Thinking Outside the Cell
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Baker's Dozen Problems
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Brief history of use of prisons
The history of punishment
carried out by legal process from the ‘village tribe’ several hundred
thousand years ago evidence that lengthy incarceration in prisons is a very
recent punishment in some Western societies which is highly
cost-ineffective.
Through the Middle Ages the
greatest and most grievous punishment used in England was being hanged until
he/she be half dead, and then taken down, and quartered alive; after that,
their members and bowels were cut from their bodies, and thrown into a fire,
provided near hand and within their own sight. If the crime was deemed less
heinous, the accused was hanged until dead.
Notably, the concept of
incarcerating a person as punishment for a crime was not evident seemingly
because there was no ‘fiscal pot’ to pay the high cost of imprisonment. If
there was any tax revenue, it would have been assigned a higher importance.
Most prisons were used as
holding areas until trial and subsequent sentencing. Trials were skewed in
favour of the prosecution. Justice was usually swift and often brutal.
Australia in the 21st Century
needs to learn from past human behaviour, and still practiced in much of
Asia, Russia and other countries.
Many of our major global
competitors in particular China and Indonesia will not expend a material
portion of their ‘fiscal pot’ on long term incarceration. They will expend
their tax revenues on educating and health care for current and future tax
payers.
Similarly, in Australia the
material cost of imprisonment for citizens who commit heinous crimes against
innocent victims would be much better spent on health care and education of
future and current Australian tax payers.
A cost effective sentence for
the person that killed Daniel Christie with one 'coward punch' would be to
be flogged to within an inch of his death once a week for 5 weeks, then the
weapon that killed Daniel Christie namely his punching arm surgically
removed. The assailant’s assets should be sold and paid to the NSW health
care system towards the significant cost of treating
Daniel Christie whilst in an induced coma.
Jesus of Nazareth was executed
in a vicious way to send out a patent message not to similarly transgress.
Joan of Arc was also executed brutally. Swift and cruel punishment was
deemed necessary to warn others of the likely consequences of similarly
transgressing.
Our predecessors did not
incarcerate a person as punishment for a serious crime. Rather our
predecessors implemented swift and painful punishment as a deterrent for
similar transgressions.
"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. Debtors were jailed until they paid their debts.
Vagrants were jailed until they found work.
Accused criminals were jailed while
awaiting trial, and convicted criminals were jailed while awaiting punishment or
until they paid their court fines.