Tennis at Mountjoy

D1stant wrote: »

The state reckons you can get by with 10K a year on SW. So why does a prisoner cost 65k. Its a pretty legitimate question I think

We don't generally hire staff to clothe, feed and guard people on social welfare.

65k may be excessive, and I'm sure there are plenty of inefficiencies, but it's never going to be as cheap as social welfare.

D1stant wrote: »

The right balance is probably somewhere in the middle, but spending tax on these luxuries cant be justified.

Why cant we bring down the cost of housing an inmate. 65k per year is crazy

The major cost of keeping prisoners is the salaries and overtime of the officers in the Prison Service. The cost of tennis courts and sports facilities is just a red herring.

Who cares? Non story.

Loss of liberty is the punishment nothing more.

Better they play tennis than do other things. They've got to have something to do to pass the time.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

If they're not allowed to keep physically fit and healthy or have access to any entertainment then we might as well just replace all custodial sentences with the death penalty. 'Twould be more humane.

I had an attempted break in a couple of weekends ago. Myself, my wife and our two young kids were in the house. The guy attempted to break the lock on the front door (which I heard), then went round the back and tried get in the sliding door. We heard him and scared him off. Luckily enough we hear him before he managed to get into the house.
My wife and I were well shook and have since upped security a bit. Thankfully he didnt get into the house.
He had also attempted the same thing on a another house in the esate, he didnt manage to get in but no one in the house heard him trying anything.
Another house a few estates down, wasn't so lucky - he got in took a few bits and pieces and went on his merry way.
Did he give two fcks about my family? No way. Had he gotten into the house who knows what would have gone down.

To be fair to AGS, they caught the guy and were on the ball getting to our house etc. I will be following up to see what the guys background is and what ultimately happens him.

That fcker had no fear about attempting to rob three different houses for what I would guess would be a severely limited amount of loot. Obviously the risk of getting caught for such a small amount of money doesnt scare the guy at all as he knows the penalty (jail time) is a walk in the park.
While at the same time he's scarred the ****e outta at least 3 families who are now probably more security conscious than they should be.

The point of this story?
This country has one of the best welfare systems in the world. There's absolute NO excuse for some prick to need more money unless they are supporting an expensive habit (Usually drugs).
If these guys aren't afraid of what awaits them if they get caught they'll keep at it and pass on the "skills" to others.

Its time to lose a bit of the politicilly correct BS that's permeated in this and other countries over the years and enact more stringent sentencing and/or education programmes for these types of criminal.
They don't give a fcuk about you - just remember that.




Time to get tough.

kippy wrote: »

Time to get tough.

I understand your frustration, but I think it's making you a bit blind to reality.

If you take someone like this guy and dump him in a manky cell with no exercise or entertainment for a few years, do you think he'll be a better or worse person when he comes out the other side?

Unless you're suggesting that all custodial sentences be life sentences, or that we just put all criminals to death, then this is something that has to be considered.

Criminals do shitty things, they can hurt people, put fear in people, change people's lives for the worse, but they're not a separate species and they are not necessarily evil to the core. It's not 'politically correct BS' to think of the bigger picture or to treat people with a bit of humanity.

There's plenty of people out there who do bad things or get on the wrong side of the law and then reinvent themselves to become productive members of society. The purpose of prison shouldn't be to punish people like bold children, it should be to protect the public and rehabilitate the criminal before they are reintroduced to society. It's the only thing that makes sense, unless you're going to kill them all.

D1stant wrote: »

but spending tax on these luxuries cant be justified.

these aren't really a luxury. Not from from the point of view of either the prisoner of the prison officers. These are a distraction to stop people going crazy, we have to be very careful that in the process of punishing people for their crimes we're not turning them into bigger and bigger lunatics every time they do a short stint inside. I'm sure it also gives a break to the people running the prisons.

A person left in confinement with no mental tasks to carry out and keep their mind occupied will go insane. We're not locking these people up for life so it's stupid to spend four years driving them insane to release them back onto the street.

One thing that's always absent from debates like this are hard facts.

People say that doing hard time and working on chain gangs will "teach them a lesson", whereas going soft on them just means they'll treat it like a long holiday.

However, the general evidence doesn't seem to add up. Severe punishments do not discourage serious crimes. The US is great for comparative data because some states have the death penalty and some don't. The data shows that there is basically no difference in crime rates between the two. States which routinely execute prisoners (like Texas), do not have better crime rates than ones which don't.

The United States has the highest rate of imprisonment in the civilised world (2.3 million Americans are in prison), and US prisons are known for being pretty tough places. They are constantly running out of prison space and creating new prisons. The US recidivism rate (the number of people who are re-imprisoned for a new crime after being released) is over 50%.

Denmark by contrast, has an exceptionally soft prison system where prisoners go to school, live in segregated domiciles (often with partners and children) and generally do shorter sentences. Recidivism rates in Denmark are 27%.

Denmark's prison populations are 10% the size of the US ones (in relative terms). In fact, Denmark announced in 2009 that it was closing prisons because it didn't have enough prisoners to fill them. So they're clearly doing something right, and the US is clearly doing something wrong.

http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/letters/the-danish-prison-system

Now, there are other factors at play here - poverty rates, education rates, etc. However, the best thing we can say about treating prisoners harshly is that it doesn't do anything to stop them re-offending. It may not make things worse either, but it certainly doesn't make them better.