Part of the idea of incarceration should be to protect the public from predators.

Maybe we should be looking at a suggestion made on the Mudcat government thread of making criminals pay full reparation to their victims, which might just go to show some that crime really doesn't pay, particularly if they get that lesson at an early age. If they were taught a skill at the same time some of them might just end up as useful members of sosciety.


The really dangerous ones, serial killers, child molesters, rapists and the like really do need, IMHO, to be put away for life, to make sure that they can't hurt anyone else. There have been too many cases of these people, particularly child molesters and rapists, being set free, only to go on to more serious crimes. I must say that, for murder, where there is no doubt of the guilt of the person, I would tend to be thinking of execution so that there was no chance of that person being let out under a more liberal regime at some point in the future, but that is an argument that just goes round and round with not a lot of movement amongst those for and against.

Maybe we should be making prison more draconian, less a 'hazard of the job' as some criminals seem to think of it. While some may be capable of changing as a result of their loss of freedom it seems that others just find it an opportunity to hone their skills from more experienced inmates.

There are always going to be those who will prey on others. Whether it is nature or nuture can be discussed until doomsday but the fact is that they are there and must be dealt with. I find it interesting that, at a time when there does seem to be a more liberal attitude to wrongdoers, with softer conditions in prisons than was the case for prior generations, that our prisons are full to overflowing. Anybody care to look at the correlation there?