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Thinking Outside the Cell
Defined Terms
Baker's Dozen Problems
Articles & Reports - Bibliography
First
World Countries sole reliance on Prison Incarceration to
Punish and
Deter in the pursuit
of Law and Order has been the
greatest Societal Blunder of the 20th Century - both in Dollars Wasted
and Results Unachieved
On
a scale of between 1 and 10 for Cost-Effective Expenditure of the Public Purse,
Prison Incarceration scores a 2 at
most, because only some shorter Sentence inmates have benefited from
Rehabilitation Programmes, particularly those with drug related issues
"The main reason for the abolition
of the death penalty is the squeamishness of politicians, who enjoy office but
do not like all the duties which power loads on to their (often rather narrow)
shoulders. Far easier for them to leave the matter to some trembling
constable with a gun in a dark street, who can be disavowed if it all goes wrong
later." Peter
Hitchens, England - 29 April 2013
1.
For 97% of the history of Homo sapiens, prisons were merely holding
tanks until Capital Punishment or Corporal Punishment was inflicted
Ashley Rubin's
paper (University
of Hawaii) "Prisons and jails are
coronavirus epicenters – they were once designed to prevent disease outbreaks"
(April 2020)
explains that confining convicted criminals to tiny steel cages as a
Punishment
and Deterrent is a very recent
Sentence during the history of Homo sapiens.
Ms. Rubin is a Professor of Sociology and
an Interdisciplinary Scholar specializing in Penal History.
Below are pertinent extracts from her very recent paper:
"The first U.S. prisons emerged in reaction to the overcrowded,
violent, disease-infested jails of
the colonial era.
Prisons as we
understand them today – places of long-term confinement as a punishment for
crime – are relatively
new developments.
In the U.S. they came about in the 1780s and 1790s, after the American
Revolution.
Previously, American
colonies under British control relied on
execution and corporal punishments.
Jails in America and
England during that period were not
themselves places of punishment.
They were just holding tanks......
Accused criminals were jailed while
awaiting trial, and convicted criminals were jailed while awaiting punishment or
until they paid their court fines.
2. Many politicians in the USA and Canada have recently concluded
that warehousing people in prison is costly and unsustainable
A Professor in
Clinical and Forensic Psychology in Vancouver, Canada and an Associate Professor in University of
Massachusetts Medical School jointly wrote
"Prisons
are not the answer to preventing crime in the U.S."
that was published in
The Conversation on 27 Oct 2019. Below are extracts:
".............locking people up is a waste of taxpayer
dollars that may do more
harm than good."
"The U.S. incarcerates
more people than any
other place in the world. However,
many politicians have recently concluded
that warehousing people in prison is costly and unsustainable.
1. Prisons cost a lot
Prisons are expensive
to operate. In the U.S., the total state expenditure on prisons is at least US$81
billion. In Canada, taxpayers pay an average of $114,000
a year per prisoner. It’s cheaper
and more effective to provide treatment than it is to put someone
behind bars.
2. Locking people up doesn’t make us safer
Research shows that
putting people behind bars does not
reduce reoffending, and some studies show it can make matters worse.
From working in prisons, we have seen this firsthand; prisons can be schools for
crime. If you take a teenager who’s
never gotten in trouble before and stuff them in a confined space with people
who are already entrenched in crime, they won’t necessarily turn into a good
law-abiding citizen."
3. In earlier
times Homo
sapiens Governing
Forefathers focused on
Deterring
serious criminal behaviour by 'public
executions' that instilled a frightening warning
Jesus of Nazareth was executed
by inflicting vicious, protracted torture to send out a patent message to
the locals not to similarly challenge the
Roman imposed Jewish government in
Jerusalem.
Joan of Arc was burnt at a stake.
Former King Louis XVI and
Queen Marie Antoinette were
executed with the guillotine
in 1793 at the outset of the French Revolution.
Swift,
frightening and cruel punishment
in the public forum conveyed a cogent Deterrent to others not to
similar transgress.
Early Capital Punishment practices
- globally chronicles how Rulers maintained law and order
when squillions of tiny steel cages were not a cost-effective
Deterrent. Now in 2020, tiny steel cages are no longer an
option to maintain law and order by
warehousing the problem onto others down the line:
*
over 97% of the 108b
Homo sapiens have lived under both during the 125,000 years
circa of occupancy
of 'terra firma';
*
even in the last 2,000 years chieftains, rulers, sovereigns, monarchs, warlords
et al practiced the most barbaric executions to send out the message "don't
challenge our authority";
and
* the majority of the
current 7.6b circa human population today live under both forms of
frightening
Punishment
(China,
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, parts of the United States, Pakistan, Somalia,
Belarus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Botswana, Libya, Guyana, Uganda, Bangladesh, Sudan,
Nigeria, Taiwan,
India,
Russia, Vietnam,
Thailand, Japan, Indonesia,
the Arab States, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei
'et al').
4. Recidivism
rates
on its Pat Malone evidences the folly of Punishing and Deterring by
confining squillions of convicted felons to tiny steel cages, because
Jail is the University of Crime
Recidivism
among prisoners is the rate that released prisoners return to prison.
Across Australia, 46.4% of
prisoners released during 2016-17 returned to prison within two years (to
2018-19). Patently for many a
Sentence of imprisonment is not a
Deterrent. Rather for a not insignificant cohort of the
prison population that become institutionalised, an attraction to
criminal behaviour is a return to a warm bed, three meals a day and some living
structure.
5.
Prison costs
Below are
extracts from
Material Public Purse Prison Costs:
Productivity
Commission report titled Section 8 'Corrective services' noted that in 2017-18
net operating expenditure on Corrective Services (prisons) across Australia, including
depreciation, was $4.416 billion - a real increase of
35% from five years earlier
in 2012-13
"Table 8A.8
from
Report on Government Services 2020 - Part C, Section 8 'Corrective services'
notes that as at 30 June 2019 Total Net Operating and Capital Expenditure Costs had slightly increased (from June 2015 of $300.88) to $310.32
per inmate per day or $113,267 per inmate p.a."
Below is an extract from
Annual Administrative Cost of Australian Maximum Security Prisons -
$150,000 p.a. in 2019
After reading the following articles, casual empiricism suggests that the
ave
Administration Cost per annum for a prisoner in a
Maximum Security
Prison such as
Goulburn's
Supermax which houses a lot of Muslim jihadists extremists or
Lara Barwon Prison, Victoria
is $150,000 p.a. in 2019:
To the SuperMax -
THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN - April 2017
- "A special unit in this prison
houses Australia’s most dangerous
extremists. We gain rare access
and discover a ticking time bomb"
Australia's jail population hits record high after 20-year surge – The
Guardian -
11 Sep 2017
Australia spending more on prisons, policing than other comparable countries:
report
– ABC News
The expensive problem with our prisons: Why spending more doesn't make us feel
safer
– ABC News - Aug 2017
Below is an extract from
Capital Expenditure Cost Of Building New or Modify/Extending
Existing Prisons:
$700m maximum security prison planned for Lara, Victoria -
The Age (24 Apr 2018)
evidences that the capital expenditure cost of providing maximum security
prisons is at least
$25,000 per inmate per annum
based on $1 million dollars per prisoner to build the planned new Lara Prison
divide by a 40 years life of the prison, before a major refit:
"A new maximum security men’s prison with 700 beds will be built in Lara, at
a cost of almost $700 million, as Victoria’s prison population grows to
record levels.
The Andrews government will commit $689.5 million in next week’s state
budget – almost $1 million per prisoner – to build the jail, which it says
will open in 2022."
6. What the experts think
Recognised Punishment Historians
at the coal face, and down in the bear pit understand what 'works' and what 'does not
work' in the Australian prison system. Pity is that none of the
Recognised Punishment Historians
have recommended a return to the
Punishments
Sentenced
in the final 30 years
of Judicial
Corporal Punishment for Adults in Australia until the mid-1940s -
still Sentenced in three adjacent
Commonwealth of Nations Countries in South East Asia - Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei -
Singapore: Judicial and prison caning
that each have
significantly lower crime rates than Australia.
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