"So, Jim, what do you think people should be doing when they're incarcerated?"
$64,000 question Joe - you don't turn them out resentful by giving them menial tasks
Training, education, even voluntary or charity work, if possible, but it needs to be s planned out scheme to fit them for life outside and they should have some say in what they wish to do
"do you really think it's better for these people to spend their incarceration time watching television?"
The fact that you need to ask that question is proof that rehabilitation has not been built into the system - are they really the alternatives?
I know from reports that they are in British prisons, that is why we have so many recidivists.
Prison here has never moved beyond the idea of retribution - I tend to think
that goes for much of the U>S. system where, in the states that have retained the barbaric practice of capital punishment, relatives of victims are invited to watch the execution.
Now there's a thought - perhaps prisoners might be put to work preparing and packing popcorn to sell at the show.
You had (and may still have) the chain-gangs, we had the treadmills
It really is time we moved on and treated crime as something that might be cured - though that would take a change of system to even think about that
In the meantime.....!
Jim Carroll