Be Excellent To Each Other

I've got to do a 10 minute presentation using this title at my interview on Tuesday. I've done a bit of research but thought I'd open it up to you guys and ask your opinions, someone on here is likely to come up with something I haven't considered!

So what do you think about them being able to order from the Argos catalogue and have PSones in their cells? People breaking into prison for cheaper drugs and prisoners not taking the offer of early parole as they'd rather stay inside?

I saw a guy on one of these traffic cop programmes the other week. He'd just gotten busted for some crime and said he actually wanted to go back to prison; it's easy time, and far more luxurious than the life he was living on the outside.

I'm all for helping people reform, but prison should still be a punishment and a deterrent, else what's the point?

I'm not sure if you've said what the interview is for, but I look at that title and think that they're expecting an answer of "Yes, it's too easy". On that basis I'd recommend taking the opposite tack - forget the fact that they have luxuries, and focus on the one thing they don't have, freedom. It should be fairly easy to talk for ten minutes about the immense value that one's liberty holds for a person, and how a few luxuries can never make up for having the choice of what to do with their life taken away from them.

What Craster said. The key to prison is the removal of freedom. I doub most of us would really think of it as wonderful that we could play games or watch a film if we could never leave the prison or see our friends without supervision, or have a lover spend the night, or go to the pub, or nip up the road for a sausage roll.

We treat prison with far too much shame and hatred. Justice shouldn't be about how much we're making people suffer.

I'm sure all that holds true for us, but for the dregs of society, is losing whatever liberties they have really in their thoughts and something they want to avoid*? I'm going to have to think about this more - I don't really feel qualified to say one way or another.


*I'm trying not to come across as pretentious here, so excuse me if I do.

Bear in mind that I wasn't necessarily presenting my views, I was presenting what was in my view a sensible approach to answering an interview question. In that situation, whether you agree with it or not is entirely irrelevant.

Oh of course. It always helps if you can look at and argue the sides of a debate separate from your views. Objectivity is a wonderful thing, but I all-too-often find myself arguing from emotion, and that's often entirely irrational.

WAAAAAGGHHH! :droool:

The point of prison is to cause fewer crimes to be committed. That's it.

So taking namby-pamby questions of civil rights and basic human decency aside, the only question should be "would making prisons even more unpleasant result in fewer crimes being committed?" Speaking in near-total ignorance, my guess would be no. No-one ever thinks they're going to get caught, after all.


Nail 'em up, I say. Only language they understand. Nail some sense into 'em.

Hey guys, thanks for your replies.

I don't mind if you just post how you personally feel about stuf, it all contributes to different points of view. Feel free to take the thread in whatever direction it goes if it means a good debate about something.

The job I'm applying for is Psychology Assistant at a female semi-open prison, not that I feel that matters too much. The presentation needs to include the main points with a critique. I've got to make it interactive too - great!

Not so, not any more. Prison is about rehabilitation.

Absolutely disgusting...they should be allowed a 360 or PS3 in this day and age.

btw, how can you order stuff from Argos...do you put HM PRISON in the delivery address?

A couple of lads I have been to prison and they hated every minute of it and said it was the worst time of their lives. Boring as hell and even preferred to be at work than sitting in a cell do nothing. The worst part was the lack of freedom and as far as I know none of them have re offended...so it appears that the system did work.

Although I "know" several people who have been back to prison on numerous occasions and as mentioned before, these are usually the dregs of society who have no life outside of prison anyway.

Largely because rehabilitated people don't commit more crime, and can go on to look after themselves, saving the state resources and possibly benefitting everyone.



Interactive? How novel.

"Point one: I've locked the doors.

Point two: I have a gun and will shoot you if you attempt to leave.

Point three: Would a playstation help?"

Well that's sending me to bed with a smile!

That's actually a really good way to either start or finish your presentation, IMO. Get four people to stand up, and then ask them. Better if you actually can lock the doors.

And the point of rehabilitation is...?

Society invests a metric fuckton of money to put someone in prison and to keep them there. What society "wants" to get in return for that investment is less crime - whether it's by deterring people from committing crimes in the first place, by stopping people from committing crimes while they're behind bars or by preventing people from committing further crimes in the future. So taking aside all ethical considerations, if you change your prison system to make it a stronger deterrent against acting illegally but in the process cause more people to re-offend once they leave that system then so far as society's concerned you've failed.

This is a good read Jasmine, one man's experience of the prison system:

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topi ... 42266&i=40

Read the posts by "10 Pence Short".

Also the original thread on his accident should be required reading for anyone who enjoys driving 'enthusiastically' on the roads.

Trouble!

Ah, oh yeah, sorry Jasmine.

A very sobering read -thank you.

Back at Newsfield, we had a magazine called Crime Buster. One of the mag's correspondents was known as 'The Insider', who was introduced as a career criminal who turned his back on crime and went straight. In actual fact, he had a lifelong crusade against crime, but served 18 years for murdering someone who burgled him.

Anyway, his take on the matter was, 'anyone who thinks prison is easy has obviously never been in one'. We're going back to the early Nineties here, but the same complaints were being made back then about prison being easy. Except for PlayStation Ones, obv.

Do they have 360s now?

Is the WiFi crippled with all the concrete and bars?

One things is for sure.

Prisoners are entitled to, and receive, a superior level of accommodation than most military personnel in this country.

I remember when I was in the RAF staying at Redford Barracks, there was no heating or hot water for a fortnight in the middle of winter!

This was MaliTowers in december.

I'm not saying that was justified treatment at all, but at least you could have walked away before it drove you insane.

It strikes me that the people who say prison's too easy are all too often those who've never been in one, and/or those who think that criminals are all sub-human scum.

Also, have a look at De Profundis (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/921) for so me thoughts on prison and attitudes to it. Annoyingly, they only have the censored version up, which doesn't go into the heartbreaking detail about his affair, but I think most of the prison stuff is still up.

In my experience, prison is quite tricky. However, this 'experience' solely comes from playing the Great Escape on the speccy.

Having watched several seasons of Prisoner Cell Block H and several jailhouse movies, I can confirm two eternal truths about prison.

1: The prisoners fall into two categories - the really nice folks you'd be happy to have move in next door, and the demented psychopaths with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Always one or the other, never somewhere in between.

2: Ditto, the wardens.

Freak out!



A poster on Popbitch was assigned to look after the actress who played "The Freak" on a visit to the UK. Apparently she was really nice and he confessed to her that when he was a student he used to stay up late to watch Cell Block H.

About a month later a thank you note arrived in the post accompanied by a framed picture from the actresses Cell Block H days complete with the uniform, leather gloves and sour expression.

He proudly put it on his office desk. It lasted a day as apparently everyone kept on asking him if it was his wife/girlfriend. The picture now resides at his house instead.

And on that off-topic note I shall return to work.

What an amazing thread, I've only just finished reading it since about 4.30ish and with a couple of comfort break. Very interesing in it's own right, but I got some good POV from it too, thanks markg.

You may wish to make coffee.

Most of my clients want to go back to prison. No worries about benefits, cooking, chores and drugs delivered to you. They love it.

Clients, sir?

Goatboy is the drugs czar of Cardiff.

I did the presentation. They said it was interesting.

How did you approach it? Go on, give us a brief rundown. Good luck though; hopefully you're putting a negative spin on things yourself.

I compared the media's take on things to the prisoners point of view. The former saying it's easy the latter saying it isn't. Mentioned that it depends on the prisoner too and the value they place of their life outside of prison. Didn't come down on either side, just ended with there is no 'one size fits all' approach, or there would be no need for psychologists in prisons.

Seems like an intelligent, well-thought-out answer to me. So what's the next step from here?

Take out the prisoners, lock up all journalists, then man the newspapers with perverts, racists and violent reactionaries...

Thanks nynfortoo

Wait for two weeks while applying for other positions. They did say that when they've finished interviewing they will send me feedback, so that will be quite useful.

I had a long discussino on WoS ages ago abotu this sort of thing, but I think from memory the gist of my positino is that whether prison is too easy or too hard is neither here nor there. As someone else as already touched on, the nature of the punishment will never, ever cause the nature of the punishment to act as a deterrent whilst the fear of getting caught is considerably lower than the fear of any such punishment.

Basically, currently it doesn't matter whether prison is Dickensian or Hilton-esque. People aren't scared of getting caught so will commit crimes regardless.

In fact, on can go a step further. Most states in the US have the death penalty as the punishment for murder. Result? One of the highest murder rates in the developed world. Murder is one of the crimes with the highest clear up rates, yet people will still do it despite knowing they could be killed if caught.

Kind of makes one question the purpose of punishment, really.

So, prevention=better than punishment. Rehabilitation=better than punishment.

So why go in for vengeful punishment at all?

As with many things, I wish we were more like Sweden.

My stance is that we should take money out of the prisons and put it into the police force.

Put three times as many officers on the streets and your fear of being caught will hopefully go up.

The only problem being the massive budgetary shortfall from the resulting lack of prison spaces. Unless you let all the nonces out early.

Hell, if you can get the crime clear up rate up high enough, then the punishment itself acts as a deterrent. bring back hanging for everything from parking on double yellow lines, in that case. Provided, of course, we can ensure we never find innocent people guilty.

Oh.

Hang on, does that mean you'd be in favour of my hanging for not paying my speeding fine?

Only if you were actually speeding.

See, it goes like this. If you have a 100% clear up rate for crimes, and you have a 100% accuracy rate on getting the guilty party rather than some Irish bloke the raddies have fitted up, all crimes could have the death penalty. Result - zero crime. You know the penalty for breaking the law, and you know it's a bigger price than you're willing to pay, so you make damn sure don't do it.

All this is except for exceptionally poor people stealing bread, for which I would allow some sort of absolute defence.

What about an old lady who accidentally put a bar of chocolate in her carry trolley to take up to the till and then forgot about it and accidentally stole it?

Kill to death?

She hasn't actually committed a crime. She's committed the actus reus of the crime, but has not formed the necessary mens rea.

[Stuart Lee]AaaaAAAAAh. [/Stuart Lee]

Sometimes I'm so childish.

I'm not voting for you as leader of the world any more.

The law's the law, dude. We either obey it, or society breaks down. Socrates, for instance, refused to be rescued from prison for fear of undermining the legal system.

If it's any consolation I'd revise the speed limit on the motorway to 100mph.