Re: Travellers
Originally Posted by
Dextrous63
->
Probably. Maybe spending their sentence among travellers? At least they might learn a few skills
Yes, I think that could be quite educational for them.
Now, it occurs to me that there may not at present be sufficient space in our prisons for all these additional convicts.
I have two very practical solutions to that:
1. Build more prisons, though this entails spending a lot of money. That, of course, doesn't appeal to me at all.
2. Adapt sentencing appropriately. This could include such things as hard labour, the good-old Victorian 'screw', very small cells with no amenities other than a bucket for pee and poo (and certainly no televisions or radios), segregation of prisoners with a maximum of one hour a day for solitary or very small group exercise, food delivered to individual cells to avoid prisoners meeting each other, smoking completely prohibited (which will do them the favour of helping their health), monthly visitors with glass screens to prevent touching (and passing drugs).
For more serious offences, traditional bread and water diets, corporal punishment (flogging) and, for murder, hanging until dead.
The advantages of such severe punishments are two-fold:
- shorter sentences, resulting in fewer prisons;
- the deterrence factor, resulting in fewer prisons;
- no need at all for prisons for murderers, other than for a short holding period during trial.
I'm sure I could think of more and better reasons for returning to Victorian ideals with regard to the crime problems we presently encounter, but I think that will probably do for now.