To believe that prisoners serving life sentences shouldn’t have access to luxuries like TV or gym equipment?

[NimbleRoseMoose]

Why should taxpayers fund entertainment for people who’ve committed heinous crimes?

Seriously? Are you so lacking in imagination?

Why so nasty?

It will help mental health and physical health. Either of those deteriorating costs money.

Have you had a lot of success tackling poor literacy with that approach? Or have you found structured teaching and support more helpful?

Ridiculous response, there’s nothing nasty about this.

We’re talking about serious criminals here. Not people so desperately failed by society that they’ll commit petty crimes so they don’t starve or get hypothermia on the streets 🤦‍♀️

Think it through

violent men (and a few women) with no comforts or pleasure

how do you manage them

TV and gym equipment are luxuries? Hardly! TV is what you do when there's nothing interesting to do and gym equipment is what you use when you don't have either time or space to stay fit in any other way. I would be perfectly happy without either of those. If you don't have liberty unfortunately there's no other entertainment and no mother way to stay fit. Those are part of the punishment in my view.

You're right. Fuck em

You're right, watching TV all day is far more fulfilling than gardening or education. Do you really think there's anything actually worth watching, that they're actually interested in? I thought my suggestions would be infinitely more life enhancing and lead to better chances of rehabilitation. I was thinking of Norweigen prisons but if you think Corrie and the One Show is the best salve for a miserable life and existence then what can I say

It does have the money. It just has different spending priorities.

If they're occupied they're generally happier. If they're happier then they're generally less likely to cause problems for staff. Are you wishing for the days of slopping out and almost constant lock up?

Stupid and impractical idea.

These prisoners have to be managed. That's not an easy job, which is why we've nowhere near enough people willing to staff prisons. TV and fitness equipment are useful tools, particularly as access to them can be withdrawn as a sanction.

What are they currently spending money on which you think they could reduce? I’m always interested on people’s opinion on this. I wish their was more money for all sorts of preventive strategies like the old Every child matters.

Yes exactly the prison authorities still need to manage behaviour

It's quite common for people to have ideas about what should be done to prisoners, that aren't based remotely in reality and have no thought for the people actually tasked with managing them. See also, dragging unwilling defendants to sentencing hearings.

I work in a prison, and meet real human beings who yes, have done terrible things, but many have found themselves caught up in circumstances that could indeed happen to anyone. None of us is perfect, and all of us are capable of mistakes.

Agree with this. If gym and tv make prisoners calmer, more compliant then I'm all for it. TV I believe can be used as a reward and if poor behaviour can be threatened with removal of a tv in the cell.

I remember once someone talking that prisoners go to prison as a punishment not for punishment. And that struck me. They have had their punishment by being deprived of their liberty. I don't think all the tv in the world makes up for that.

Prisoners are often locked up in their cells for 23 hrs a day due to staff shortages. The mental health implications of having nothing to do but stare at a wall for 23 hours would be awful. Remember not all will be able to read. The health implications of no gym time would also be very bad. They can't exactly go for a walk or jog in the park.

Prison should be a balance between serving justice for victims/society through seeing offenders deprived of their liberty, keeping society safe where it's deemed some offenders are too dangerous to be left free, and rehabilitation of offenders so that they can become functional and contributing members of society.

Currently, it's failing in all these respects.

Prisons are so overcrowded and prison and probation staff so overworked that all but the most exceptionally dangerous prisoners escape with community-based sentences, and we've seen some awful tragedies as a result.

And despite the best efforts of very dedicated staff, rehabilitation in prisons is a joke. Educational and therapeutic opportunities are limited. Many are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day, with no opportunity to exercise or work on self development.

It's not making excuses but a fundamental requirement to understand what drives offending behaviours. There are very striking, way-above-average trends of substance dependency, mental illness, adverse childhood experiences, learning difficulties, lack of qualifications etc among this group. Many of them had appalling childhoods and have been let down by society long so badly that they no longer have any stake in society. The social contract no longer exists for them.

If we truly want rehabilitation, prison should be places of intense psychological therapy and education. Accompanied by good quality food and regular exercise (we all know the links between diet, exercise and behaviour). Those leaving need far better housing and job-finding support.

The fact that many people outside of prison are also denied this support is a damning indictment of society and not a justification to also deny it to prisoners.

I think the fuck em approach was tested and tried previously by banning books for prisoners. That went well.

Nobody spends enough money on criminal justice; the decision seems to have been made that spending money on rehabilitation courses in sufficient numbers or other assistance programmes is some sort of indulgence. As it is, these things are rationed out.

I’m somewhat boggled at the idea all the prisoners should be doing gardening for a substantial part of the day.

The land required would be enormous. Most prisons are in residential areas. If the government were to spend literally billions on expanding the footprint on multiple prisons by buying and tearing down the surrounding houses (or building new prisons in remote areas), the ‘lock them up and make them suffer’ types posting on this thread would throw a fit.

Add in the cost of the logistics - larger prisons need more staff. Remote prisons probably need accommodation for staff (can’t commute to far flung areas). Getting people to work in remote areas requires higher wages etc.

It’s one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface but could never, ever be put into practice for more than a tiny handful of prisoners.

Was that the Chris Atkins book "A bit of a stretch"? It sounds familiar. I read the prison diaries by Jeffrey Archer (I haven't read anything else by him), which lays bare just how terrible prisons are, and how they are universities of crime: people come out more criminally minded than when they went in. He tells of how career criminals explained their methods in detail, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. The police would know who all the big drug barons were, but would be powerless to imprison them, because "Mr Big" would never get his hands dirty, and always have minions to do his work for him.

There's also "The Loose Screw" written by an officer. Did your DP escape the possibility of prison?

I’m somewhat boggled at the idea all the prisoners should be doing gardening for a substantial part of the day.

Me too. The big Victorian prisons don't have a single patch of green in them, nor can they.
I have some experience of prisons and detention and so many of these suggestions are just laughable, for reasons of cost, of staffing, of the nature of the buildings, of security, of the sheer numbers of prisoners.

And of course if the money was found, for any of them, there'd be even more OPs like this one.
TVs and gyms are cheap, don't need much in the way of staffing, and keep the inmates reasonably calm and manageable.

I used to be a prison lecturer.
without TVs (very basic TVs that the individual has to pay a TV licence for) and access to (the most basic - a treadmill and cross trainer) gym equipment, then what can individuals be rewarded with if they behave well?
Each inmate at my prison was issued a basic set of clothing and given a small amount on a spends account (Americans may know this as commissary) upon entering the system.
They are then educationally and medically assessed and streamed into different educational classes and work depending on their ability/crime/skill set etc. So for example someone could be a wing cleaner in the morning and come to ESOL lessons in the afternoon or do a Media Studies degree in the morning and garden in the afternoon.
We often had football matches with officers and teachers against the inmates, basketball tournaments etc, as this covered their PE requirement - as stipulated by the government.
The “punishment” is being locked away from friends/family/girlfriends/babies/siblings etc, not removal of all sources of entertainment. Not the removal of rights to an education or the right to work.

Yes, this sort of thing is a very expensive and more importantly disruptive luxury. It's always very obvious when no thought has been given to the logistics.