Does Society Need Prisons?

[Quizzical18]

PrismaticPunishment as such seems useless to me. It never reforms anyone. I once heard a lecture by a man who had spent nearly half his life behind bars for burglary and armed robbery. He explained that criminals never expect to be caught—their minds simply do not accept the idea of being caught and punished. They constantly underestimate the chances of failure. Consequently they return again and again to the same crimes and the same punishments. To rehabilitate such a person would surely require an enormous investment of time to change that mind set.

The one thing incarceration does is remove the criminal from society and prevent his committing further crimes. In the case of violent crimes that may be justified for the remainder of life, but the goal is to prevent further crime, not to punish, which usually embitters and guarantees an eventual return to crime.

ResponseIt seems you're generalizing criminals as incorrigible beasts that needed to be locked away from society which is simply not true. They aren't a whole different species incapable of change. I'm sure that most, if not all,can be reformed. It may take a lot of money but not more than it takes now to pretend to want to change them. To prevent further crime, like you said, is to help the prisoner change there ways. I fail to see how throwing a man in a building with other criminals for the rest of his life so they can "prevent his committing further crimes" isn't a punishment or just a plain degrading.

[Prismatic]

ResponseIt seems you're generalizing criminals as incorrigible beasts that needed to be locked away from society which is simply not true. They aren't a whole different species incapable of change. I'm sure that most, if not all,can be reformed. It may take a lot of money but not more than it takes now to pretend to want to change them. To prevent further crime, like you said, is to help the prisoner change there ways. I fail to see how throwing a man in a building with other criminals for the rest of his life so they can "prevent his committing further crimes" isn't a punishment or just a plain degrading.

No, I'm saying that the only good incarceration does is to prevent further crimes. As punishment it seems to be ineffective and punishment in and of itself does not reform, but embitter. Apparently murderers are the best bet for reform—they usually commit one murder (often the wife) and never kill again. However, drug users are a very poor bet unless they get serious help kicking their habit and they are a major factor in prison overcrowding.

The cost of reform is something society has so far been unwilling to pay. Reform would require a host of services—psychological counseling, job training, health care, and especially drug detoxification. Right now prisons are so crowded that none of those services are being offered in most places. States are having trouble just housing prisoners. Here in California the courts have ordered prison populations be reduced because overcrowding is so severe that conditions are considered inhuman. Gymnasiums and libraries have been converted to additional dormitory space.

Incarceration for simple possession of drugs ought not to be a felony, but a misdemeanor. Prison sentences for possession ought to be deferred contingent on entering a program. Many states and municipalities have started "diversion" programs for minor crimes that help to avoid trials and prison sentences whenever possible, but overcrowding remains a serious problem. Much of the problem has been caused by drug-related crimes leading to rather long sentences. In some states the third conviction for a felony leads to a long sentence, but for a druggie it is not hard to rack up three convictions.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Legalizing and taxing drugs and any other consensual crimes for that matter would more than double the resources to use for rehabilitation, reform and treatment of the violent offenders and other non-incidental victimizers.

[Prismatic]

Legalizing and taxing drugs and any other consensual crimes for that matter would more than double the resources to use for rehabilitation, reform and treatment of the violent offenders and other non-incidental victimizers.

It very well might do that and should be given serious consideration.

[Altruist]

Non-violent non-victimizers: Society tends to work its way in a certain progressive state. Nothing substantial tends to transition to a new idea until there's either a revolutionary situation coming into place, or a high necessity for it to take place (like if the monetary systems crash, they may need an immediate response to replace the dollar system). When it comes to prison, the response to legalize actions known to be illegal in the country's history, it tends to transition only if it is seen as entirely harmless and fits with the country's general sense of ethics. Prostitution can be dehumanizing, and as the powerhouse of the world it would hurt the nation's pride and sense of leadership to, for no apparent reason, allow it to be legal.

Most countries look up to the United States. To see it transition to neutrality over things known to be illegal in the evolving 21 century, may show signs that it is weakening. There are many penetrations known to exist, and many penetrations that have the possibility to exist. The legalization of illegal drugs have an unpredictable consequence. Especially for a powerhouse nation. If marijuana is legal, it may affect the youth's senses once it becomes mainstream. With it being mainstream, and the general known effects of the drug come to light, and the elderly ought-weighing the numbers from the youth's workforce (baby-bloomers), society may have a terrible experience akin to Europe with it's elderly outweighing the youth. This can be one of the reasons why it goes beyond individual decisions, and requires a wide-range utilitarian viewpoint to help the nation's stability.

Accidental Criminals: This fits along with the fact that the law system believes a society finding comfort in the law will be more law-abiding. If the mother wants justice for her five year old daughter after the five year old was killed by a man who ran her over, for example. The crime will be set upon the man who ran the child over, even if it was an accident. This part is theoretical at best, but society can still work in a positive way without arresting those who have experienced these situations. What grants the human a responsibility over something beyond their possible ability to handle or control? This can include being drunk in public. The police should expect to see people walking around drunk after leaving a bar or nightclub. To arrest them for waddling and talking out of place, is unnecessary (I've seen it happen from time to time).

Incidental Criminals: That can be arguable. The law cannot go by a person's word only. If the person stole and said they did it for their family, it can be a penetration into the law, and allow a small taste of anarchy with people stealing and lying so that they will not be in trouble. Not every person is honest and wouldn't abuse the system build in the law. Violence such as domestic violence...yeah. That is something that should not be taken to light on. My mother was a victim to that, and the man who did this to her came back after six months. She would have no freedom if he were not put in handcuffs. And even then, after six months, he ends up still sticking around. Incidental crime also can include rape. The system in a government will not function without holding those accountable in a certain level of restraint. Society has never been in the past a utopia. It lacks the probability to be in the future without steps of progress taking into place.

Mentally Sick People: Majority of those who murder (unless it was by accident or a situation that was militarily necessary or in inevitable self-defense) are mentally ill. However, those who have actual documentations in their lives and excuses are more than likely in mental homes already. Then again, those who lack documentations tend to be in prison. It should be universally understood that the people who do things with obvious signs of mental illness should be treated in long terms in a mental hospital, than put into a prison system designed to lack safety from time to time.


Society actually do require prisons/jails (today, maybe not in the future). We thank the Wild West and Jeremy Bentham for the reasonings. It's the fact that the system currently lacks safety and reasons to be a prison. However, do we in fact need to hold those accountable for crimes to keep society at a certain pace in progress? Yes. I simply believe we need to changed the definition of what a prison is to be and look like.

If I were asked what it should be like: I would have answered that it should be, for the most part, a rehabilitation center of some kind, separated in levels determined by psychologist and sociologists. Depending on the crime and their mental state will determine the time period and the communication they'll require to be with a psychologist. The whole prison should then be observed by sociologists and psychologists, so that everything is done in a balance and can be closely read and be placed into the statistics for future progress. If you treat the thief's mind, the probability of him transitioning to not steal again will be high. By simply holding him in like a caged animal under constant watch, he will have a higher chance to be more of a stubborn child to society after he's released; increasing his chances to continue on stealing. A long boring lecture persuading him not to steal is better than confining him for stealing:

And on the reverse viewpoint for the prisoner's decision making skills: Theoretically speaking, if prison is seen as a boring place to learn to be persuaded not to do wrongdoings, it would be annoying like a boring day in school. It's a fact that the majority of those who do wrong in society lack the patience to stay in school. Why fall into crime if it's the same experience as going to school? It would be a conundrum. But this puzzle can be easily solved: by thinking positively. This will, on the reverse side, increase the wary's decision making skills.

With a good number of decades with this to define what a prison is to be, this can help reduce bad decision making skills and increase good decision making skills. But the real factor in prisons all depends on the economy. The worse the economy is, the more you'll see crimes come into light. So, this is also a good "delay" system as society is either going to the toilet or rising back to stability.

Until the future shows signs that society cannot be affected by petty crimes, holds a strong and reliable youth and a mainstream lacking in foolishness, will things begin to loosen up in the government. Everything requires steps to progress to see a progress. Even my little idea on what I believe a prison may be more nice than the current system, and progressive in terms of enlightening a prisoner, it may not come into light maybe, give or take, possibly one-hundred years or so.

It helps if you think like a futurist. The key goal is to turn a prisoner of today into a positive thinker tomorrow with good decision making skills, being just the first step to having no need of prisons. Trying to reduce too soon or all at once, even if you did it for individual freedom, can lead to increasing the possibility of anarchy.

[Grotto19]

About reform and insanity. You can make a blanket statement about every deliberate criminal being insane, but that in turn massively multiplies the number of "insane" people. The number of people who are kind is directly proportional to the number who are cruel. Likewise with any attribute such as greed and charity, or envy and humility. These are often not insanity but simply the persons character. Changing ones character takes many years (if even possible). For people who are too far deviated in cruelty(murder, rape, assault), envy(vandalism, theft) or greed (drug dealing, "cooking books") a threat of actual punishment is likely needed to discourage this undesirable behavior. Telling a child you are very disappointed in them works sometimes, but when it doesn't sometimes they need a time out or a spanking. It is not so different with adults.

[Altruist]

Indeed. Rather than put them in the mindset that they're experiencing a time out however, the system I suggested would put them into a period of restoration. It will imply to them that they are out of touch, give them the time to actually think why they are in prison in the first place. It's a fact that most of the time it actually takes veteran prisoners, after so much trouble for so many years, to finally realize who they are and will experience periods of wisdom and try to teach other prisoners their way of thinking if the prisoners are willing to listen. The suggestion quickens the process of probability to have wiser prisoners. With a prison designed for prisoners to improve their thinking more than feel punished like a child would be interesting. It changes the perspective of what a prison ought to be entirely.

Some may criticize and think it's trying to be a revolutionized psychiatry ward, however that's narrowing the perspective of it all with one word. The word alone doesn't define the whole picture on how it can positively affect the future for societal improvement.

The truth is, the child of a particular environment was built by that environment (sociology), whether it be at home or outside of home. The levels on how they function in that environment depends on their mindset (psychology). The person who deals drugs more than likely knows their morals and know what their doing is wrong, but is willing to earn money in exchange to reduce the mind of another person to scrambled eggs, which happens to be immoral from a universal point of view. The psychologist's job is to help them understand their own mindset, why did they do their crime, and suggest the mind to think outside of the box while they're in this new idea of a "prison". If the prisoner also is taught how this can affect the environment they're in, it could widen their perspective on their actions and increase the reduction of said crime. Psychologists and sociologist observe all of this, and improve their data for future workings.

All kinds of personalities could dwell inside the prisons, but they all can be transitioned with enough time placed upon them. And be released with a different mindset without the need of being drugged. Then there's the fact that many people who tend to go to prison for the excitement (the ones who are known to go in and out of prison) would avoid prison for the fact that it would be like going to a boring school for several years. Not saying everyone will, but I would believe it will increase the probability. Many who are in prison today come out and do more crimes because of the feeling of oppression and provocation while in prison. It's like a cycle.

And it can be fixed easily only if you redefine what a prison should be.

[Grotto19]

Your Idea is in no way wrong, however I think it would be cripplingly expensive. The form of intensive therapy your suggesting would require at the least one fully trained psychologist and perhaps four social workers to handle every 20 prisoners to affect that kind of change in a matter of 3-5 years. That is quite an expense, and i was being very conservative in the estimate. Psychotherapy is a lengthy process which requires constant supervision and many hours of sessions to see results, and that is assuming the person wants to change. I want to help criminals as much as anyone but there are limits to what is economically feasible.

[Belinda]

Telling a child you are very disappointed in them works sometimes, but when it doesn't sometimes they need a time out or a spanking. It is not so different with adults.

I agree with Grotto.In an imperfect world with imperfectly cooperating people in it, the majority have to be protected from dangerous criminals. The less prisons and the more psychotherapy we can afford is the purely practical answer to dealing with criminals.

While it is true that dangerous criminals are ultimately , metaphysically, not to blame for what they did and for their predisposition to do it again; for practical reasons we have to use deterrents and separation from society.Retribution is bad, but there is not much practical difference between retribution and deterrence, except for human rights legislation which curbs excesses of retribution such as cruel and unusual punishments and torture.

Scott wrote:

Legalizing and taxing drugs and any other consensual crimes for that matter would more than double the resources to use for rehabilitation, reform and treatment of the violent offenders and other non-incidental victimizers.

The only reason I can think of why this not done is that legislators and the electorate believe that society has to express its disapproval either for deterrence or for religious reasons. I would of course discount religious reasons, but I believe that the financial advantage with ring fencing as per Scott would outweigh the deterrence effect of criminalising druggies.

This is because I believe that good sense and reason prevail in human choices. However, I also think that education especially of children should include drug resistence. Also I believe that punitive controls have to stay in place until deprived people have less need to escape bad living conditions and have something better to live for than drugs.

I have not much, if any, sympathy for rich hedonists.

[Altruist]

Politically speaking, it can and it also cannot be expensive. You have to use both the blues and reds to find the purples. The economy is functioned like a brain. The way the brain works depends on how it's designed at birth (constitution, etc) and has adjusted to become over time as it grows up (legislations, etc). The mindset of the country of United States has been a undulation of conserving and liberating. Currently, society is more progressive than it has been in the past (look at what we find as mainstream in society), with still conservative thinking keeping things stable and liberal thinking keeping things revolutionary. As we enter into an era that's very corporate-entwined (an example of its error in 2007 crisis thanks to trickle down economics), we have to take into consideration on what is ideal for things to progress while also resting into the hands of stability.

In many ways, recreating and redefining a prison can be cheaper than what's available today. Visualize its entirety. For example, with people in a prison designed for them to learn and be wiser would mean less security. If this really was a revolutionized prison, there would be less outdoor and indoor activities, meaning less electricity, as well as lessening the death toll, the fears and security requirements. With less security, less group activities, condensed architecture, and actually be viewed as a place to restore, the number of governmental employee checks would drop in this area to only a very few people.

This idea is a reduction in governmental spending. And recreating the buildings would actually be a small bump in a smooth road of continuous reductions for years to come. For example:

If you receive 5 dollars each year, but must spend 3 dollars one year to receive 8 dollars each year, you will gain +3 dollars annually.The fear is that you will have only 2 dollars that one year, but will have much more in accumulation years on. All choices to progress to a better economy and make better decisions requires a small push before it can experience a long-term reduction for the negatives.

The fact that prisons having less numbers in staff (meaning lesser payrolls) with only the condensed buildings themselves to be expensive in that one year's cycle, it would have no affect to offend the conservative thinking processes. This is basically, what I call, a purple viewpoint.

To worry about the long-term process on how it can or cannot help improve someones decision making skills is not the point. All people are different, but the majority are fixable. If we actually try to restore the criminal mind, it can also have outsource improvement outside the prison, and help out the economy in other areas that don't necessarily involve with the prison. The workforce can improve if we actually try to help change them from thieves and killers to workers and thinkers.

In reality, anything more revolutionary than this idea may be controversially expensive, but in this sense, the purple viewpoint in how to enlighten a prisoner's mind will actually stay in the balance in accordance to how United States' economy works.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Altruist, thanks for your post, #110. I think it is a very detailed consideration that follows with agreeable conclusions. I also think you are right to qualify that abolishing prisons -- and replacing them in small part with improved mental health asylums and mental health treatment centers -- cannot be done safely too quickly and requires step-by-step progress.

***

Grotto19,

For people who are too far deviated in cruelty(murder, rape, assault), envy(vandalism, theft) or greed (drug dealing, "cooking books") a threat of actual punishment is likely needed to discourage this undesirable behavior.

Do you have any evidence that a threat of punishment (presumably execution or an unpleasant stay in a relatively, purposefully inhumane prison that generally doesn't offer much rehabilitation or mental health services) actually deters violent crime such as murder, rape, assault, vandalism and theft? (I see no reason to use the threat of prison to prevent drug dealing even if it worked as explained in my topic Macro-Criminalization of Consensual Crime, so I left that one out.)

Even if intentionally, relatively inhumane imprisonment as does deter these crimes, is it worth it? For potential logical comparison, would you support the death penalty if it was found to actually deter crime via threat*? Would you support the officially sanctioned anal rape of prisoners by guards if such a policy was found to deter crime? Would you support the policy of cutting off the hands of thieves if such a policy was found to deter crime via threat*? What about repeatedly burning a convicted pedophiles genitals with cigarettes as an official policy if it was found to deter them? (These questions might sound crude, but I am assuming there is point in your eyes where a certain level of cruelty isn't worth any level of deterrence. For me that point is point 0, philosophically, I never think cruelty can be justified by some sort of allegedly utilitarian deterrence, particularly since the one being victimized isn't the one being hypothetically deterred.)

*Note, I write "via threat" because the issue at debate at that point is whether the threat of this harm deters crime not whether the harm itself actually deters the harmed person from committing crime per se, e.g. that an executed convict can no longer commit crimes because he is dead and that the imprisoned convict can generally not commit crimes against the public at large not because he is discouraged by threats of punishment but because he is physically unable.

Telling a child you are very disappointed in them works sometimes, but when it doesn't sometimes they need a time out or a spanking. It is not so different with adults.

This is a useful analogy, but I think it speaks to the opposite conclusion. It seems to me that the science clearly shows that spanking children is utterly ineffective when not counterproductive.

In adults, a similar pattern seems to emerge in terms of recidivism. It seems to me that, all things the same, putting someone in a modern prisoner makes them more likely to commit a crime once they get out than someone not put in prison. Moreover, while there may be no way to make a statistical comparison for prisons, I think the evidence shows that the death penalty actually increases violent crime by brutalizing the culture and society, whereas the humanity of a policy strictly and unexceptionally against state-sponsored murder trickles throughout the culture into an intolerance rather than celebration of such violence. In other words, adults that metaphorically grow up in a house with spanking are more like to metaphorically grow up to be the kind of people who slap and hit others; just like when we drop the metahphore we see that kids who grow up around spanking and/or who are spanked grow up to be more likely to slap and hit others (in addition to all sorts of other negative behavior attributes).

I suspect that "do as I say, not as I do" simply doesn't work.

[Altruist's] Idea is in no way wrong, however I think it would be cripplingly expensive. The form of intensive therapy your suggesting would require at the least one fully trained psychologist and perhaps four social workers to handle every 20 prisoners to affect that kind of change in a matter of 3-5 years. That is quite an expense, and i was being very conservative in the estimate. Psychotherapy is a lengthy process which requires constant supervision and many hours of sessions to see results, and that is assuming the person wants to change. I want to help criminals as much as anyone but there are limits to what is economically feasible.

While I cannot speak one way or the other for Altruist, my proposals come with a lot of savings. The current system -- at least in the USA which has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- is not an economically feasible way to protect society from violent crime and criminal victimization. (The incredible wastefulness of the current system is great for the powers that be, though, in the ways explained more generally in my topic The Philosophy of Government Spending.) My proposal entails huge savings by legalizing consensual crimes (e.g. prostitution, marijuana, gambling, etc.) and by not using prison to deal with accidents and incidental criminals. Over a quarter of the millions of people rotting in prisons at the huge expense of taxpayers in the USA are in for non-violent drug offenses. At least 50 billion could be saved instantly just by legalizing these drugs let alone other consensual crimes like prostitution and gambling, and then those savings could be exponentially greater by considering the perhaps immeasurable savings of the strain this needless stream of criminals puts on services that cost us money, like hiring the employees who work at the courts during drug trials and so forth, as well as the potential for huge gains in taxes and regulation fees as we see with cigarettes and, where legal, gambling. There will literally be billions of dollars created through my proposal in the USA to divert towards either preventing violent crime in the first place or towards this agreeably expensive procedure of treating the minority of mentally sick people leftover who cannot be safely released into society. Let's run the unofficial numbers, though. Firstly, how much do you estimate it will cost on average to successfully deal with each leftover prisoner in the way I and/or Altruist suggest? By 'leftover prisoner', I mean the ones who are not instantly released under my plan such as non-violent drug offenders.

Thanks for your replies, Grotto19! It's always great to have a smart, stand-up guy to bounce my own ideas off of.

***

Belinda,

While it is true that dangerous criminals are ultimately , metaphysically, not to blame for what they did and for their predisposition to do it again; for practical reasons we have to use deterrents and separation from society.Retribution is bad, but there is not much practical difference between retribution and deterrence, except for human rights legislation which curbs excesses of retribution such as cruel and unusual punishments and torture.

You are right that we need to use separation from society. Indeed, even if someone was not mentally ill but contagiously sick, we would likely want to quarantine them. I think even libertarians and anarchists have to acknowledge that last point to some extent (which is elaborated on in my topic Public Health - A Gray Issue in Political Philosophy). My proposal is not to stop separating the dangerously mentally defected from society, but rather to institutionalize them in humanely-run mental health asylums where they will be treated and rehabilitated as much as possible by experts. While more expensive per inmate/patient directly, I think it will lead to at least comparable costs overall since there will be less inmates/patients and since there will be indirect savings such as through lower crime rates and no expensive prisons.

The argument for using prisons as deterrence because it is allegedly less expensive than my proposal is at the very least a point worth looking at. However, I do not see the evidence that prisons as a threat actually deter violent crime and criminal victimization. Granted, that is not really a point of philosophical dispute but rather an empirical one. I assume it follows a similar pattern as the death penalty, which is easier to study statically. We will have to scrutinize the evidence to come to an agreeable conclusion, but my preliminary hypothesis, based on my fallible recollection of the evidence I have seen here and there, would be that the death penalty does not deter crime. Philosophically, even if it did deter crime, I oppose it, both the death penalty and using the quasi-torture of prison. The main reason why is that the ones being allegedly deterred are not the ones actually being hurt. Rather, people are allegedly being deterred via threats that never need to be fulfilled by hurting other people to prove we have it in us, like a mobster who kills someone's girlfriend to prove to that someone that owes him money that he means business. I think the appearance of tolerablity and fairness stems from our minds jumping falsely to the conclusion that the harm being inflicted on the convict is connected to his own responsibility, when it really is not but is surprisingly more like that mobster example where the innocent girlfriend is attacked just to scare a different person.

I agree with your comments on drugs legalization, Belinda.

It's always great to hear from you.

***

Altruist, I also like your post #115. Unfortunately, I do not have much to say about it because I agree. I think your point about the long-term benefits of actually treating/curing the dangerous criminals which could have huge cost savings as well as immeasurable, non-financial benefits is worth repeating which is what I hope this sentence has done.

Thanks everyone for your replies!

[Grotto19]

Hi Scott as always you do make compelling points. I am a psychology student as well as sociology so I am familiar with studies like what you have presented. I think however that the scope and manner in which they are conducted is often aimed towards the desired results.

For example child studies which show positive only reinforcement often show promising results, and clearly show the negative impact of negative reinforcement. However the way these studies are conducted in order to track long term results often points much more strongly to correlation than causality. This is naturally unavoidable, but results in many outside factors (such as what type of parent leans naturally towards heavily positive and negative reinforcement and what type of role model that parent would be independent of the reinforcement at all). It can be argued that a naturally mean parent who leans towards negative reinforcement would produce a child more apt to violence or cruelty just from observation and mimicking of the parents attitude and behavior regardless of actually being subject to higher levels of negative reinforcement. There has been observation of this phenomena in cases where the "negative" parent is not permitted to enforce punishment on a child (such as a step father who the mother does not allow to punish her child).

This naturally does not discredit the study, but it does damage it's validity. Without the ability to take children into labs and raise them under controlled conditions we can not avoid this type of problem. I do however believe that positive reinforcement can be very effective on the majority of children or even adults for that matter.

But there in lies the rub. Majority and reinforcement. Criminals who defy the law today do so because they are quite likely not like the majority. Some may well be those problem children that do not respond well to positive reinforcement. Secondly is the reinforcement itself. Criminals are often receiving their reinforcement when free of prison by fellow criminals who support or even admire the behavior. This is positive reinforcement to be sure, but of exactly the type which promotes more criminal action. While in prison they still have this reinforcement but it is accompanied by the miserable experience of prison, on the outside however the reinforcement is chosen by the criminal, and he will very likely chose the ones who support his behavior.

So this begs the question; What can we do to handle the prison problem? Prisons clearly aren't working as well as we would like at all, and are terribly expensive. The alternative however seems to be actually enforcing more criminal behavior by returning them to the society which originally condoned it and rewarded the behavior, and removing the only deterrent. I feel that those currently in the norm of being lawful would more often stray without the threat of prison. I feel reform to the prison system and more effort for reform of inmates is actually needed despite the expense.


I think the only realistic results will come from an effort to change societies view of crime, an effort to educate and display positive reinforcement of right behavior in high crime areas. Media spends so much time displaying the crime and so little on people rising above it. I know the project of altering societal views is daunting, but I think our lack of this effort is the key contributor to current and future crime.

[Beyondthecave]

I imagine that it is not safe to completely do away with prisons immediately, "cold turkey", but I am in favor of whittling away at the use of prisons to the extent we can find and verify through research that there more efficient and humane responses to, and methods of reducing, dangerous, anti-social conduct. Putting a person in prison, and forcing them to live with, and be vulnerable to being injured and terrorized by, people who have cruel and dangerous dispositions, is a HORRIBLE thing to do to anyone. Calling the facility a mental health hospital rather than a prison does not make things better unless their are genuine differences that make the hospital more humane.

I think you may be overstating the extent of victimless crimes. You identify drug use, prostitution, and practicing unpopular religions as examples.

Is drug use really victimless? I do not think so. Drug use damages the brain. Drugs are low grade toxins that are potent enough to at least temporarily shut off or over stimulate parts of the brain. You should not assume that the use of such toxins does not also have permanent damaging effects. The brain has many check and balances. When you damage one part, and that part ceases to function properly, it leads to malfunction of other parts which are no longer subject to the normal checks and balances and other interactions with other parts of the brain. As a result, the person becomes less rational, less capable, and/or more dangerous. The ultimate consequence is injury to victims of later violent conduct, or hardship for those who take on the burden of caring for, or living with, the less rational, less capable and/or more dangerous person. I do not know if you are familiar with the amount of suffering that results for a person and that person's family when the person is stricken with mental illness. Permitting freer drug use would increase the incidence of such problems and increase the number of people who will have to be cared for (incarcerated) in the mental health facilities you are talking about. So I am not in favor of completely decriminalizing the use of drugs. But I would agree with you that putting people in prison for having drug addictions is not the most reasonable approach, although temporary stays in the local jail for persons who do not cooperate with drug treatment might be an option worth considering in some cases.

Is prostitution really victimless? If your spouse uses the services of a prostitute, and comes home and infects you with a deadly or debilitating STD, you will not regard prostitution as a victimless crime. How many millions of people, mostly women, have been infected in this manner? Of course, we do not hold people criminally liable for similarly reckless conduct like going to a bar and having sex with people who do the same thing on a daily basis. (Perhaps we should, although we are dealing with another form of addiction, and should accordingly prefer treatment to prison).

I agree that we should think carefully about whether prostitutes should be imprisoned. It is my understanding that more often than not, they are the victims of human trafficking (slavery) and need to be rescued and reintegrated into society rather than punished. Our local courts have initiated a treatment program to do that, and I understand it has had significant success reintegrating the women into society. The prostitutes are given a choice between jail and entering the program.

The pimp, who is generally engaged in slave trafficking, is clearly not engaging in a victimless crime, but rather is engaging in a business that involves both human slavery and the transmission of deadly and debilitating diseases.

I do not think that practicing a religion is necessarily a victimless activity either, but it is rarely the sort of thing that should be criminalized. Choosing to limit what one will believe based on factors other than reason will effect how one will act and generally lead to behavior that is less reasonable than behavior that is directly governed by reason. If there is a counter balance to the religious antipathy to reason, it is that when religion does require the same kind of conduct as reason, the motivating force of mythology and a religious community can be stronger than the motivating force of reason alone. In any event, I agree with the US Constitution that generally prohibits punishing the practice of religions except in those rare cases where it becomes violent or otherwise seriously victimizes its members or their children. Not every less than perfect behavior should be criminalized.

When you start looking at the systematic effects of behaviors, there may be fewer "victimless" crimes than you suggest there are, but in any event, I agree that we should be looking for other methods of responding to the sort of crimes that are less intentionally violent.

Moving on, I would generally agree with your notion that any crime that is not justified by circumstances is always the result of mental defects. A person does not engage in irrational activity unless they have a mental defect. A properly functioning mind chooses to behave rationally rather than irrationally. However, we are human. We all engage in irrational activity at least occasionally and we all have mental defects. There is no such thing as a perfect human brain. Furthermore, the norm for human beings is not mental health, but varying degrees of mental illness or disability. Who among us has never injured their brain, never failed on occasion to give it proper nutrition, never exposed it to damaging substances, or inherited the genes for a perfect brain? (We have a game called "football" in the US that systematically injures the brains of our young men). The lucky person who has avoided all those dangers to his or her brain would be very rare indeed. The observation of human behavior and brain scans suggest that the completely healthy brain is rare. Consequently, the question is, how do we reduce anti-social behavior in a world where most people's brains have defects that occasionally (or in some cases often) leave them disposed to choose to engage in the sorts of anti-social conduct we have criminalized? Do we say we will never punish anyone because all irrational conduct is the result of brain defects? Or do we say that since most people with brain defects can, at least sometimes be motivated to act more rationally by the threat of punishment, that we should use the threat of punishment as a deterrent of significantly antisocial behavior, especially if we can avoid applying punishment to the category of people whose brain defects are so severe that they will almost never be affected by the threat of punishment? Law in the US has generally attempted to take the latter approach, as I expect it has in most of the more liberal democratic countries. I imagine most of us would be worried about entirely giving up on the deterrence effect of punishment merely because all unjustified crime is a result of brain defects rather than the entirely free choice of healthy, non-defective brains.

[Bezelbub]

The prison system will never be perfect just like anything though it can always be improved. We need prisons as a way to get rid of those which are harmful to our society. But the real question is why should we wait for them to prove themselves as being harmful. Shouldn't we develop some way to predict them as being a threat and stop them some way. Such as with those with mental defects can receive treatment upon the soonest availability for help.

[Celtick]

After reading all of your replies to the question, I can safely assume that not one of you has experienced a crime committed against you or your family by a criminal. 1 If you have ever been assaulted or had your home broken into, your first reaction is to kill the bastards who committed the crime 2 If any of your children are harmed in any way, your first reaction is to kill the bastards who committed the crime. 3 If someone threatens your family or your way of life, your first reaction is to kill the bastards who committed the crime. So to answer the question, Does Society Need Prisons? The answer is no. Execute the bastards on the spot. Your instinctual reaction is to eliminate the threat to you and your family. If you hesitate or feel compassion towards the criminal, you put your family at risk. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.