narya wrote:Incarceration isn't just to punish people (whether or not that works). It is also to warehouse them, to keep them away from the rest of us. If someone is a serial rapist, I would not be comfortable with a flogging and release. I'm not comfortable with warehousing, either, but the third option - rehab - does not seem to be available.
Just a general comment here (not directed at you my dear) but I encourage everyone to read the article at the second link in the TP. The point of the book isn't to reinstate flogging (or corporal punishment in general) but to draw attention to the fact that NA prisons are no longer in the business of rehab. It is strictly punishment and/or warehousing. The author makes the point that keeping some kind of offenders away from the public is necessary. But if punishment is the only attainable goal of incarceration, that purpose could be better administered in other ways.
Personally I would like to see a greater emphasis on rehab but it is not happening except outside of a few special facilities. But there are two problems with even those places. One is that when returned to the public the person's life is still a shambles if not utterly destroyed by the time they lost in this race we call life in a capitalist economy. Second there is a stigma attached to the person making reintegration virtually impossible.
Furthermore, the aim of such rehabilitative centres is not well understood; many people believe that somehow prison life is a holiday at a resort of sorts. Often people believe that inmates have a higher quality of life inside prisons than they do themselves, and that prisoners do not suffer or are not punished nearly enough for their crimes.
Of course expecting such people to give a rat's behind about the impact of incarceration on the innocent members of the prisoner's family is completely out of the question. (Imagine having a parent in prison, or a son or daughter you might have expected to be able to rely on in your old age.) For this reason alone, depending on the nature of their crime of course, since rehab isn't happening anyway, it makes sense to administer punishment in as short a time as possible.
Regarding LordMorningStar's point, if a mod thinks this thread could be fit into the previous similar thread, I have no objections to it being moved there.