NationStates Jolt Archive

How do you feel about mandatory, unpaid work for the perpetrators of serious crimes? Not just work for the sake of making prisoners suffer, but actual for-profit work which can be used by the government to fund facilities like healthcare for law abiding citizens?

Do you feel that the right of a criminal not to work is more important than the right of a non-criminal to an education or a treatment for disease or injury? Or, more accurately, more important than the right of a non-criminal not to pay for said education/health?

Chain gangs are good. They keep prisoners busy and give them exercise. As for working, prisoners who do not work don't have to eat. Perhaps we should bring back prison farms where they grow their own food while learning how to farm.

I can understand community service, whereby criminals undo the damage done to their communities (for example, by cleaning up graffiti), but using them to make money sounds too much like state-endorsed slavery.

When you are incarcerated you lose your freedom. It's prison. They cannot be forced to do anything dangerous or be abused but making them work on projects that can benefit the society that they wish to someday to return to is only right.

How do you feel about mandatory, unpaid work for the perpetrators of serious crimes? Not just work for the sake of making prisoners suffer, but actual for-profit work which can be used by the government to fund facilities like healthcare for law abiding citizens?

Do you feel that the right of a criminal not to work is more important than the right of a non-criminal to an education or a treatment for disease or injury? Or, more accurately, more important than the right of a non-criminal not to pay for said education/health?
So, correct me if I'm wrong, because this is all a bit hard to comprehend....you want criminals, convicted of "serious crimes", out in the world doing the kind of work that nobody else wants to do, just to fuel our already-oppulent lifestyle? Doesn't that seem like a bad idea? The more they're abused in this way, there more unrest there will be; the more unrest there is, the more rioting will occur; the more rioting occurs, the more innocent people and prison guards, or sometimes prisoners who want nothing to do with the riots, get hurt. Then the criminals who started it are simply re-convicted and the cycle starts anew.

Besides, who's to define what crimes are "serious" enough to deem fit to send them into labour? Who's to define what crimes are too "serious"? Who decides what criminals aren't fit to leave the confines of the prison, or even their own cell, for the sake of social labour?

Sounds like a faulty system to me.

Legalise No-Holds-Barred Deathmatch and make them fight for their freedom.

Unrealtastic :P

How do you feel about mandatory, unpaid work for the perpetrators of serious crimes? Not just work for the sake of making prisoners suffer, but actual for-profit work which can be used by the government to fund facilities like healthcare for law abiding citizens?

Do you feel that the right of a criminal not to work is more important than the right of a non-criminal to an education or a treatment for disease or injury? Or, more accurately, more important than the right of a non-criminal not to pay for said education/health?

I would fully advocate chain gangs.

Criminals gave up their rights as citizens when they did their crime. I don't think it's over-foul to expect them to put something back into the community that they abused.

I can understand community service, whereby criminals undo the damage done to their communities (for example, by cleaning up graffiti), but using them to make money sounds too much like state-endorsed slavery.

No no, not just to make money. To make money which can directly fund vital public utilities. I hypothesise that huge wads of prison-earnt money shoved straight into universal healthcare and free education will be more beneficial to society than prisoners picking up litter from roads or cleaning graffiti.

they had the inmates from the county jail out taking trash off the highway the other day. im pretty sure its voluntary though. gives them a bit of exercise and fresh air. breaks up the monotony.

For it.

they had the inmates from the county jail out taking trash off the highway the other day. im pretty sure its voluntary though. gives them a bit of exercise and fresh air. breaks up the monotony.

Trash-collecting is a start, but what about actual hard, menial work which can generate tangible revenue for the public?

I also think that cleaning and anti-littering by prisoners is inconsistent with social priorities. Clean streets are nice, but surgery and medicine are vital.

In all honesty, Prison life is boring. In American prisons most people are there becuase their bordem led them to do something stupid, usually involceing one or more drugs. Locking the type of person who winds up in prison really just incites them to do more foolish things.
Giving them something to do keeps them too distracted to cause trouble. My favorite was walking dogs at the pound.
I like the idea of the prison farms. Helps the prisoners learn something useful (if not all that profitable) and help cover the states cost of keeping them there.