inspired once again by the stylings of EyeAm,, I have another ethical question


what is the purpose of prison?

1. to punish
2. to benefit/protect the general public
3. some other reason
4. a combination

the hypothetical is this: imagine a man has lived a passive, productive lawabiding life till the age of 24 but suddenly snaps and goes on a killing spree for 7 years,,,,he is caught and confesses, but before trial he suffers a terrible accident which completely erases his memory of any of the events and essentially reverts him back to the person he was BEFORE he snapped


will it serve some public good to still lock him up in prison? to lock him indefinitely in a mental institution? OR to lock him in an institution until an ongoing treatment plan can be implemented outpatient?


what are your reasons for the answer you have given?

to fulfill a group governing system's authority, show it has power and meaning and relevance.


I don't know.
I'm one guy.
If I can defer to a system that means I don't have to take personal responsibility for the "public good" by overseeing individuals and determining their unique subjective daily changing extenuating circumstances.
Because while this one hypothetical occurs there's going to be 10,000 other people "snapping" and doing something else.


A desire to live in practical reality.

Ideally , I would like the prison system to be punitive as well as rehabilitative. Punitive...Because i want them to be held accountable for ehat they have done.But rehabilitative in that I also want to see victims/society compensated in some way for the pain they have caused.

As for the scenario you described ....

Whether criminals go on to be reformed or not, their victims and their families continue to live with the repercussions of the perpetrator's actions . And I feel that punishment should be dispensed in the aftermath of wrong doing, if only to set the precedent to society that we must all be held accountable for our actions.

If he could snap once, he could snap again. He needs at the very least a treatment plan.

I think prison is a combination of punishment, and protection - in theory. It should be about rehabilitation, but certainly seems to lack in that area.

The entire system is broken. I think we could learn from other countries, but I don't think those in power care enough to do so.

In some cases, prison is a business and some profit from it.

money... the american prison system is privatized, so it's a corporation... so, the bottom line is profits...

mighty moe,

Is that true of the entire system, or just parts of it?

If it's all - why do so many tax dollars go to prisons?



Obviously, I do not believe it's ethical to make a profit from imprisioning anyone!

this might help...

http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry

because they still have to pay for the prisons to make a profit...

That is horrible!!!!

And that was from 3 years ago...

It should be rehabilitative/reformative for the purposes of proper reintegration into the society after they have served their term .

none of those listed since privatizing

the reasons for prisons now is to maintain an economic standard
for the companies that are contracted to run the (so called) correctional facilities

these companies actually now have lobbiest that are lobbying to
imprison people longer and for less serious offenses

you know what lobbiest get from elected officials (what ever they
can pay for)

thus while that person you know is in prison the guy in charge of
that prison's management company's kid is in an ivy league school partying
and riding around in high dollar cars and boats and such

-------------------------------------------------------------
Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . ."


https://www.aclu.org/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mass-incarceration

Prisons = Profit = Greed = Corruption. Already discussed.

If someone kills someone especially multiple homicides

AND

there is REAL proof(DNA, video, etc), NOT the anecdotal Voodoo forensic science used many times, that the person commit the murders then they should quickly be terminated. There is no putting those cracked nuts back together. Otherwise rehabilitate and release. Nobody should spend their entire lives in prison for multitudes or reasons.

It's where rich white people like to send the "undesirables" they don't want to deal with while they themselves get off scott free with much more heinous crimes then most of the people that end up there.

This hypothetical sounds awfully specific. And incomplete, too.

I have by chance, read a LOT of books about serial killers. This incomplete story, with the idea of "suddenly snapping for seven years" sounds too much like a born sociopath's cover story for having been a very problematic person for their entire life.

You don't "snap," and stay "snapped" for SEVEN YEARS. And I'm not buying the magic accident that "fixes" the person. I've read of too many serial killers who experienced convenient "memory lapses" that they translated to a reason to let them go.

On to the more general question about the purposes of prison...

It's complicated. As can be seen from the responses already, different people and different parts of our society, have completely different, and in too many cases, confused and contradictory "reasons" for having a prison system.

Some aspects of imprisoning people, are derived from punishment. That's different from what some people conflate with that, which is to give the victims and the rest of society some sense of satisfaction that they did punish someone, and made them suffer for what they did. I think it's very important to realize that those two things are entirely separate, especially since I've seen that it's actually very rare, that the ONE punishment actually works to "solve" both of the challenges that the illegal behavior caused.

In addition, one aspect of imprisoning that I don't think is attended to nearly enough, if at all, is that the existence of a punishment system, gives a lot of societies the background fantasy sort of sense, of almost a "Justice Factory" in operation. Kind of like we pay taxes as a sort of fee service like cable TV, so that a bunch of strangers will "manufacture bad guy repairs or removals." I think that that idea of turning justice into a mechanical, industrial process/service, might be what led to some places deciding to "outsource the job" to private industry. After all, we keep hearing how everything in government should be run like a business, right? Why not turn government itself INTO a business? I blame this on the failure of our overall society to educate itself ABOUT itself, and to accept personal responsibility for how we put everything together.

Anyway. I myself prefer to be extremely practical, including about using prison as a tool to deal with people who we all (or almost all) agree have wronged others. Being practical, means I want an answer to the question of exactly how prison is going to fix the problems that the criminals caused for us.

Things prison CAN do, include:

* protect the rest of us from someone who misbehaves so badly, that they hurt us often, by keeping them locked in a guarded box.

* with appropriate (and expensive) additional features, "repair" the causes of the previous misbehavior, so that the criminal can come back to the rest of us and contribute positively instead.

Now. It rarely does, because of the aforementioned lack of real thought being put into a society "doing" prison.


Things prison CANNOT do, or at least have never done, that I have witnessed, include:

* seeing to the reimbursement of the victims of crime (it's actually an additional expense to us).

* reliably change the criminal's mind about how to behave themselves.

the hypothetical is from a series I watch called 'The Fall'

in it, a man grew up with an overbearing mom who had the boy sleep with her while his 'dad' slept in the boys room, until he was 7

at which time the 'dad' left and mom shared that he wasnt really the boys dad

a week later he found is mom hanged on her bedroom door

he was sent to foster home, and abused by the pedophile headmaster for a year

he tried to have a life after, but became obsessed with womens underclothes , arranging them in the shape of his mom beside him in bed to feel comfort

he married and became a father but found himself attracted to another female, and aggressive forms of sex involving strangulation,, leading to his first 'accidental' kill which he then began to obsess over and want to experience over and over, but intentionally,,,and well into his twenties


later when caught, he confessed, but was attacked by a womans husband and died temporarily causing oxygen loss to the brain, he was revived but had lost memory of the last ten years of life

the question before the authorities was if he could receive a fair trial if he was unable to participate in the trial or remember any events,,,and whether this 'new' person/personality should still receive the punishment for what the seemingly 'earlier' person/personality did


my personal opinion/conclusion was that since the trigger of his 'snap' could not be determined it was unsafe to assume he would not be triggered again,,,and should therefore be locked away from the public,,,,,either in a mental institution or a prison

Well Harmony, I like your style. You should not emulate someone elses. 39 posts once in a while. Keep being yiur own woman. Imo

Facts are facts. If this "senario" were to happen, he must pay for his crime.
And if it happened in Texas, that dude is gonna fry. You must put the loss of life, and the loss to the families as the paramount issue. If he cant remember, that is fortunate for his consience. He wont enjoy his execution. Maybe he would realize from the evidence that he has to pay for the murderous evidence.

Is it moral to put people whom break the law in to prison, I believe it is, as a punishment and to show others in society justice has been served.

In the case of murder, the punishment should be imprisonment for the rest of their natural life . (I don't believe in the death penalty.)

In the case you mention, if the man is found guilty of murder then he must go to prison (or other institution) in my opinion, to show that justice has been served.

well you know those that he killed... the family's would want him in jail forever...or even death penalty ... I say a institution until an ongoing treatment plan can be implemented outpatient?

now not sure of ...the out patient part ... that would be a heavy burden on someone to make that decision to let him out ... might have to know what made him snap to begin with ... and a look at his brain for testing ...