Can Prisoners Be REFORMED? - Is The Solution the PROBLEM?

The Social Cost

The prison crisis reaches right into your wallet.  It is estimated that in the United States, for example, each prisoner costs taxpayers $21,000 annually. Inmates over the age of 60 can cost three times that amount.  In many countries public confidence in the penal system is waning for additional reasons. There are concerns about prematurely released criminals as well as offenders who manage to avoid prison sentences altogether because of some legal technicality discovered by an astute lawyer.  Usually, victims do not feel sufficiently protected against further violation, and they may have little voice in the legal process. 

Public Concern Grows

Public confidence in the prison system is not helped by the inhumane conditions to which prisoners are exposed. Prisoners who have suffered unjust treatment while serving their sentences are hardly candidates for rehabilitation.  Then, too, a number of humans rights groups are concerned about the disproportionate number of members of minority groups who are found in prisons.  They question whether this is a coincidence or the result of racial discrimination. 

A 1998 Associated Press report drew attention to the plight of the ex-prisoners of the Holmesburg Prison, in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., who sought compensation for having allegedly been used as a human guinea pig in chemical experiments while imprisoned. And what about the reintroduction of chain gains in the United States? Amnesty International reports:  "Work on the chain gang lasts for 10-12 hours often in hot sun, with very brief breaks for water, and an hour for lunch. . . . The only toilet facility available to chain gang inmates  is a portable chamber pot behind a make-shift screen. Inmates are forced to squat down on the ground in public."  Of course, not all prisons operate that way. Nevertheless, inhumane treatment dehumanizes both the prisoners and those who mete it out.  

Note: Food for thought; the criminals who did horrible crimes against people-were they humane in the way  they treated their victims? 

Next time: Can Prisoners Be REFORMED? - Is the Solution the PROBLEM?/Are Community Interests Served? 

From the Awake! magazine