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I'd be inclined to say, at the risk of pontification on a subject I know little about, that if prison worked it wouldn't be getting more and more full.
I don't think telling people "No, bad person, naughty!" and sending them away from a while actually does anyone in the system any good. Prisons should be entirely about addressing the issues that put people there in the first place (you could make a serious dent just by treating drug addiction properly, for a start), rather than this outdated notion of punishment.
As far as I can see, punishment per-se is only good as a detterent, and a detterent is only required if people are inclined to do something in the first place. It would be far more effective to remove or reduce the original impetus to commit crime than to punish it after the event.
As for punishment if and when it is appropriate, it needs to be something far more costly to the prisoner than some time at Her Majesty's Pleasure. I think the Proceeds of Crime bill was a step in the right direction here, though there are plenty of more novel approaches that increase the cost of committing a crime (including increasing the chances of getting caught - cf. the Japanese legal system) that would make the reward far less attractive than the cost.
There are obviously a few people who we cannot ever allow into the community at large because of behavioural issues that make them simply too dangerous. These people shouldn't be in prison either, though they should be in a tightly controlled environment. They should be allowed to get the most they can out of their lives without endangering others.
To me, prison is mostly an outdated concept. There are plenty of other ways of raising the cost of crime without raising the cost to society at large. |
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