The Unworthy Gentleman said:
Therumancer said:
Incorrect, that's a common liberal belief though.
Snip.
If you think your going to spend years in the cube, as opposed to playing basketball, swimming in a pool, or attending free classes, a lot of people are going to have to re-evaluate the risk-reward ratio of a lot of crimes. This won't end crime, but I do think the supercube will prevent a decent number of them due to fear, if it was ever implemented. The people coming out will feel it forever, and probably not want to risk ever being sent back.
Yeah, I snipped all that out because I said they want to as well as they have no other alternative. It'd be naive to think all crimes are committed out of desperation. I see no use in creating a some horrific building of torture to prevent minor crimes like pocket theft. It won't prevent murders, gang warfare, rape and the other crimes that are actually intended to be affected most by prison because none of them are hindered by the fear of prison, no matter how harsh.
Destroying human rights in the face of misdemeanors is something that this world should never see happen. It's simply medieval.
Actually, no torture involved, just putting them in a cell to cool their jets for a long period of time.
Also your wrong, those major crimes ARE affected by the penelties. Part of what has increased our crime rate is the lack of fear criminals have of the system or the punishments. Some guy committing a rape, murder, etc... knows that if he's caught the experience awaiting them isn't especially bad. In weighting the pros and cons in cases like that a person might very well feel they come out ahead even if they wind up doing the time. This is to say nothing of those who embezzle or steal tons of money and defraud people. To be honest your typical criminal has more concern over the inmates than he does over the punishment itself. A child rapist or whatever is more likely to wind up paying for his crimes at the hands of some dude with a shank, than at the hands of the system which is supposed to be punishing him to begin with.
I'll also be honest in saying that I believe the rights of criminals should be minimal, right now liberalism and protecting these people has lead to society becoming an increasingly dangerous place. I wouldn't dial things back to the middle ages, but society wise, I'm all for doing what it takes to getting the streets back to the comparitive safety of say the 1950s. Putting the genie back into the bottle is always more difficult than letting it out. Also don't misunderstand me, the 1950s were not some kind of utopia, but it was a time period where people were considerably less paranoid and society in general was considerably safer.
Also, the so called "supercube" is an idea I embrace as being able to do the job, simply because it's more reasonable than other tactics which would get the job done. There are a lot of people who have made the point that actual torture would probably work in a lot of cases if handled correctly, and that what's more it's technically permitted by the constitution. The protection against "cruel and unusual punishment" not being all that inclusive, as the same guys who put that down as a right left behind examples of how the intended it to be practiced in the street. The idea being to prevent people from developing new and horrendous methods of flaying people alive region by region, but things like racks, flogging, stocks, pressing, etc... were all considered to be perfectly acceptable. The "unusual" bit was the key word as many people will point out, with the protection intended to stymy the development of new and grotesque tortures, and lead to a standardization of punishment. With empowered local goverments they didn't want a crime punished by 20 lashes and a month in the stocks (which is bad enough) in one area, to be punished differantly two towns over where the judge's hobby is inventing new tortures where he mandates the same crime involves the removal of the eyelids and salt to be poured into the bare eyes twice a day for the next two weeks.
I'm a big believer in dialing back a lot of what liberals have done to the country socially, but at the same time there are limits. I've read many arguements for say bringing back the stocks and the lash at least, and I can actually agree with some of them for petty crimes (a month in the stocks will straighten out attitudes years in prisons won't touch), but I do have problems with it as a convention and feel we don't have to go that far. The Supercube is basically just imprisonment and solitude, the classic dungeon, I tend to feel such methods will work perfectly well, without having to open the can of worms inherant in say having bailiffs whip people publically in front of the courthouse. A lot can be said for corperal punishment, and I have trouble really argueing against some of it's proponents (my attitude has waffled over the years), and can see points there, but oddly I favor what is a more humanitarian path.
Of course none of this has much to do with the subject, I just mentioned my attitudes on the prison system as an aside. In general if you don't believe that the convicted should be punished, we really aren't going to see eye to eye on anything related to this. I believe the purpose of the prison system is to punish, rehabilitation comes later. I am actually a supporter of half way house programs and such, but believe such things should only come into play after a person has been punished for whatever it is they did.
I also argue this from the perspective that I do because of all the organized crime and violence in prisons. This kind of solitary segregation ends all of that. Some gang banger who has a lot of prison connections gets sent in, and it's a very differant experience for him than for some general guy (who he probably victimizes). With the supercube, you don't have to worry about any of that.
