In fact by doing this the priest or ministers in todays times will use this to promise you if they send money to there ministry God will reward them back 1,000 fold and they use scriptures taken so far out of context it makes you want to throw up. Mike Murdock one of the bigges false ministers who sells the buy a prayer from God lives in a 5 million dollar home. Also look up the rest of these charletons homes that preach the prosperity gospel and they all own over 2 million to ten million dollar homes.

Unfortunatly it is the poor who are desperate and believe them. PT Barnum said there is a sucker born ever day and these men and women will burn in the deepest and hottest parst of hell. I got off of the subject sorry but as I said prisons are for punishment and not rehability plain and simple.

Virtually every “normal” person has an aversion to hurting and killing other human beings. This aversion is what produces the normal civil society that we have. We don’t have to worry so much about random people hurting and killing us, not because there are laws against it, but because most people don’t want to do such things because it makes them feel terrible. Giving people who enjoy hurting people a justification for doing so under the cover of law is a terrible idea because they will come to enjoy it more and won’t limit their torture to only legally sanctioned torture.

The purpose of basic training is to “break” the normal aversion to killing other human beings and then program them so that soldiers are able to kill “the enemy” easily and efficiently. The problem for soldiers is that after their tour of duty they are not “deprogrammed”, and the aversion to violence against other humans is not restored. That is part of what PTSD is. The long term changes in neuroanatomy that result from living in a war zone and killing people.

Some of the people who ran the death camps in Germany in WWII couldn’t take it and then volunteered for the Russian front which was essentially certain death. They effectively committed suicide. Suicide is a leading cause of death for veterans.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml

The purpose of “punishment” in the criminal justice system isn’t to deter crime. The purpose is to dehumanize criminals, to push them to the bottom of the social hierarchy so that people above them can think to themselves “I am not like them, this will never happen to me” and also to elevate those who do the punishing to the top of the social hierarchy.

In the limit, individuals are dehumanized so much that they are no longer human and so can be killed. That is the goal of every instance of dehumanizing and of bullying. Dehumanize the individual enough so they are at the bottom of the hierarchy and can be maltreated and even tortured and killed. Blacks were once at the bottom, and at the bottom they were enslaved. Women were at the bottom too. In some places women still are.

There are ways to rehabilitate criminals, but it entails doing the opposite of punishment and torture. Rehabilitation doesn’t move anyone down the social hierarchy and it doesn’t move anyone up. That is why rehabilitation has such a low priority in the criminal justice system. The goal isn’t the absence of crime, the goal is to use the “system” to move up the social hierarchy.

At least through medical experimentation these dregs have some hope of serving some sort of a purpose in society, and can be proud of their role in advancing human medicine. Also, by contracting them out to pharmaceutical companies, they can help to offset some of the financial cost which they have inflicted upon the non-criminal taxpayer. If they are unfit for medical experimentation they should simply be shot in the head. White collar criminals should not be exempt from this.

Anyone who disagrees is a fool. Feeding, housing, and clothing these parasites should not be a burden that is borne by me or any other taxpayer who does not engage in criminal activity.

Before joining general population, I was stripped naked, made to take a shower in scalding water, and washed with a harsh soap. I’m sure designed to limit (not eliminate, which would be impossible in a lock-down facility,) antibiotic-resistant staph infections, which were prevelant enough to warrant a pamphlet. Staph costs lives and limbs, which would seem an extreme punichment for any crime short of murder, but is acceptable as a necessary side effect of imprisonment.

Despite someone’s thought that prison rape is a fantasy of the writers on Oz, that, also, merited a seperate pamphlet, with suggestions for avoiding involuntary sodomy.

I don’t know of any judge who would advocate that violation, even in retribution for a rapists’ crimes. Even so, a judge would, presumably, pre determine the appropriate duration, location, and medical concerns involved.

Finally, this experience was BEFORE a trial, before I was “proven guilty in a court of law.” Before I faced a jury of my peers.

Torture seems a little less evil, when you look at both sides of the issue. A caning seems downright humanitarian in comparison.

Unless we can garuntee no rapes, infections, and beatings, imprisonment seems worse than torture, because it’s inflicted randomly and without concern for benefit or rehabilitation. No-one is stepping in to end this expiriment, and it’s high time we did.

(I don’t advocate torture, or corporal punishment, but I think the current option is worse, in many ways.)

Many convicted criminals, however, don’t pose a risk to society. Men convicted of securities fraud, for example, are frequently barred from the stock market and so their freedom won’t endanger society.

So you propose torture only for white-collar criminals? In what way are they not a risk to society upon being freed? It would seem they’d be just as likely to re-commit their chosen crime as a non-white-collar criminal would be. In what way is torture a better deterrent, especially, if, as your comments suggest, the criminal would prefer torture over imprisonment?

And given that the knock on white-collar sentences is that the criminals are shuffled into ‘Club Med’-style prisons, why do you think a sentence of torture would amount to more than a slap on the wrist?

Personally, I don’t look to the prison system to provide retribution or much of a deterrence. That’s for medieval types. Prison is about incapacitation, and, hopefully, rehabilitation. And, yes, I’m willing to pony up for that, just as you’re willing to pony up to send a huckster back out on the street to bilk us all out of money through the back door by pretending you’ve deterred him. Just because it doesn’t show up on the budget doesn’t mean you didn’t pay.