The young and the worthless
What's wrong with this picture?
"Ten-year jail terms have been handed down to three men convicted of trying to murder a man when violence erupted at Wellington Oval...[The defendants] waved to friends and relatives who packed the public gallery, and were loudly cheered as they left court and their prison van drove away."
"Loudly cheered"? Why are these people apparently hailed as heroes by their families instead of being disowned?
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Mostly thugs and other social misfits do not like to have their pictures in the newspaper and often try to cover their faces or try to attack the photographer.
The crowd who cheered the result of the Rebecca Middleton case gave the Black Power salute and was photographed doing it.
Apologists for our disgusting behaviour hate to have photographs of it shown in the media reflecting the comments shown by some in this blog.
Regrettably prison today has changed and is no longer a place likely to change many.
In fact the entire Judicial system is a total horses ass in my opinion.
First you have prisoners on remand for unbelievable periods of time and so when sentenced time in custody is deducted as was case the other day the convict had almost served his time as time off for good behaviour was taken into account etc.
Remand prisoners cannot be treated like other prisoners and can have their own food sent in etc !
The present method of time off for good behaviour is absurd.
One should have to serve their full time and time added on for bad behaviour instead as the idea of rewarding one to behave when that is the whole idea of putting them in prison is a joke !
Westgate today is not really in the hands of the prison authorities it is dominated by gangs and is on the verge of becoming totally out of control.
Drugs have corrupted the system and drug use is rife there and in fact in every other dept prison farm womens prisons etc.
Discipline the very base of any correction institute is almost non existent and guards are seen lounging about in town with inmates improperly dressed and breaking rules.
Training classes are failing and improperly administered.
If prisoners were not so pampered they would be willing to change attitude to get out of their cells to attend but they are well catered to so its no longer a privelege as it was in my time attending my classes in Casemates.
The general public basically know fuck all about our prisons and the authorities are more than happy to keep it that way as it is a total failure and unlikely to change any time soon with a public as apathetic as we are here.
Posted by Bill Cook on 22.12.05 at 21:47
Prison does not actually do anything. It just "suspends" people. They are out of the system. The system does not want them and has the money to remove them. Prison does not improve the prisoner, it just turns him off for a while. It proposes the conciet that all humans have an on/off switch and proceeds as if this were true.
He have yet to come up with a better solution. Or rather the only solution is to educate children and strengthen the social institutions that are a part of child developement.
That will reduce prison populations but not illiminate it. I don't think we have an alternative. Prisons are dumb, they always fail and yet we have no other solution. Cililization is violent. Far more violent than uncivilized societies.. Prison's prove the point. So do wars and other things civilizations do well, that are inherently violent.
And I suppose it is no wonder that a good part of the population, especially that part that goes to jail a lot, will resent the justice system's obvious flaws.
The people cheering outside court houses for criminals have been doing that for centuries.
And they have always been half right. But since we have no workable alternative yet, we shall have to always disagree with them.
Posted by blovator on 23.12.05 at 03:23
Not quite true,
Once upon a time we had a functioning senior training school for young offenders.
This school had a time frame of from 9 months and 3 yrs to retrain inmates to behave in society.
It was very successful and I was happy to serve in it and even happier to see my former pupils doing so well though as m,any sing out to me in town I have difficulty in remembering who it is after all that time.
That is no longer in operation sadly and the carpentry shop and masonry classes etc closed plus the mentoring that was given to these young men.
Thats called prevention and no prison record was attached to them on release etc.
Prison is not a cure all but it can and must be significantly improved and punishishment is part of the rehabilitation.
Prison should be a place that you would rather avoid at all costs going to which is not presently the case.
The problem is that running a real Prison successfully is very hard work but if discipline is restored and maintained the work is substantially reduced.
The true enemy of progress is APATHY.
Posted by Bill Cook on 23.12.05 at 09:06