Law & Order is STUFFED.

[Rant mode ON]

Yep gaoling works, just look at the US.
The biggest prison population in the world, highest per capita under lock and key and yet they still seem intent on wiping each other out in creative and not so creative ways.
Gaol just creates a more hardened criminal.
A good mate is a criminal lawyer, (although currently in family law) and another friend was a prison psych.
If you hear the stores from these people inside the system your views night change.
If we can keep people out of gaol we're better off.
Massive fines or some other deterent work much better for minor offences, keep gaol for the real criminals, the murderers, rapists, rock spiders.

The continual 'law and order' bull**** panders to lowest common denominator politics, nothing more.
It does nothing to protect communities.

e.g. Drug addiction and use is a mental health issue.
We don't need more laws, just the ones we have better enforced.
In fact streamlining and reducing laws would be better.

Increase policing budgets and numbers so they can actually prosecute and not miss things so the bad buggerss don't get off on technicalities would be a big step in the right direction

One of my best mates is in the AFP.
At one point eighteen months ago he was stressed to the hilt as the powers that be had cut his annual budget to 1/10 of what it was in the previous years.
Not reduced by 10%, reduced to 10% of previous years.

He and his specialist teams are the secret squirrels that provide the means to do surveillance.
He is chronically understaffed and totally overworked.
They are the blokes that break into cars and premises, even gaols and plant the recording devices, set up all the surveillance stuff, do all the technical stuff.
Without them you'd have hardly any prosecutions.
The new budget didn't cover his ****ing internet bill!!!!

The arsehole politicians that continually bang on about 'law and order' and want extra laws, that want to increase surveillance on us, that want to make journalists and whistle blowers criminals for reporting corruption in politics, that continually deflect with 'look at that illegal immigrant' (read assylum seeker) over there are the same ****** that gut the budgets and totally demoralise the men and women tasked with actually doing something.

You've all been conned by rank politicians and a compliant Murdoch press.

[/rant]

Some reoffend because prison can be seen as easy food and roof over ones head.

Aside from that, one of the worst things i can think of is to work for little or no pay. That should be one of the best deterrents, and can ideally make the prison system revenue neutral.

Prison should be solitary confinement for non workers, and the more you work the better the conditions you live in, and over a certain threshhold you get to save some money, and over another threshhold you get earlier release.

Prison sentences should be measured in work hours like community service, rather than simple years of incarceration. Bludge on your arse, stay there forever, work really hard, get earlier release with saved cash. People will leave prison with a work ethic.

What sort of work ? Will the free labour not affect those indirectly who are legitimately in those occupations? Still have to supervise them.

My ideas evolved as i wrote that, so here is a summary:

Sentences measured in work hours.

If a prisoner does no work, solitary confinement forever.

Work equals better living conditions. More work per week equals better and better living conditions.

If you work hard enough to go over your revenue neutral point, you get to bank the cash and it becomes available on release.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by trog

What sort of work ? Will the free labour not affect those indirectly who are legitimately in those occupations? Still have to supervise them.

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Whatever sorts of work is deemed most suitable. Charged out at the average commercial rate. Ideally perhaps, pick emerging industries so existing industries arent affected. The business world is what it is, new players are often entering markets, its just life.

The cost of supervision is what prisons have to cover anyway. A penalty system could be introduced for people whenever they create a problem. Either add more hours to their sentence, raise their revenue neutral point or drop their living conditions.

Once a baseline of solitary confinement forever is established, it shouldnt be hard to get compliance on most things from people.

It doesnt matter what you did to get into prison and how many hours your sentence is, no work equals solitary confinement forever.

Jailing people by itself may not reform, it may just let them mix with and learn from more expert criminals.
One thing I have seen work is when a person with a drug problem agrees to a magistrate deferring sentencing on condition the addict agrees to enter a supervised detox program for a lengthy period, say a year.
If the addict kicks the habit then the magistrate can take the effort to reform into account when sentencing. That can mean the person is placed on probation for a period, knowing that if they reoffend it's back to court and off to jail.
If they don't kick the habit during detox then they are just sentenced as normal.
I have a connection to a non-government detox farm and know this can work. However it really depends on the motivation of the person. There are no guarantees.
Still, it's a smarter approach then just locking up every body, I think. That doesn't work.

Agreed.

But if people have to stay in jail till they have worked off their sentence hours, they will focus on that more and less on learning from the other criminals. Jail will truly be undesirable. Drop the ball, and you are in solitary forever. The way out will require work, and reinforcing that habit will bode them well when they are released.

Just seems like a win win win. Solves most issues.

A person might become despondent, lose hope, but work even one hour, and they will be closer to freedom, and further from solitary.

It seems really powerful.

Solves the cost problem.

What problem doesnt it solve? Hmm....

Many of the more serious problems can be solved using the 45/70 equation...

Balancing crime vs Gaol vs treatment will never be an easy equation.

Some crimes however should have mortality penalties.
- Pre-meditated murder (eye for an eye)
- Pedophiles
- Serial rapists

Gaols should have only the most basic of human rights.
- Food
- Bed
- Clean Water

No TV
No Internet
No luxury items
Restricted visitation relative to crime convicted.

Stop making Gaol a holiday camp, start making it unattractive to be there and we may start to see some changes.

Absolutely,,, and base these prisons next to a quarry.

Here is an idea. Once convicted and sentenced , the miscreant is placed into a medical coma. Just a bit of liquid feed , and a monitor. Easy to warehouse many in i smaller space . In the mean time they can provide an on tap source of blood for the blood banks. The lifers can not only do this , but as they won't be getting out again , they can be tissue typed for organ donation to those on the outside. Severe enough ?