Thread: Our "Justice" System?

Originally Posted by BathurstTom

At around $292 a day to house a prisoner? Are you going to make voluntary contributions so that the rest of us are not paying taxes?

Tom.

We all pay taxes, yet some of it gets wasted. So would you rather have these criminals out in the street in the general population?
I suppose they are dearer than supporting all those unmarried mothers with heaps of kids to as many dead beat fathers which we also love to pay our tax money to keep.
Maybe if we made prisoners work for their keep, like bring back road gangs, get them out working removing litter from road sides, which it costs tax payers to get others to do.

Originally Posted by Roverlord off road spares

We all pay taxes, yet some of it gets wasted. So would you rather have these criminals out in the street in the general population?
I suppose they are dearer than supporting all those unmarried mothers with heaps of kids to as many dead beat fathers which we also love to pay our tax money to keep.
Maybe if we made prisoners work for their keep, like bring back road gangs, get them out working removing litter from road sides, which it costs tax payers to get others to do.

But then they'd be out in the community.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

G'Day Bathurst Tom, Attila The Hun here. Firstly, I ain't no expert, I'm simply giving my opinion.
Not enough details, of what he's done, is he in jail now, etc etc?
However I would like to think that EVERYONE is capable of, & would respond to, "rehabilitation", but clearly, many don't.
Pickles.
NB: I see you mentioned in an earlier post,.."Parents". COULDN'T AGREE MORE. In many cases, involving youth, they have a lot to answer for.

Pickles, whether or not he is in prison (hate the Oz spelling Gaol) is getting ahead. As I have said, he is a multiple offender, jailed as an adult. As to what he has done - robbery, theft etc is enough.

Should he be rehabilitated?

Tom.
Tom.

Originally Posted by BathurstTom

Pickles, whether or not he is in prison (hate the Oz spelling Gaol) is getting ahead. As I have said, he is a multiple offender, jailed as an adult. As to what he has done - robbery, theft etc is enough.

Should he be rehabilitated?

Tom.
Tom.

Firstly, He has to do the time.
After, or during this,....."Does the sun rise in the morning".....?
OF COURSE, He should be given every chance to do so.
Pickles.

I don't know about delusional but you're clueless Pickles. Rehabilitation is neither just a word nor a magic wand.

Gotta buy into this. 15 years working in the system has hopefully given me a few ideas.
The mayor Guiliani example may or may not have been due to the "zero tolerance" approach in that city. Similar declines in crime have occurred at about the same time in other cities of similar size in the USA where there was no "zero tolerance" approach. In fact, crime levels have been declining across almost all developed nations, and recently researchers think they have found out why.
The correspondence of this decline with a reduction in lead pollution brought about by the introduction of lead-free petrol about 20 years earlier is striking, and closer examination suggests that something about lead poisoning as a child increases a person's probability of becoming involved in criminal activity as an adult, especially violent crime. (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis).
Diet is another factor. The "wetware" between our ears makes up about 8% of our mass but uses about 20% of our oxygen, so it needs good nutrition. If you don't feed it very well, then it doesn't work very well. Research originally carried out in the UK and since repeated in other countries (with similar results) showed that prisoners who were provided with supplements (essentially vitamins, minerals and omega-3 fatty acids) showed about a 30% decrease in violent incidents in prison. So take a look at our fast-food diet and how prevalent it is in poorer areas, and consider how that could be contributing to criminal behaviour. (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...bation.ukcrime).
Jail is not a deterrent. Put people into jail and do nothing else and they will be more likely to re-offend after they are released. Give them a few work skills and you can reduce that to about break even(ie neither more nor less likely to reoffend). Give them a general programme aimed at reducing re-offending and you'll get about a 10% improvement. Give them a programme that is targeted at their specific type of offending and you'll get about a 30% improvement.
But it's complicated. Not all types of crimes have the same re-offending rate. And while the improvement can be demonstrated across numbers of prisoners, predicting which individuals will fail and which ones will succeed is difficult. (http://law.jrank.org/pages/1936/Reha...tion-work.html).
As for the Parole boards- well, they are essentially betting organisations. They are placing bets that individuals will (or will not) re-offend. They do what all good punters do- they gather as much information as they can about the person's "form", their prior history, their recent "gallops" (prison behaviour), the "track conditions" (home environment, job, recreation, etc.) and then they decide whether or not to release, and if so, under what conditions. When they get it right, you won't hear about it, because that's not "news". But if they get it wrong, well, that's controversial, and everyone agrees that they shouldn't have bet that way. With 20/20 hindsight the public feel superior because obviously they wouldn't have made the same decision. Incidentally, the Parole Boards get it right more often than they get it wrong. And don't get the idea that Parole Boards are a push-over. The only PB I am familiar with consisted of an astute QC with a very sharp tongue, a crusty old police officer who has seen and heard it all before, a wise old aboriginal chap (ditto), and a victims of crime representative among others.
If you think it's a good idea to just keep putting people into jail and leaving them there, then I hope you are also prepared for a very large increase in taxes and/or a reduction in services for aged care, medical, schools, etc. You might also ask yourself the question: "How is it that other countries put far less people into jail than we do, yet have similar crime rates? And how is it that some countries put far more people into jail than we do, and have higher crime rates (the US, for example)?"
Simplistic solutions such as "get tough on crime" don't work and can make matters worse. If you throw more people into prison (or keep them there longer, which also increases the prison population), then you overload the resources available to provide effective programmes. When I last worked in the prison system, all our prison beds were full, and half of the City Watch House was being used to hold prisoners on remand. They had no access to outside environment, no exercise facilities, no smoking, no education, one phone call a day. Remember, some of these people were later found to be innocent of the charges. Imagine how you would feel if you had been put into such a position where you lost your job, had your pet put down because there was no-one to look after it, and had to put up with living in a concrete box for four weeks while the legal system slowly decided that perhaps you were suitable for bail, or maybe the prosecution decides to drop the charges. That what an overcrowded prison system can do to people.
Cheers

C00P

Thanks Coop, for that informative answer to this vexed question. It's a timely reminder that if a subject is emotive enough to get our blood up, we should use some of it to power our brains to research and figure instead of banging each others heads.

Originally Posted by BathurstTom

....... (hate the Oz spelling Gaol)........

Gaol/jail . Both spellings came into Middle English from the Old Norman French gaole and Old French jaiole, both derived from the Latin cavea = cage.

Since the English legal establishment after 1066 was staffed primarily with people whose mother tongue was Old Norman French, the spelling gaol became entrenched in official legal language in England (once they started to write it in English as well as Latin), with the spelling "jail" becoming an alternative as more socially conscious Normans sent their sons to Paris to learn "proper" French.

Both spellings became common by early modern English, with "gaol" remaining the legal term, as it still does in England and Australia (and probably in most other countries that have inherited the English legal system). "Jail" became the only accepted spelling in the USA, probably as a result of Webster's attempts at spelling reform in the early 19th century, part of his effort to produce a distinctive US language. (Most of Webster's proposed reforms stayed at the "proposed" stage, with almost the only ones accepted being ones that were already alternatives, often the older form.)

In Australia, both spellings are used, with "gaol" probably preferred by most associated with the legal profession plus traditionalists and "Jail" preferred by those who were brought up on a diet of American pop culture plus those who delude themselves that English spelling is or even can be phonetic.

John