Havasu Creek, by David Coppedge. Posted on 09/12/2017 8:32:08 AM PDT by fishtank
Creation Therapy Works for Criminals
by David Coppedge
Prisoners locked up in cells day after day, year after year, would calm down if nature could be brought to them, says a new study.
Look at this photo. Does it improve your mood? What if you had nothing else to look at but bare walls?
Havasu Creek, by David Coppedge.
We’ve reported that hospital patients recover better when shown scenes of nature (5/20/01). Now, augmenting a report from last year, a project at the University of Utah found that nature imagery calms prisoners in solitary confinement and maximum security cells, too:
(Excerpt) Read more at crev.info ...
It might work. Would take some chains and heavy anchors, but it has possibilities.
And why do we care about the mood of hardened criminals doing serious time?
Yep - put them all in cells with pretty nature murals....
One: to make the jail guards job a little safer?
Two: because it’s the right thing to do?
Three: because (combined with a ministry of the Word), it might open their hearts to God?
Exactly, give them pictures of a landfill or an abandoned house. Screw ‘em
2) If we are Christians at all, we are concerned for the fate of the souls of even hardened criminals doing serious time. We would prefer that they come to repentance, and to saving faith in Jesus Christ, than to remain hardened criminals. Reasonable Christians may discuss, and even disagree, on how best to arrange that situation.
Four: Because almost all of them, at some point, will be released.
I read that as “cremation therapy” at first.
L
Hear comes the bear. Watch the bear decapitate a salmon in one quick slash. Yeh....relaxing...
Scripture prescribes death for a surprising range of civil crimes.
Thoughts?
Excellent answers.
And maybe yoga and aroma therapy? /sarc
Does the article/author/study address the likelihood of inmates defacing such images? smearing feces thereon? being incensed over what their incarceration denies them (viewed as “this is where you _could_ be, but you’re in prison - HA HA!”)? There are reasons they’re in concrete boxes with zero decorations.
Anecdote: I once worked for a major telecom company, implementing a collect-call/third-party billing system. For my first three days there, while trying to absorb the team’s terminology, I kept hearing the term “inmate” referenced, and couldn’t mentally reconcile the reference with the standard definition. I finally asked “’inmate’ can’t possibly mean what I think it means, right?” Yes it did - the system had a series of automated menus, which often ended with passing the customer to a live operator, but since inmates (identified by calling from a phone known to be in a prison) habitually abused any interaction with other normal people, they were denied the pleasure of communicating with a real human and routed thru some limited choices and likely had the call ended.
Moral of the story: prisoners habitually abuse what is “nice” for non-criminals. Giving them more “nice” often backfires.
I’m only semi-reasonable. :)
I tend to think of the victims first and how, say, a 20 y/o rape victim might feel about her convicted rapist getting pretty pictures in his cell to help his mood.
Paul had no pretty pictures during his confinement...at least it wasn’t mentioned. There are some criminals that can find recovery and a future positive life on the outside and we should focus on those. There are others that only God can mend. We waste very limited resources on them till He does.
Again, purely kicking around opinions....I would much rather jails put inmates to work. Labor. Something. Anything. Teach them a trade. if they work at it and play by the rules, they continue. If they cause trouble, they stay in their cage and rot. These are the hardened ones. The first timers; the clearly recoverable; the non-violent; they should be give a 2nd chance. We can agree on that at least.
Paul had no pretty pictures during his confinement
As a Christian, I'd rather model my thinking after Paul than after his pagan captors.
I would much rather jails put inmates to work.
I agree. Idle minds and idle hands too often tend toward the devil's business.
Teaching a trade, and supplying an academic education, are the only two “rehabilitation” concessions I’d back - as noted earlier, they’re going to return to society at some point (and if not, they still contribute to the society within the prison).
Such articles invariably fail to address the chronically destructive, those who are incarcerated precisely because they refuse to contribute & cooperate with others. At some point every individual has to choose productivity, and must learn that there is a limit to the contributions & cooperation of others in response - “solitary confinement” is precisely for that purpose: the unpleasant dead end where there is no beauty, no joy, no assistance, just decay & demise until either one repents or dies.
I have NO PROBLEM with the death penalty....
PS the Roman church is out to lunch on this one.... no surprise there, they’re out to lunch on most everything.
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