Split prisons?

[biostud]

We know that most people who goes into a prison comes out even more likely to commit crimes. Also there's a lot of violence in prisons, and we as the state take people in custody also have the obligation to secure the prisoners.

So do you think it would be a good idea to split 1st time offenders and non violent crimes into on part of the prison system and violent, gangs and repeated offenders into another prison?

And then focus more on rehabilitation for 1st timers and non violent crimes, to minimize their risk of being repeated offenders.

 

[AViking]

From a US perspective our prison system has turned into a for profit business and this is a major problem. We need to decriminalize drugs and get these people out of the prison system and into rehabilitation if they have a drug abuse problem.

Once that is done you have eliminated about half the prison population.

Right now 48% of federal prisoners are there for drug offenses and 11% for immigration offenses. That's insane. Then there's the state and local prison system too.

Then you divide the prison population up so that violent offenders are kept separate from people there for petty crimes and financial crimes for example. You try to rehabilitate rather than punish everyone and with any luck you stop at least portions of our prison system from just breeding more hard core criminals.

 

[AViking]

Rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and other violent criminals should be kept 100% seperate from everyone else. Then those that have short prison sentences should be kept seperate to try to rehabilitate them. Life sentences? Fuck em.

 

[smackababy]

It isn't so much the prison itself, as the massive impact it has after you get out. Say you get 5 years for some felony, serve your time and get out. Now, you are an ex convict with a record. Good luck finding any job outside of line cook or construction. Making $7 an hour sure makes selling dope look mighty attractive.

The system is already set up not to rehabilitate, so there is really nothing we can do about that. It should be viewed as punishment and time served is that punishment. There is no reason to continue punishing them after they've "paid their debt to society". Yet, we continue (in the US, at least), to demonize those and pretty much force them into a cycle of repeat offenders.