Quote Originally Posted by SadisticNature View Post
A punishment can't be decided by the victims, after all there is a need for balance, justice and retribution are very different things. Ancient Babylon is not a place in which any of us would want to live.

That being said the punishment must be adequate enough that society has a reasonable belief that the punishment is fair. If people believe criminals are coddled, they lose trust in the government to protect them from crime, and there is also an increase in vigilante justice. Both of these things are highly undesirable.

Finding this balance is incredibly difficult. Reform of the justice system is very politicized and its hard to get people to sit down and focus on making a good system when people can't even agree on what the jail system is supposed to do.

My personal taste would be a system that could effectively test reform. Ideally I'd like to see a system where prisoners had optional labour for which they could earn credits. These credits would be at the control of the prisoner and could be used to:

(i) provide compensation to the victims families.
(ii) get additional counseling/mentoring services
(iii) provide for family of the criminal (pay towards child support?)
(iv) Compensate the government for the cost of jailing

Thus when a prisoner's sentence is being considered one would have a track record, showing how much they were willing to work, and what their priorities were with that money. If someone worked long hours, paid compensation to the victims families, and took their other responsibilities seriously, and their counselors/mentors express clearly that they are unlikely to reoffend they would get out sooner than someone who doesn't show the above. The current system is largely bluff and guesswork, because individuals don't earn anything that could measure their responsibility.

The exact details of such a system would require a lot of work, but it seems better than what we have now. Especially since forced labour is either limited or legally problematic in a lot of states.

Of course some people cringe at the idea of compensating prisoners for work in any way even if they can't keep the money for themselves.

The cushy image of jails that the right tends to paint is inaccurate in a lot of ways.

While its true that jails do have access to televisions they are shared among large groups which limits the availability of what can be watched. This is also available only during a very limited period of the day.

The mere existence of televisions for prisoners does not mean that prisoners have the right to watch television the way you would use it.

They are still told when they can eat, when they must work, when they can relax, when they can exercise, and are monitored at all times without privacy. It's a miserable existence, that no one would want or desire. Only the most rabid politic would call it coddling.
That hasn’t got a hope in hell of working with the majority of prisoners, because most are habitual, and I presume you are talking about murderers, for god’s sake get real, apart from a minute percent you could never trust them again however many credits they had. The murderers lost all credibility when they carried out their heinous crimes, they are there to be punished, and that is only because they escaped the death penalty.

Regards ian 2411