California must free thousands of inmates

[TheNewGirl]

Well I do accounting now but work consumer/industry/trade.

And I agree, oh boy how I agree we need tradespeople, though in my experience it's always been the higher educated tradespeople that are the most in demand.(My last company had to hire outside of the country and bring people to Canada to specialized technicians.)

I have no objection to them doing labor jobs. Like I said, I think it's the approach to it that's the most important part. What ever they do it's got to be something that feels like a learning experience and an accomplishment - be it making furniture or growing crops or making cabinets or making clothes. It's just got to be something that inspires a feeling of pride and contribution.

[Walperstyle]

On the other end though, here in Alberta, we had Children cleaning the highways on the weekend as volunteers.

I'm a firm believer that Inmates should do that though, at least once or twice.

Prison shouldn't be all glory and education. Then really, what would be the point of us to take out student loans and go into debt when the prison offers it for free. Catch my drift.

[Death2Theft]

If single moms would stop saying " i dont need a man" and squirting out the next generation of criminals we'd have more room for quality education.

Originally Posted by TheNewGirl

Additionally the BIGGEST factors in preventing crime are education and community/family involvement. If we work on improving our education system and ensuring that all children in our country have equal access to it and what ever support they need, then we can take a bite out of crime before it happens. But the other, bigger step is supporting families with children who are starting to display dangerous behavior at a young age, and proving alternative activities for youth that are actually appealing to them (I know a lot of community programs are well meaning but I think too many of them miss the mark).

Majin> I did my degree in Psych but I only took one course psych involving criminal behavior. I do remember that rehabilitation rates are higher in productive programs (so in prisons that do have work programs, such as the prison farms program I mentioned earlier) and prisons that have education and drug rehab programs. Typically this is all most successful in minimum security institutions (both because you have a less violent population and because their time there is so short that they always have it in sight, they know what they do impacts that greatly).

Larger, Max Security prisons actually tend to force criminals to become better criminals to protect themselves. This is one of the reasons I object to the larger prison facilities that Harper wants to build. In smaller facilities, this can be mitigated to a degree but the larger the population, the harder it gets to be to do this.

[flagella]

Originally Posted by Supafly

Honestly imo, this would save us a lot of money....should be used for convicted rapists, murderers, molesters, drunk drivers.




It would save us a whole of tax money.

You wanna volunteer cleaning up the mess?

Much easier with a bullet, like in China.

[TheNewGirl]

Originally Posted by Death2Theft

If single moms would stop saying " i dont need a man" and squirting out the next generation of criminals we'd have more room for quality education.

Are you crazy? Our population growth is negative in this country, do you know that?

We actually don't have enough babies. Without people coming into the country we would be in decline.

It has nothing to do with "not having enough room".

[quasi]

Originally Posted by flagella

You wanna volunteer cleaning up the mess?

Much easier with a bullet, like in China.

Bullets cost money, make the inmates clean the mess.

[TheNewGirl]

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/p...p-the-province

Interesting article given we've just been talking about this:

Hudak proposes modern-day chain gangs
Published On Fri May 27 2011

Inmates from a sheriff's community service program clean Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans the day after Mardi Gras, March a, 2006.

Inmates from a sheriff's community service program clean Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans the day after Mardi Gras, March a, 2006.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Richard J. Brennan and Rob Ferguson Staff Reporters

Tim Hudak says convicted provincial prisoners should be working on modern-day chain gangs cleaning up Ontario highways, not watching TV and taking yoga classes.

The Progressive Conservative leader said Thursday that if a Tory government is elected Oct. 6, about 2,700 inmates serving sentences in provincial jails will be forced to work up to 40 hours a week, replacing the voluntary program that exists now.

“It makes a lot of sense to ask prisoners who have taken from society to give something back: to clean up that graffiti, to start picking up the trash, raking leaves, cutting grass,” Hudak told reporters, pegging the cost at $20 million a year.

Critics say such bumper sticker politics sound great but in reality it would be an unwieldy and costly program that would need a large number of extra guards.

“I thought Tim Hudak was running for the premier of Ontario, not the governor of Alabama,” said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

Hudak’s tough-on-crime announcement was timed to gain the party maximum attention as the Tories head into a weekend convention at the Toronto Congress Centre, where more election policies will be unveiled.

The Liberal government later warned that Hudak’s plan is a reckless “catch-and-release approach” that will put Ontario families in danger by having convicted drug dealers, burglars, sex offenders and people convicted of violent assaults on the streets.

“It means a lot of characters you wouldn’t want to see in my neighbourhood or your neighbourhood,” said Community Safety and Corrections Minister Jim Bradley.

“What we have here is a failure to think an issue through,” said Bradley, paraphrasing an iconic line from the classic chain-gang movie Cool Hand Luke.

“The public expects governments to keep convicted criminals who could be a danger to our society behind the high walls, behind steel bars.”

Hudak emphasized he doesn’t care if the policy tramples on provincial or municipal union contracts, saying more help is needed cleaning up dirty roadsides and unkempt parks.

“He would be better served to focus on strategies to create good jobs rather than destroying good jobs,” said Mark Ferguson, president of Toronto Civic Employees Union Local 416, which represents the city’s outside workers.

“The crews in Toronto do an excellent job. Toronto is one of the cleanest cities on the continent.”

New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath said she’d rather put unemployed Ontarians back to work in such jobs than have prisoners do them.

“That would be my priority,” she told reporters at a Canadian Union of Public Employees convention.

The Hudak policy hearkens back to 1995, when then Tory leader Mike Harris was swept to power promising a tough-on-crime agenda and tax cuts. In 2002 the Tory government introduced legislation on inmate work gangs but didn’t follow through.

Hudak boasted his would be the first mandatory program in Canada, replacing a voluntary system that now has a small and specially chosen number of inmates rewarded with jobs in jail kitchens, laundries and shops making licence plates.

The Maplehurst jail in Milton, for example, has a “work gang” of four inmates cutting grass in a nearby cemetery and shovelling snow at a seniors’ home.

To be part of the work gang, “you have to be the cream of the crop,” said Dan Sidsworth, head of the corrections division of OPSEU, which represents jail guards.

This spring, the Tories released documents obtained through access to information laws that yoga and creative writing classes were being offered in some provincial jails by volunteer organizations such as the Elizabeth Fry Society. The government said the free services help rehabilitate inmates.

Conservative concerns in April about prisoners being able to watch premium cable channels on TV prompted the government to scrap the services — which, ironically, had been put in place by the previous Tory government after programs to keep inmates busy were axed in spending cuts.

People familiar with the provincial prison system, in which the longest sentence is two years less a day, said Hudak’s work gang policy isn’t as simple to implement as it sounds.

Jails are designed so a relatively low number of guards can keep their eyes on large numbers of prisoners. As well, the two-thirds of prisoners in Ontario jails who are waiting for trials and sentencing would not be eligible for the work gangs.

That means jails would have to have enough guards to stay with them and others to take inmates outside the walls to various locations, along with the need to screen inmates for potential security problems such as rival gang members serving on the same work detail.

“The logistical challenges are tremendous,” said Paula Osmok, executive director of the John Howard Society. “It would make more sense to fund more programs for inmates to work within the prisons.”

[dangonay]

^ While I don't agree with this "chain-gang" approach, or forced labour, I also don't agree with the BS spin the writer is trying to put on it either. First this is a provincial program, and only affects inmates serving less than two years.

The writer goes on to say that this program will put Ontario families in danger by having convicted drug dealers, burglars, sex offenders and people convicted of violent assaults on the streets.

Clearly he doesn't know much about the provincial system. People who commit serious offences like he has listed do not go to provincial jails since they rarely get sentences of less than 2 years to qualify going to a provincial facility. The whole purpose of having provincial jails is so you can send first time offenders or offenders convicted of less serious crimes to serve time in a lower security institution. Provincial jails are not filled with hardened criminals. So trying to say letting inmates from provincial jails out to work is putting the public at great risk is just fear-mongering.

Originally Posted by TheNewGirl

Frankly, as long as our penal system's focus is punishment, and not rehabilitation, the crime problems are not likely to change much.

Where the hell did you get this idea from? Have you even read the Mission Statement of Corrections Canada? The word "punishment" doesn't even appear. Here's the short version, direct from their website:

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), as part of the criminal justice system and respecting the rule of law, contributes to public safety by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens, while exercising reasonable, safe, secure and humane control.

Corrections Canada has many goals, but the two primary ones are:

- Rehabilitation of offenders. This is done through programs such as drug addiction counselling, education or job training.
- The protection of society. This is where offenders who are a risk to society are kept locked up in prison. Either for life (murderers or violent sex offenders) or for a period of time sufficient to allow for rehabilitation.

"Punishment" is not one of their "goals", although I'm sure people would think even going to jail is a form of "punishment".