Apparently he or she has lost their mind or is speaking out of sheer ignorance. Anybody with half a brain will realize that since the '80's, treatment of the convicted felon has changed drastically in favor of the convict. In the 80's, the courts became involved in the running of prisons. That was the beginning of the end. Prisoners' rights groups and bleeding-hearted liberals changed the way convicts do their time. I believe the burgeoning prison population of the 80's can directly be related to the fact that there is no such thing as "hard time" anymore. Prison should be a place so terrible that no one would ever want to go there, and those that do end up there should never want to go back. Instead, it has become nothing more than another form of welfare, where criminals hang out with their home-boys, are given shelter, three square meals, an education, healthcare, etc. for free. Many prisons are like college campuses. They have access to general libraries and law libraries, gyms and weightlifting equipment, can buy non-taxable items at the commissary, can place catalog orders for approved items, can belong to and attend services and events for the religious group of their choice, can have special diets pertaining to religious beliefs, can belong to a variety of ethic groups and attend special events pertaining to these groups, can be married, can have conjugal visits, have unlimited access to telephones, television, cooking privileges.
I could go on and on, but why bother. I spent over 23 years working in the New York State prison system. I started in '80 and retired just this past December. During that time I worked in maximum and medium security prisons. The medium security prisons I worked in were nothing more than maximum prisons with fences. In the early 80's, the state more than doubled the number of medium prisons they had. They primarily built medium facilities because the cost of steel was too high to build the maximum style. When we first opened the medium facility I was at in '83, an inmate had to be within three years of his first parole board. By the time I left there 20 years later, the average inmate sent there was within 10-12 years of his first board.
During those 23 years, I saw a big change in the disciplining of the inmates. Drug testing was reduced to practically nothing, and punishment for misbehavior got to be slim to none. Lack of keeplock units created a revolving door system that saw inmates locked up for serious offenses, kicked out after a week or less to make room for the next round of troublemakers. It went on that way until the department forced their administrators to refine their discipline guidelines. It got so bad that the officers didn't bother to write the inmates up when they committed a rule violation because the tickets were either thrown out, or the inmate was given a suspended sentence or a minimal disposition. Why bother trying to enforce the rules when the inmates were getting only slaps on the wrist and were lauging at the officers' lack of authority. The department became more interested in wax buildup and counting soapballs than they were about the inmates doing drugs or carrying weapons.
I'm glad I'm out of it all, but I do feel sorry for the men and women who are just coming into the department. Maybe they're lucky though. They don't have anything to compare the present system to. I remember how it used to be and seeing how it has all turned out is upsetting to say the least.
"The only thing that keeps ex-cons from making a go of it is attitude. Period!"
I agree with you totally here as well. I've always told the inmates that getting out of prison was the easy part; staying out was the hard part. An individual has to want to change, and that change has to come from within.