After restrictions for a year do you feel more sympathy towards prisoners now?

[Gobacktothe90s]

After having restrictions on our lives for a year like when we can go out and see people, whether we can work or go to school etc I'm wondering had this changed anyone's views on prisoners and that they maybe don't have it that easy in prison being locked up 23 hours a day and only allowed out for meals and sometimes exercise?

I have to admit going through this past year I have thought without being able to do what I wanted in my own house like reading, Netflix, gaming etc after being restricted outside I would have found very hard and couldn't imagine being in prison with having nothing to do and can understand the high mental health problems in prisons.

Do you feel more sympathetic towards prisoners now?
Yes I know they have committed crimes but through this pandemic I read that they haven't even been allowed to mix at all and have meals in their cell to avoid the spread. I cannot imagine being in a cell eating,drinking and sleeping and that's it.

Lol no

Not at all.

No.

No

No , don't be ridiculous.

No.

No

I have more sympathy for animals in zoos and factory farms. Prisoners no.

No, not at all.

No, utterly unrelated ideas!

It has never crossed my mind to compare our experience to that of prisoners.

We can go for long walks, we can go to the shops, we can care for a relative or go to work. We can eat and drink whatever we like and whenever we like.

Simple.

If you can't do the time - don't do the crime!

Actually yes. Maybe not sympathy- but at least a questioning as to whether being "locked" up is the best route for punishing people- if the end result is that their mental health is more in tatters at the end of their sentence.

@KeyboardWorriers

It has never crossed my mind to compare our experience to that of prisoners.

We can go for long walks, we can go to the shops, we can care for a relative or go to work. We can eat and drink whatever we like and whenever we like.

Yes good points but I'm wondering that so many people have found it so hard over the last year and we have more freedom than prisoners whether it has changed their views or not towards them.

@gettingusedtothelimelight

Simple.

If you can't do the time - don't do the crime!

I'm not saying they should be let out and all is forgiven. I'm just asking whether this past year has made you think actually prison isn't as easy as you might have thought.

The massive difference is that the overwhelming majority of prisoners made a decision that caused them to end up there. You can't compare a (pretty mild) lockdown with a prison.

I also have never thought prison was "easy". Surely the point is that it's not easy, hence why most people would like to avoid it!

Absolutely not.

Nope but then I’ve never thought that prison was easy

No, they are being punished for a reason.

No. Prison isn’t exactly something I think about often so no.

No.

Out of all of the groups of people I feel sympathy for, of which there are many, prisoners are not one of them.

Nope because a prisoner can to a certain degree rationalise their situation with logic; at this point I can’t. A whole ducking year, destroyed education, wrecked businesses all for a virus that is highly unlikely to harm me or my children....do not get it!

Even strict lockdown rules are nothing like prison regime, and only a very few have ever had to go to a quarantine centre (some from China early on, just begging for other travellers now)

Everyone else has been able to stay at home (yes, some more comfortable than others, but none a prison) and everyone has been able to go out daily, except the shielding CEV from March-June last year

I think so many pretty serious things don't result in a prison sentence so if you actually are in prison then you must have really put yourself in that situation and I think crimes should have consequences. So I don't have sympathy for them.
That said, it does make me think that earlier societal interventions for people who are heading in that direction are woefully lacking, so rather I would wish that fewer people were in there (because they got more opportunity to straighten out earlier in life) in the first place.