AIBU to wonder why we care so much about overcrowding of prisons?

[Ellie126]

Just that really. It’s prison. For people that have committed horrific crimes. Why are we giving it a second thought? Granted, I know some crimes are less ‘severe’ than others but they should still serve the sentence they were given. I can’t believe this is even a political issue right now!

if overcrowding is really issue, should capital punishment be given to the most SERIOUS offenders? For example for the two men that abused and assaulted that poor adopted boy. If they’re taking up space… that would solve the issue? They have no place in society and we certainly shouldn’t be worried if they feel cramped!!

At a very basic level OP they can’t fit any more beds inside the prison cells. They’ve already squeezed two (small) single beds in what should be a one person cell, so there’s already no floor space. A third and fourth prisoner would need to either share a single bed with the existing cell mate or sleep on the narrow bit of floor between the two existing beds. They’ll end up murdering each other and killing themselves at even higher rates.

I think it's because people think if they're full where can they put all the dangerous people? It makes people think there are people that should be in prison who are walking the streets.

It's not because they care about the conditions the prisoners themselves are enduring.

There should be many aspects to the treatment of criminals. I would start with

Punishment.
Restitution
Rehabilitation

Now if you think it should only be punishment (some people can only count to one) then you can skip the following question. However, if you still have your socks on the what do people feel should be the split (or any additional factors ?) ?

Punishment - 50%
Restitution - 25%
Rehabilitation - 25%

If you want radical solutions, why not privatise our prisons. and pay them on a results basis. Give them £150,000 per year per prisoner. But if that prisoner gets out and commits another crime they have to pay it all back. With interest.

Because overcrowding, apart from its immediate dangers, increases violence and criminality. Most prisoners will eventually be released, and if they have been living in inhumane and violent conditions, will come out worse than before. And most prisoners have not committed truly horrific crimes; should non-violent offenders, the unjustly convicted, and those on remand who are eventually acquitted or given non-custodial sentences, be put at the mercy of the most violent? Not to mention the dangers to prison staff.

I don't think indiscriminate early release is the solution; we need to build more prisons- and also to find better ways to prevent crime in the first place.

Because it's fucking horrible and does no good whatsoever, in fact it only makes things worse.

Not an alleged racist. An actual racist, one convicted of inciting racial hatred. Again you're minimising her crime.

Why choose her as your example of someone unfairly imprisoned?

Judges aren't in change of sentencing guidelines. They interpret them for the case they are judging. There's an independent council for sentencing guidelines. A quick Google would have told you that.

Because it's a shit dangerous job being a prison officer made more shit and more dangerous if the place is a powder keg caused by overcrowding and bad conditions .

As PP have said, prison is not the punishment. The punishment is the deprivation of liberty. There are zero benefits to making people’s experiences of custody more onerous (whether this be by failing to address overcrowding or removing other privileges such as gym access) - unless the aim is revenge? As others have pointed out above, poor conditions = increased recidivism / violence / mental distress and also negatively impact staff who work in prisons. And - aren’t we human?

I am always fascinated by those who extol prison as a comfortable and attractive option (games consoles inevitably come up). Why aren’t you all blithely offending away to prompt a stay at His Majesty’s Pleasure? For most of us with a lot to lose (jobs, family ties etc) it’s a risk we wouldn’t consider. But if you don’t have a foothold in society the structure and stability - and relative safety - might seem like a legitimate choice. How does it make any sense to respond to that by making prison worse?

Because we are supposedly a civilised country.

Though I do wonder sometimes if we are becoming much less civilised these days.

So do I. Someone commented last night that they don’t recognise the country they grew up in and I feel pretty much the same. I think we’re very clearly a far less civilised society than we were when I was young back in the dark ages.

Some of the posts on this thread suggest that might be true

I feel sorry for the officers. It's not a job for alot of people. Even if they build more prisons, they need to be staffed.

If you read up on it new prisons are currently being built but it takes time
Not only that they need staff
Funnily enough it's not a very popular job .

What about the victims human rights?

What about them? How would ill treating prisoners improve them?

And apparently suggesting rounding up prisoners and taking them out and shooting them doesn't breach talk guidelines either.

If they did so repeatedly yes. The starting point should be a non violent first offence gets community service and a tag. Then escalate appropriately. I can't believe the minister's wife a few years ago got a custodial sentence for a traffic offence < well perverting the course of justice, but regarding a traffic offence. Judges unable to understand context it seems>. Absolutely ridiculous. Then they wonder why prisons are full.

Releasing violent repeat offenders early should not be an option, not sending those committing minor offences to prison in the first place should be.

If you take someone's life shouldn't you lose you human rights. You took theirs away.
It's your look out then what happens to you after that.
Have you ever had a family or friend murdered?

Once again how would removing prisoners’ human rights improve those of their victims? It’s a simple question.

Are you familiar with the Athena Strand case in Texas? (I don’t know how much international attention it got.) Athena Strand was a seven-year-old girl who was kidnapped from her front yard by a delivery driver. There’s video footage from his truck’s camera of him kidnapping her. Eventually he covered the camera, but the audio continued to record. This terrified little girl is asking him if he’s a kidnapper, and sobbing, and saying she wants her mother, while the driver makes sexual demands and beats her before eventually strangling her to death. He led police to her body, which showed at autopsy that his DNA was on her. He later pled guilty to Athena’s murder. A jury voted for the death penalty and now he’s awaiting execution.

It’s always irrefutable until it turns out not to have been? No, sometimes it’s fucking irrefutable. Let’s not pretend that every inmate on death row is falsely accused or improperly convicted.

First of all, human rights are for all humans, and if we take them from some, we risk losing them for all (do we really trust governments to choose which people deserve human rights?) Secondly, most people in prison are not murderers,

The implications on the volume of these early releases has significant repercussions on those that work in Probation, Housing, Police, Social Care and Health, that many staff in these sectors are just leaving. Trying to manage the risk for those that have been in prison for all of 30 seconds is impossible.

The reoffending rates speak for themselves.

Well done Andy Burnham let’s hope by putting a pause on this, there can be wider research into the implications. Too little too late for far too many victims and their families though.

Surely the priority should be on hard-working, law-abiding people and not law-breakers? They just have to be dealt with in whatever way is cheapest and least inconvenient for decent society,

Absolutely, and it’s clear from the OPs comments that she cares not one iota for the men and women working in our prisons. Keep filling them up and we know what happens.

As a job, does the OP expect them to work in any conditions, the worse the better, so that inmates suffer enough to satisfy the OP. Consequences on the workers, so what, they chose the job.

It's not that we've got jobs and family ties, we value our freedom and we most importantly we make a choice not to commit crime and upset others lives as well as our own own and our families.