcome in order to achieve this kind of success. If they had to get over something like the enslavement of a people, I wonder how they did it and how long it took. We in America are still a long way from reconciling this issue and it is directly related to many of our criminal justice problems. I also wonder if their prisons and privately operated for profit as this is another significant factor. That said, this issue is way to complex to resolve with a comfy chair and nice pillows. I do think prisoners should be treated with respect and kept in a safe, clean environment. Let’s start there. Then we can decide what we want prison to be. Payback or rehabilitation.
18 responses to “How should criminals be treated?”
That seems like a bit much, but I’d be for it if it truly works. I believe they should be treated fairly well. Better than how they are treated now for sure. Our whole system needs changing.
“There are no life sentences in Norway. The longest sentence a person can receive is 21 years, although that can be extended by five year increments indefinitely if authorities decide that the prisoner has not been rehabilitated.”
With no life sentences you have to totally focus on rehabilitation.
“Norway spends about $90,000 a year to house each prisoner. That’s three times as much as the U.S. spends. But its recidivism rates are among the lowest in the world at about 30 percent — half that of the U.S.”
With that said, I like the way Norway treats their prisoners. There are statistics to prove their system works, and ours doesn’t.
https://thinkprogress.org/the-u-s-has-a-lot-to-learn-from-norways-prisons-681fd194b6e1
Some inmates are beyond redemption and should be removed from society permanently.
Having witnessed a death by lethal injection in February of 1996, when it was brand new in the state of California, I saw it was so peaceful a death that I would prefer lethal injection over a hangman’s noose.
“Treating criminals not with a view to punishment, but only with a view to remediation and deterrence is the end of justice and the seedbed of tyranny. It is dehumanization with a gentle face.” – John Piper
“It is essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case.’” – C.S. Lewis
Let’s remember that we are talking about just one aspect of the rehabilitation structure in a country very foreign to us.
And that there is huge bias and agenda in the original offering (“Cracked” as a credible social tool??
Effective jurisprudence needs to be a healthy mix of deterrent (which includes aspects of punishment) and rehabilitation. Currently it is lacking in both; and leaning more towards punishment-retribution: vengeance, but bizarrely mixed with the social rights . . . of the offender?!!
Those wanting to rehabilitate should be given every reasonable chance possible. Perhaps including moving the more promising of them into facilities like that one picture from Norway.
But those with little remorse, with little desire to rehabilitate and with high recidivism rates do function very much like a cancer within our society. There needs to be a sharper cutting-edge between what is amicable for them and what is fair and just for the society.
Many have had tragic pasts, mental illnesses, stresses and trials without turning to crime against the society. Should they be punished and the whole society forced to care for a toxic element, just so we can feel “fluffy” about ourselves?
Consider this: a full set of “rights” from the society should only be expected when a certain degree of “responsibility” to the society is lived up to.
Failure in this responsibility to the society in criminal endeavor, should result in a time of “disqualification” from the rights the society grants.
This is just effective parenting; but for those who perhaps did not get it in their formative years.
All citizens automatically get full rights; but can have them restricted through actions freely taken against the greater society granting the rights.
But the greater society would also have to learn to curb its zeal for punishment retribution and vengeance. We would have to learn to simply let Justice be Justice; and not try to turn it into our entertainment and emotional play thing.
In my work as a paralegal, I got to interview many inmates. I got to type up reports on how they were doing in the rehabilitation program. I was kept up to date on how they were doing once they were released, the crimes they got back into, and their re-arrest. It seems that the rehabilitation program was just the means of getting back out and getting back into a life of drugs and crime. I cannot think of one case that did not end in re-arrest. If any did not get rearrested, I have not known any of them. —- Why? Because they learned not to break the law.
I am sure that there are inmates that make it to freedom and never do wrong again
In my paralegal work on San Quentin State Prison’s Death Row, the inmates plot a new story to get a new trial in hope to be released from the death sentence. Nothing has been done to stop their thoughts of killing. They are simply housed to wait to be put to death.
If they did get a new trial and released, the killing will still go on. The killing instinct is still untreated.
I tend to agree with Immortal Pirate. He has spent many years working in the prison as a Correctional Officer. He has talked with countless inmates. He watched them come and go — and some return. There is no rehabilitation that will keep them from making the same bad choices that got them imprisoned in the first place. They learn new tricks while they are in prison and trading information and techniques with other inmates.
Give the inmate a nice bed and a modern wooden chair and he will use the bed springs and wood splinters from the broken chair to make a shank to attack the other inmates and Correctional Officers. It is a zoo on the other side of those locked doors.
maybe once a year we wipe out everyone on death row.
no more trials, no more appeals, no more inmates.
maybe that would be a deterrent, knowing if you got to death row, the most you would serve is a year, unless of course you were sentenced right before ‘Hanging Day’? then I agree with @immortal_pirate – hang em, bag em, tag em, bury em.
That might work. I was working on a case of a man on Death Row (Douglas Danial Clark aka Sunset Slayer or Sunset Killer) who has been on Death Row for 36 years and he is still awaiting either a new trial, or death. In his case, the complicating factor is that the real murderer was Carol Bundy. She even confessed to the murders and told everyone — even at her interrogation — “Killing is fun!” The murder weapons in the Sunset Murders belonged to Carol Bundy and the list of facts point only to Carol Bundy. But, Douglas Clark is on Death Row because Carol fingered him and she was the ONLY witness testifying against him in his trial. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, no other facts pointing to Doug Clark. Even his vehicle, a motorcycle, was testing negative for blood traces. The sperm found in the throats of the victims belonged to Carol Bundy’s boyfriend Jack Murrey. All the blood evidence was found in Jack Murrey’s white van. Carol bragged that she was copycatting the Ted Bundy Murders because he is her hero. Yet, there Doug sits awaiting death for murders there is proof he did not commit.
“He who defends himself in court, has an idiot for a client”
From Wikipedia:
Clark was immediately arrested and the guns were found hidden at his work. Bundy was charged with two murders: Murray and the unknown victim whose killing she confessed to having been present at. Clark was charged with six murders. At his trial, he acted as his own defense and tried to blame Bundy for everything, portraying himself as an innocent dupe. The jury did not believe him; he was sentenced to death in 1983. He still sits on California’s death row. Bundy on the other hand, made a plea bargain and, in return for her testimony, only received a life sentence.[6] Bundy died on December 9, 2003 in prison at 61 from heart failure.
I remember the part of his trial where the judge told Clark that he was not allowed to defend himself and if he continued to shout and argue, he would be taken from the court and placed in a holding cell. This infuriated Clark!!! He was taken from the court and placed in a cell that must have been just on the other side of the Judge’s bench. Within that cell, Clark began to kick the wall. It made such a loud banging that the Judge shook his head and the courtroom broke out in laughter. Clark’s Public Defender Attorney was asleep in a seat in the back of the room, just across the isle from where I sat. He smelled like booze and looked like he had spent the night in a dumpster. Then, the trial went on without Clark and while the Defense Attorney slept in the back of the courtroom. This is when I first saw Clark — or anything in his case. I had entered the courtroom by accident. The trial I was there for was being held in the next courtroom. It was the William George Bonin (Freeway Killer) trial. At one point in that trial, Bill Bonin described his murders in a court confession. I got sick to my stomach, ran out of the courtroom to vomit in the Ladies room. Then I got lost when returning and entered Clark’s trial courtroom by mistake. I sat down in the back to figure out what I did wrong. I stayed to watch the railroading Clark got. Then I had to return to Bonin’s trial because I was there to sit with his mother (Alice Bonin Benton) and hold her hand through her son’s trial. I came to meet Douglas Clark after both men were on Death Row. I worked in an Electronics firm in those days and did not get into Legal classes and Paralegal work until after William Bonin was executed and I had scattered his ashes at sea, 5 miles out from the Golden Gate Bridge.
I got out of the case in 2011, because it was going nowhere and besides that, even if Clark could be innocent, he has become very angry and argumentative. His thoughts and attitude are dark. He is old and sick. Now he is blind in one eye. Speaking to him is always upsetting to me. Then I fell in love with a Correctional Officer in Arizona and there was a large conflict there. So, I got rid of my files and dropped my work on the case.
I think criminals should be treated as humans. I don’t think they should receive luxurious lifestyles, but I think being allowed time with family, time connecting healthily with others, time receiving occupational training for when they get out, and educational opportunities can be critical to returning to society as productive forces for good. I think solitary confinement is extremely harmful, and I think actively seeking to hurt people who’ve done wrong (or wound up on the wrong side of laws that are wrong) is better at motivating them to do the same to everyone else than it is at getting them to behave better. Humanization, therapy, education, chances at meaningful and legal employment, and community engagement are how to reform behavior. Connecting prisoners to their community makes the community accept them better and makes prisoners less likely to harm their community. Harming prisoners on behalf of the community makes prisoners resent the community.
Norway is not the US, but the US justice system is bad…
Does not prove your atheism, in fact, the reverse. Atheism says fuck you to good.
Again, atheism says fuck you to good responses to criminality… and blessed be to bad responses to bad.
So, by definition, you love a corrupt and wicked justice system.
@Lucifer Rising look at any dictionary… that would be proven patently false. The moment you said “By definition” you lost that argument because definitions are defined by (gasp) the dictionary!
@Lucifer Rising waitwhat? atheism loves evil and not good? I attribute kindness to humans and cruelty to circumstance controlled by god. Good is the act of humankind.
“Again, atheism says fuck you to good responses to criminality… and blessed be to bad responses to bad.”
Bullshit. Howso? Just because I hate 12 step programs doesn’t mean I think sobriety is evil.
Hello @jear77. This might not be a fair comparison. I wonder what kind of cultural issues they had to overcome in order to achieve this kind of success. If they had to get over something like the enslavement of a people, I wonder how they did it and how long it took. We in America are still a long way from reconciling this issue and it is directly related to many of our criminal justice problems. I also wonder if their prisons and privately operated for profit as this is another significant factor. That said, this issue is way to complex to resolve with a comfy chair and nice pillows. I do think prisoners should be treated with respect and kept in a safe, clean environment. Let’s start there. Then we can decide what we want prison to be. Payback or rehabilitation.