Prison - Rehabilitation and Capital Punishment

To clarify, this thread is about two different aspects of prison, rehabilitation and capital punishment. Not the two of them together. So, please don't talk about how people should be killed if they can't be rehabilitated. That's not what I'm asking.

Rehabilitation:
Do you think prisons should try to rehabilitate prisoners? How far do you think they should go? Should we consider prison a place to try to rehabilitate criminals, or should it just be a place where we send criminals, to keep them away from law-abiding citizens?

Capital Punishment:
A very specific thing concerning capital punishment, so pay close attention. Why does capital punishment exist? Is it meant to scare people and keep them from committing crimes? Or is it to wipe out criminals and ensure that they won't commit any more crimes? If it is a scare tactic, is it working? If it isn't working, should capital punishment be done away with?

That really doesn't answer any of my questions, but thanks for the input?

Saying this in case people don't understand it - rehabilitation can be more than just getting someone off drugs. To rehabilitate a criminal is to make that person no longer a criminal, able to go back into society and not commit any more crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology)

Rehabilitation certainly seems like the most humane way to go about things. It's very difficult and it's not always successful, but I imagine that most people can imagine times in their lives where they made a bad decision and only realized later that they shouldn't have done it. A serious crime would require a much more comprehensive and complete revision of someone's decision making process, but it's not impossible. There's always gonna be some people who can never function in normal society, but it feels like a waste of humanity to just assume every criminal is like that and lock them up forever.

I don't believe capital punishment to be of any real benefit myself, but I think it's a combination of the two factors you mention; it's intended to be the ultimate deterrent, but it also satisfies the shallow wishes of the public at large, minimises risk and doesn't drain state resources. I personally don't think it works particularly well on either count: death is ultimately favourable to life in prison for the criminal, they don't have any time to think about what they have done, and for the victim's families, they suffer comparatively little with the short pain of the execution itself. There's also the rare but ever-looming possibility of people being wrongly executed; it has certainly happened with lengthy prison terms.

On rehabilitation, I think there will always be a minority on whom no impression will ever be made, something which surely becomes quickly evident. However, it is in the criminals' interests to participate, for both the possible sentence reduction and to kill time, and I honestly think that this education and rehabilitation, combined with the remorse and poor living conditions, can and does change people. I suspect it to be only a small minority who fail to do so, and they are inevitably the only ones who garner media attention.

https://www.fakku.net/viewtopic.php?t=27566&start=0



I still believe that treatment is the way to go. After the sentence has been served, it will assist the convict in re-integrating mentally. This specifically applies to perpetrators who are acting on baser instinct (kleptomania, paedophilia, etc.)

Capital punishment is flat out useful. Life in prison is an expensive sentence. The deterrent factor is fairly secondary.

Rehabilitation, yes why not, but can we afford it?

Capital Punishment, I dont know what the rationality is why countries implement them but I am alright with it. As long as the crime has been proven without any reasonable doubt then go for it. In truth, I think more crimes should be punishable by death - it may be a scare tactic or to prevent jails from being overcrowded. If you know that a crime is punishable by death and you still did it, I think its your own bloody fault... if you dont want to die, then just dont commit them.

Depending on the crime, and severity of said crime, my views differ.

Rehabilitation: For misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes, prisoners should be given the chance of rehab. This way, we can get them out of prison faster; and us citizens wouldnt have to pay for them for quite as long. However, Violent crimes should be met with just punishment. These criminals should serve their full punishment, be that a year or a life sentence.

Capital punishment: I believe capital punishment was originally formed as a means to discourage serious crime. For example, burning a witch at the stake was meant to show other "witches" that they will meet the same fate if they do not change. Capital punishment was also originally a form of entertainment, such as public hangings, burnings at the stake, and even roman gladiator battles. However, I believe that this has changed, as well as our mentality towards capital punishment. Lethal injections are now held privately, with the exception of those involved in the case for which the criminal is being put to death for. It is now seen more as a means to rid ourselves of violent prisoners. This is also beneficial to citizens who wont have to pay for them anymore.

I hope I gave you the answer you were looking for :)

Capital punishment exist primarily as deterrent (ie scare the potential criminal into not doing the crime in the first place)... whioh doesn't work.

About the only reason why capital punish shuld exist is the economic aspect -- is killing a criminal worth more to society than rehabilitating him?

BUT

This is not how capital punishment is approached. Rather, capital punishment is given out depending on severity of the crime, which is at complete odds with the concept of rehabilitation. Really, these two ideas are mutually exclusive. The dead cannot be rehabiitated.

so:

1) Make all crime punishable by death
2) abolish capuital punishment
2) establish capital punishment, but on the basis of whether or not it is better to attempt to rehabilitate a criminal rather than kill him

Personally, criminals should be rehabilitated. If they can't and prove to be more harmful to soceity, off with their heads.

It should be noted that nothing short of the complete murderous irredemable sociopath is worth the death sentence, and insanity is not a crime, so the actually deserving of the death sentence should be zero. I don't support capital punishment at all.

Rehabilitation for prisoners would be a good idea, so if someone was insane enough to say... kill a few people but wanted to change so they may live a normal live with thier family, why shouldnt they try? give them a few years or put prisoners in a program where they can live a normal life. so them going from a life of theft to a life of becoming a law abiding citizen? why not lets give er a shot.

For capital punishment for more of those serious crimes such as rape or attempting to burn down houses and kill people, scare tactics could work with the right methods done. im sure they have thought about it, they could scare them so bad when they get out of the prison they could be someone who would live their whole lives free and if they saw something that reminded them of said crime they would probably drop to the ground crying.

Country club for those demented and sick people!

I think capital punishment is necessary. Because I think there are and will be people that commit deeds that are so bad, so horrible that they don't deserve to live anymore. I intend to understand how precious human life is. I think it like this, if I myself would die, what would that mean to me? It would mean that all my dreams, all my mistakes, all my thoughts, everything I had and was and could have been would disappear. My entire world would be destroyed. And that's what I think killing someone means. Destroying an entire world, as complex as your own. And exactly because I think like this, I also believe that some people should be put to death. There is a line of how much you can hurt, how much you can destroy and how much you can do. And if you cross that line, then you should be put to death. That is what I believe.

Personally, I support the death penalty for suppliers of dangerous drugs.

Bingo. And then, the defenders of human rights and all that jazz will start bitching. So propose to them, what if this person had gone through 'rehabilitation' was deemded "corrected" and then goes and kills someone else? You kill someone on purpose, then you should die as well. Simple as that.

Yeah, it's not that I don't understand what they are trying to say, but after a while, they just start to sound like a bunch of whining bitches...

Rehabilitation/education. Prison education isn't actually that expensive. I voluntarily taught both English and Math to imminent parolees for a year and learned a lot of interesting things about the prison system. A classroom that has 35-40 students on average costs about $50.00 (USD) a day to run. The teachers get paid well, but are not over-compensated. It is a tough job. I was in a program dedicated to helping as many people get their GEDs as possible. Having GEDs will make them more competitive in the job world and also gives them much more confidence. Many prisoners had self-esteem issues. I remember one guy couldn't do fractions and kept calling himself stupid. We are not allowed to ask personal questions, but I had to ask, "Why do you keep calling yourself stupid?" He said it's because all his teachers called him "stupid" in grade school and high school. He then intimated that he dropped out in Sophomore year. Since education is optional at San Quentin Prison, only the diligent, penitent prisoners will get their GEDs and excel in class while others lack focus and drop out. It's precisely the diligent and the penitent that rehabilitation helps.

Capital Punishment. Like Aud1o Blood said, taking care of people who are serving life sentences is expensive. Here in California, people who serve life sentences can still take classes. Though I understand that this is a humane practice, it doesn't make complete sense to me. Someone who has committed an irredeemable crime - worthy of a life sentence - has forfeited their basic rights, and in some sense, their humanity, and yet we give them nice cells and educate them with almost no possibility of getting out. California State Law has completely harpooned other aspects of infrastructure in dire need of funding and improvement, such as education (yes, mismanagement can count for a good bulk of our state's problems, but part of mismanagement is mis-allocation). So, in response to your question, capital punishment seems to me as a cost-effective deterrent of repeat serious offenders. I think it would do a lot more scaring if it were handled properly. Capital punishment, like other aspects of law, isn't color blind or blind to someone's socio-economic standing. Strange thing is, I really think you have to be pretty insane to murder someone else or rape them. Even a really meticulous murderer who confesses that he/she knows exactly what he/she has done still strikes me as too insane to deem 'in his/her right mind at the time of committing the crime.' So... I can't say that I support it or don't support it.

Why did anyone never mentioned torture? If we starve the criminals, they will slowly die and have plenty of time thinking about what they have done and it saves us money by not feeding them.
I don't like the special rehab treatment the prisoners are getting, most of them are ridiculous to the point that even prisoners from Guantanamo Bay get expensive health treatment that most of the citizens in America don't get.

Rehabilitation is bullshit. If a person breaks the law, it doesn't matter whether they are "rehabilitated" or not, they're still depreciated in the eyes of society. Instead of being accepted as another member of society, those who serve their time and are released from prison are considered ex-cons. The purpose of criminal rehabilitation is to reintegrate people, who have stepped outside the boundaries of social norms, into a community whose members are predisposed to emphasize variance among themselves.

To answer the original question posed by Shaggy, it doesn't matter how we approach rehabilitation in prison systems, so long as we live in such a fundamentally flawed society.

In Terms of Rehabilitation, if the person is willing to try and help them selves. I think they should go as far as the person is willing to go. once deemed ready to return to society if they are convicted of a crime near the same... let them rot

Capital punishment... in fact as far as i am concerned its not enough even in states that support the death penalty, someone gets sentenced to death and there is no doubt they are guilty kill em. none of this sit on death row for 10+ years sucking money out of the tax payers bullshit just to be killed. but if it is indeed a scare tactic its not working because of the years convicts spend on death row .. a good bit of them die or commit suicide before even making it to the chamber or however each state does it.

I kinda agree with this view. The reason why most people commit crimes in the first place is because they are poor, have little to lose, and few ways out of their predictament. (If you are earning a few million bucks a year, you would certainly tend not to commit petty crimes, or murder, or rape. The crimes you might commit, you think twice about, cos you stand to lose a lot) Rehabilitation is based on the assumption that something is wrong with the person, but if the fault lies with the system, there is little rehabilitation can do. Ex-cons will be treated like shit, so they are basically back to the original environment they were in. Prison does not really help that much.

A clip from Shawshank Redemption: