Contrast in prison regimes

[streaky]

Arizona, USA

Tough-guy sheriff Joe Arpaio stopped smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails, started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects, then started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination. He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails; so he let in the Disney channel and the Weather Channel. When asked why the Weather Channel he replied: "So they'll know how hot it's gonna be while they're working on my chain gangs." He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value; when the inmates complained, he told them: "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."

In the extreme Arizona heat, about 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.

Joe Arpaio who long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, was unsympathetic. He said: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to wear full battle gear ... so shut your damned mouths."

Durham, UK

Commenting on the conditions that had led to the transfer of prisoners out of the jail to much more comfortable and pleasant surroundings, Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: "Durham [Prison] is a constricted and forbidding physical environment with little space for association or activity, and a particularly dispiriting and bleak exercise yard."

Spot the difference?

Streaky

[Plotloss]

Yeah, they are both wrong.

[GKP]

But only because we don't have the death penalty.






<ducks while donning flame retardent pants>

[JagLover]

We've had this subject before

and I have said that prisons should be more like this and less like holiday camps.

[docjan]

Death penalty is great, the infallible legal system would never put an innocent to death.

[smac]

Our system already puts innocent people to death. All those killed by murderers released from prison that should have hung and those murdered by known violent nutters who should be rotting in jail.

>> Edited by smac on Friday 22 April 11:17

[Flat in Fifth]

Not to mention the twonk on Panorama where in one breath he claimed that he would go straight when he got out, (Yeah right!) in the next breath saying prison was no real deterrent as he sat in his cell twiddling with his Playstation gamepad. "Got everyfink I want , innit"

FFS!

[greg2k]

As barbaric as a harsh disciplined prison environment (such as the arizona one is) it's clearly the lesser of the two evils. In a relaxed prison the innmates run things and turn the place into a thugs university.

[MilnerR]

The prisons have to be a deterrent to the lowest common denominator. The idea of going to even a nice prison fills me with horror. In order to fill your average career criminal with the same level of horror the prisons need to be truely terrible places. Lets face it the career criminals are the ones we need to stop (or at the very least punish!)

[BliarOut]

I used to know a guy who intentionally went out to commit crime and get caught every September. Why? So he didn't have to pay his heating bill over winter, got a free christmas meal, satellite TV and decent food.

Prison in this country isn't a deterrent, it's a lifestyle choice

Make it so horrible they never want to come back and crime will go down

[streaky]

Plotloss said:

Yeah, they are both wrong.

So what's right?