That may be a goal for you and I, but we aren't to that point as a society. While not ideal, our current way of adding new prisons does keep prisoners from suffering the kind of indignities outlined in the original article. My suggestion is to work within the current framework to help alleviate current issues, while at the same time working on reframing the debate. Because, if you've paying attention the past 200 years, you know the overall goal of our penal system has NOTHING to do with reducing incarceration long term.yeliab wrote:Unicorns... lol. You realize there are more equitable societies within the US and abroad? My personal "unicorn" is prison abolition and reevaluating the concepts of punishment and reintegration altogether, but I realize that is not immediately realistic (though it is an idea that had a significant amount of support in the 70s and is seeing a resurgence in the discussion around prisons). And most of what you seem to think is my unicorn involves getting prisoners from suffering from 3rd world conditions by reducing incarceration (though I wonder how much you've thought the third world conditions of prisoners unrelated to to this conversation about the correctional facility since none of what I've said is particularly novel).WSPanic wrote:You can talk equitable societies and unicorns all you want - we still need to maintain our crumbling infrastructure and do what we can to keep US prisoners from suffering through third world squalor on a daily basis. I don't think anyone disagrees with you about our justice system - but I think most here feel we need to do something about the current situation (new prison or major updates to this one) while we work towards a solution for the future.
Everything that I've brought up are things that we absolutely should be thinking about now as we are in the process of decision-making. If our goal is to reduce incarceration long term, that is a long term project that requires long term thinking and planning, especially when it comes to political feasibility. Right now, there are people in there waiting for years to go to trial, which puts additional pressure on the infrastructure because its over-crowded. I don't think that coupling policy to reduce pre-trial and non-violent offender incarcerations with either building a smaller prison or updating the current prison to house a more manageable level of individuals is unrealistic.
Curious to hear your suggestions though.
Or, you know... just kill them all.