American Corrections.

Ness

SHAZAM
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Time for a good, hearty discussion. I want this thread to focus on the American correctional system, and more specifically...the problems that face it every day. For the purposes of aiding in discussion, I'll first define some terms:

The term "corrections" refers to the system by which criminals are dealt punishment after trial. I take care to use "correctional system" rather than "prison system", since prison is just one facet of correctional thought. Corrections including offenders on probation, parole, house arrest...basically under any forum of supervision/punishment as a result of committing a crime.

"Recidivism" is the act of re-committing an act that society deems unacceptable. The term can be applied to several different fields of study, but in regards to corrections, a recidivist is one who re-enters the correctional system after already having been in it before. Repeat offenders, basically.

Now, here's the problem we need to address:

Correctional systems are some of the largest single-line items in most state budgets. In Virginia, for example, the Department of Corrections alone (this does not include the Parole Board or Juvenile programs) was alloted almost $1.1 billion for the 2009 fiscal year. Billions of dollars are spent on corrections nationwide...and yet recidivism rates remain fairly high. The nation-wide re-arrest rate (within 3 years of release) hovers between 50-60 percent. [1] In Virginia (again), about 30% of adult offenders are reincarcerated (arrested, convicted, sentenced) within 3 years of their release. [2]

Given this relatively high rate of recidivism within such a short time...it's clear that the correctional system needs some new ideas injected into it. So, how can we deal with a soaring budget that doesn't really seem to solve the problem? Should focus be placed on rehabilitation of offenders? Perhaps sentencing should be reduced for a particular type of offender (non-violent drug, for example)? How about special-needs offenders?

Let me hear your thoughts. How would you fix the broken system?

[1] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism
[2] http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indic...recidivism.php
 
I don't think you can really. People will do what they want, when they want. I got friends on probation right now. After they get off their going back to what ever they were doing. I know that my buddies friend is doing exactly what he was when we was put in. Parties all night, drinking, smoking, whatever. The system is broken, and beyond repair i think. As much as society would like it to be fixed, it can't be. It's all up to the person. Always will be.
 
Well it's kind of hard to fix something that was broken before it started.
Let's face it, humans tend to do bad things.

In truth it's impossible to fully deal with criminal activity, anyone who establishes a criminal justice system with the thought that it will stop all crime is a fool. It only happens in idealistic fantasy societies.

My point is that the system isn't the problem, humans are. People are gonna repeat crimes over and over because that's how they are. No I do think even the worst criminals can change their ways, but that's not the system working, it's their choice to change.
 
How would I fix it?

1. No TV. Seriously, why are we giving inmates TV's in their cells?

2. Cheaper quality food. You know, make it highscool cafeteria quality.

3. Reinstate chain gangs. They're basically free labor, we could use them to fix roads and do other projects to cut down more on the state budget.

4. Stop giving small offenses jail time, especially for things like having weed. OH MAH GAWD some college frat boy is smoking the chronic in his dorm room, must toss him in jail! Unless someone is dealing, I don't really see a reason to throw people in jail for it, just fine them, it saves room and money.

5. Give the death penalty more often for severe crimes. It doesn't make ANY sense to give someone a life sentence. Great, now us taxpayers are going to be taking care of a felon for god knows how many years. Why should we have to pay for them to have a place to eat and sleep and watch TV and work out in weight rooms for the rest of their life? There's just something wrong with that.
 
How would I fix it?

3. Reinstate chain gangs. They're basically free labor, we could use them to fix roads and do other projects to cut down more on the state budget.

that's a good idea. hard working americans are losing their jobs and you want to make up public service projects for inmates. white collar jobs go overseas and blue collar jobs go to orange suits. good work.
 
that's a good idea. hard working americans are losing their jobs and you want to make up public service projects for inmates. white collar jobs go overseas and blue collar jobs go to orange suits. good work.

And do you realize how many illegal Mexicans are getting paid under the table for labor, then sending that money to their relatives in Mexico? Sure it's a trade off, but at least we'd be keeping our money in our own damn country.

If you don't like the idea of prisoners doing manual labor, maybe prisons should stop making them pick up trash on the side of the road too. Then a few competing companies could be set up and normal citizens could be hired to walk along the side of the road stabbing at beer cans and wads of paper.

See? I can be sarcastic too.
 
And do you realize how many illegal Mexicans are getting paid under the table for labor, then sending that money to their relatives in Mexico? Sure it's a trade off, but at least we'd be keeping our money in our own damn country.

If you don't like the idea of prisoners doing manual labor, maybe prisons should stop making them pick up trash on the side of the road too. Then a few competing companies could be set up and normal citizens could be hired to walk along the side of the road stabbing at beer cans and wads of paper.

See? I can be sarcastic too.

never challenged you to a sarcasm competition.

i'm just saying you haven't thought through your ideas. i'll say that the united states can't afford to get rid of illegal workers. in order for businesses to thrive, especially in this economy, they need to be able to exploit cheap labor. unfortunately, many americans refuse to work for such low wages. if you can manage to get rid of all the illegal immigrants in the country AND replace them with prisoners, more power to you.

as far as normal citizens picking up trash, that's not a bad idea. if normal citizens were willing to do that type of work, we wouldn't have so many unemployed people. the problem is, nobody wants to do that work. and when an illegal immigrant says he'll do it for nothing, people complain that he's stealing an american citizen's job. the bottom line is that americans want to be paid to not work. unfortunately, that's not how things go.

as for your comment about immigrants sending their money overseas to their families and us keeping our money in "our own god-damned country" that's just plain wrong. it's that line of thinking that got into this mess in the first place. people don't realize that things are quickly changing what with the development of faster communication in the past 2 and a half decades. national economies are quickly becoming a global economy. it's not about spending money in the U.S. anymore, it's about just spending money. the faster we realize that, the faster we can take advantage of it.

besides, why pay attention to a neighbor coming in and stealing a glass of water, when your dad is out back hosing your other neighbor's lawn? (LOL i just wanted to use a colorful metaphor. the neighbor is the illegal mexican immigrant, your dad is the government, the water is money and the other lawn is one of the countries that the U.S. spends tons of money on to fund their military/relief operations)

and sorry if i was being overly sarcastic in my previous post.
 
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I don't think you can really. People will do what they want, when they want. I got friends on probation right now. After they get off their going back to what ever they were doing. I know that my buddies friend is doing exactly what he was when we was put in. Parties all night, drinking, smoking, whatever. The system is broken, and beyond repair i think. As much as society would like it to be fixed, it can't be. It's all up to the person. Always will be.

In a way, I agree with you. People won't stop being recidivists until they make the decision to "break the cycle", as it were. However, the issue I'm trying to deal is not necessarily why people continue to commit crimes, but how we can reconcile the chasm between the overall failure of the correctional system and their massive budgetary weight.

Well it's kind of hard to fix something that was broken before it started.
Let's face it, humans tend to do bad things.

In truth it's impossible to fully deal with criminal activity, anyone who establishes a criminal justice system with the thought that it will stop all crime is a fool. It only happens in idealistic fantasy societies.

My point is that the system isn't the problem, humans are. People are gonna repeat crimes over and over because that's how they are. No I do think even the worst criminals can change their ways, but that's not the system working, it's their choice to change.

There's another good point there: it's naive to think that criminal activity can be completely eradicated. In fact, that's the precise reason we HAVE a correctional system, we recognize that criminals exist and must be dealt with in some form or fashion. As I said above, though, the point is to reconcile the difference between corrections' enormous budgets and their abysmal recidivist percentages.

How would I fix it?

1. No TV. Seriously, why are we giving inmates TV's in their cells?

2. Cheaper quality food. You know, make it highscool cafeteria quality.

3. Reinstate chain gangs. They're basically free labor, we could use them to fix roads and do other projects to cut down more on the state budget.

4. Stop giving small offenses jail time, especially for things like having weed. OH MAH GAWD some college frat boy is smoking the chronic in his dorm room, must toss him in jail! Unless someone is dealing, I don't really see a reason to throw people in jail for it, just fine them, it saves room and money.

5. Give the death penalty more often for severe crimes. It doesn't make ANY sense to give someone a life sentence. Great, now us taxpayers are going to be taking care of a felon for god knows how many years. Why should we have to pay for them to have a place to eat and sleep and watch TV and work out in weight rooms for the rest of their life? There's just something wrong with that.

Now this is what I'm looking for. A few of your ideas I agree with...I don't think that prison should be a pleasant place. That's kind of the point of making prison a part of correctional punitive measures...there should be a lack of creature comforts there. This applies to your points 1-2.

Point 3...they still have some programs like this. The problem is that prisons are the business are state governments, so there is a wide range of programs that various states offer. Southern states tend to still utilize work programs, to a limited extent.

Point 4, I agree with. A lot of prison's over-population problems stem from the fact that the majority of offenders are non-violent drug offenses. I would argue that minor drug offenses should be punished by something other than incarceration (i.e. community service or other intermediate sanctions).

Point 5...I don't know. I've got my own views on the death penalty, but this isn't the place to get into that. =P

However, as the current system stands, death row inmates must be given due time to run their appeals and such. Since courts (especially appeals courts) tend to have overloaded dockets, these appeals can take a looooong time. While I've got no love lost for death row inmates (assuming they're being properly incarcerated), they still deserve their right to appeal their situation, especially given that some inmates have uncovered their innocence during their appeal process.


never challenged you to a sarcasm competition.

i'm just saying you haven't thought through your ideas. i'll say that the united states can't afford to get rid of illegal workers. in order for businesses to thrive, especially in this economy, they need to be able to exploit cheap labor. unfortunately, many americans refuse to work for such low wages. if you can manage to get rid of all the illegal immigrants in the country AND replace them with prisoners, more power to you.

as far as normal citizens picking up trash, that's not a bad idea. if normal citizens were willing to do that type of work, we wouldn't have so many unemployed people. the problem is, nobody wants to do that work. and when an illegal immigrant says he'll do it for nothing, people complain that he's stealing an american citizen's job. the bottom line is that americans want to be paid to not work. unfortunately, that's not how things go.

as for your comment about immigrants sending their money overseas to their families and us keeping our money in "our own god-damned country" that's just plain wrong. it's that line of thinking that got into this mess in the first place. people don't realize that things are quickly changing what with the development of faster communication in the past 2 and a half decades. national economies are quickly becoming a global economy. it's not about spending money in the U.S. anymore, it's about just spending money. the faster we realize that, the faster we can take advantage of it.

besides, why pay attention to a neighbor coming in and stealing a glass of water, when your dad is out back hosing your other neighbor's lawn? (LOL i just wanted to use a colorful metaphor. the neighbor is the illegal mexican immigrant, your dad is the government, the water is money and the other lawn is one of the countries that the U.S. spends tons of money on to fund their military/relief operations)

and sorry if i was being overly sarcastic in my previous post.

Please keep in mind, before this continues, that we're talking about corrections...not immigration. =P
 
1. No TV. Seriously, why are we giving inmates TV's in their cells?

2. Cheaper quality food. You know, make it highscool cafeteria quality.

4. Stop giving small offenses jail time, especially for things like having weed. OH MAH GAWD some college frat boy is smoking the chronic in his dorm room, must toss him in jail! Unless someone is dealing, I don't really see a reason to throw people in jail for it, just fine them, it saves room and money.

I'm not entirely convinced that it is better than HS cafeteria quality. But anyway, at the maximum security big boy prisons, there generally aren't televisions or high quality food. Watch Supermax (I think that's the name of the show) on MSNBC sometime. It's really not pretty. But I agree with you on the small offenses part, and specifcally on marijuana "crimes," and not only for that particular reason. The last figure I heard, and this was a while ago, so I have no idea how accurate it is, was that 16 million people are incarcerated per year because of marijuana "crimes." That's insane. And they usually go to the minimum security-type jails, where you may have your TVs, etc. So that would be killing two birds with one stone.


5. Give the death penalty more often for severe crimes. It doesn't make ANY sense to give someone a life sentence. Great, now us taxpayers are going to be taking care of a felon for god knows how many years. Why should we have to pay for them to have a place to eat and sleep and watch TV and work out in weight rooms for the rest of their life? There's just something wrong with that.

I would disagree with you here, the fact that I'm against the death penalty in all forms aside. It's rarely more expensive to house a lifer. It generally costs the state $225,000 to execute an inmate because of the appeals process and everything else that goes into it. The average DR prisoner stays there for about 15 years before being executed. Housing a prisoner costs $70 a day, regardless of what security they are. So, 70x365x15=$383,250, plus $225k for the appeals/execution= $608,250 to execute the average DR inmate. Now, obviously, this varies from state to state. In California, the average wait time is closer to 20 years. In Texas, it's around 11. Longer wait times = more appeals = more money.

So we have $608,250 to play with. At $70/day, that's 8689 days, which is a shade under 24 years. Considering that the average "lifer" generally serves somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years, it's a wash.

But then, you add in the fact that death penalty trials are significantly more expensive (longer, more witnesses/expert witnesses) than non-death penalty trials, and the death penalty is much more expensive than life imprisonment. The state of Washington did a study in 2000, and it found that Florida spends $3.2 million to execute a single prisoner, fully six times more than it costs to house the same prisoner for life.

Combine those costs with the fact that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime, I don't think that is a way to help the American correctional system. If anything, doing away with capital punishment would do more to save the budgets of the states.
 
Now this is what I'm looking for. A few of your ideas I agree with...I don't think that prison should be a pleasant place. That's kind of the point of making prison a part of correctional punitive measures...there should be a lack of creature comforts there. This applies to your points 1-2.

Exactly. When prisons were nasty places, and back when dungeons were around, it was something people dreaded. But prisons now you're basically taken care of, with daily meals, a bed to sleep in, a TV, gyms to work out, etc. There's not really much of an incentive to stay out of jail.

I would disagree with you here, the fact that I'm against the death penalty in all forms aside. It's rarely more expensive to house a lifer. It generally costs the state $225,000 to execute an inmate because of the appeals process and everything else that goes into it. The average DR prisoner stays there for about 15 years before being executed. Housing a prisoner costs $70 a day, regardless of what security they are. So, 70x365x15=$383,250, plus $225k for the appeals/execution= $608,250 to execute the average DR inmate. Now, obviously, this varies from state to state. In California, the average wait time is closer to 20 years. In Texas, it's around 11. Longer wait times = more appeals = more money.

So we have $608,250 to play with. At $70/day, that's 8689 days, which is a shade under 24 years. Considering that the average "lifer" generally serves somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years, it's a wash.

But then, you add in the fact that death penalty trials are significantly more expensive (longer, more witnesses/expert witnesses) than non-death penalty trials, and the death penalty is much more expensive than life imprisonment. The state of Washington did a study in 2000, and it found that Florida spends $3.2 million to execute a single prisoner, fully six times more than it costs to house the same prisoner for life.

Wow. What a mouthful.

So basically, it's several hundred grand less to just take care of them. Or we could do things oldschool and just have public hangings. Make a grand spectacle of it, then people would actually witness the consequences of severe crimes and be much less likely to commit them.

Combine those costs with the fact that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime, I don't think that is a way to help the American correctional system. If anything, doing away with capital punishment would do more to save the budgets of the states.
How is it NOT a deterrent? Here, let me pose two scenarios. Lets say you commit a severe crime, murder or whatever, and you're faced with two possible outcomes:

1. Get tossed in jail with a life sentence. You're going to be taken care of at the expense of taxpayers.

2. You die.

Now tell me, which outcome do you think is going to be less desirable? And don't forget, if someone has a long sentence (not a lifer, just a few decades or w/e) they can't really function outside. It's impossible to get a job because nobody is going to trust them, and they essentially have to start their life over from scratch, thus why many people will intentionally commit more crimes just to be put back in jail.
 
Rockman X:528933 said:
So basically, it's several hundred grand less to just take care of them.
And several million less to prosecute them. On average around $2.6 million less per trial.

How is it NOT a deterrent? Here, let me pose two scenarios. Lets say you commit a severe crime, murder or whatever, and you're faced with two possible outcomes:

1. Get tossed in jail with a life sentence. You're going to be taken care of at the expense of taxpayers.

2. You die.

Now tell me, which outcome do you think is going to be less desirable?

It's not a deterrent because it's not acting as a deterrent. Have people stopped commiting crimes that would earn them the death sentence? Have the numbers decreased significantly? No. In fact, they've increased. In 1990, the US executed 23 people. In 1999, the US executed 98 people. The number has dropped in recent years as several states have gotten rid of the death penalty, but there were still 50 or more executions in half of the calendar years this decade. Nothing is being deterred.

You and I can make that rational distinction as we sit in front of our computer screens. Criminals who end up on death row generally are there because they committed an irrational act. They aren't thinking about the punishment, regardless of what it is.

And don't forget, if someone has a long sentence (not a lifer, just a few decades or w/e) they can't really function outside. It's impossible to get a job because nobody is going to trust them, and they essentially have to start their life over from scratch, thus why many people will intentionally commit more crimes just to be put back in jail.
I agree that that's a problem, but I don't think just killing them is the solution. The prison mentality can set in within a few years of imprisonment. One doesn't have to spend 25 years in the joint to become institutionalized. And in some cases, the prisoner *can* survive on the outside, despite the length of their sentence. Unfortunately, that distinciton can't be made before they're released. So if someone commits a crime, serves a 3-year sentence, becomes institutionalized and re-offends on a similar crime, do you execute them? The punishment wouldn't fit the crime.
 
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