Oct 12 2011: Nathan;
I tend to disagree with the common concieved notion that schools and jail are alike. In truth jails are structured to resemble a school in that they are supposed to encourage rehabilitaion and structure. However it has been my experience that often times jail creates stigmas which follow a person and make it very difficult to be accepted into society. As well there is much unrecognized injustice in a regular penatentary that contributes to harder criminals rather then functioning members of society. I take a more "treatment" oriented approach; not to say that peeople who are jailed are ill but it relates better to me in a treatment vs punishment point of view. As a studying addictions counsellor I am also aware that a good portion of inmates suffer from addictions which helps neither the addict or the tax payers. The addict can easily access many drugs in jail while the government spends tons of incarceration fees for an individual to doesnt only not get better but possibly gets worse. And that more of less goes for most cases, addictions or not. Idealistically if the idea of jails being modeled after schools hasn't worked yet , will it ever? Personally i feel that if you put a ton of people with no empathy for eachother into a room and tell them to 'fend for themselves' then no its never going to work.Maybe if some actual real life learning was implimented or offered an inmate would possibly feel useful and be motivated to change. But realalistically speaking who's really going to want to help the "BAD" part of society? I would be but the point is people dont tend to want to fix whats already broken, and it would certainly cause uproar in a society so use to punishment as motivation. So I guess I pose a question to anyone willing to answer: Where does our obligation to a population of "criminals" lie and how can we fix what is broken (meaning the institution)?
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A reply on Conversation: jails should be more widely known as schools
I tend to disagree with the common concieved notion that schools and jail are alike. In truth jails are structured to resemble a school in that they are supposed to encourage rehabilitaion and structure. However it has been my experience that often times jail creates stigmas which follow a person and make it very difficult to be accepted into society. As well there is much unrecognized injustice in a regular penatentary that contributes to harder criminals rather then functioning members of society. I take a more "treatment" oriented approach; not to say that peeople who are jailed are ill but it relates better to me in a treatment vs punishment point of view. As a studying addictions counsellor I am also aware that a good portion of inmates suffer from addictions which helps neither the addict or the tax payers. The addict can easily access many drugs in jail while the government spends tons of incarceration fees for an individual to doesnt only not get better but possibly gets worse. And that more of less goes for most cases, addictions or not. Idealistically if the idea of jails being modeled after schools hasn't worked yet , will it ever? Personally i feel that if you put a ton of people with no empathy for eachother into a room and tell them to 'fend for themselves' then no its never going to work.Maybe if some actual real life learning was implimented or offered an inmate would possibly feel useful and be motivated to change. But realalistically speaking who's really going to want to help the "BAD" part of society? I would be but the point is people dont tend to want to fix whats already broken, and it would certainly cause uproar in a society so use to punishment as motivation. So I guess I pose a question to anyone willing to answer: Where does our obligation to a population of "criminals" lie and how can we fix what is broken (meaning the institution)?