Why have penitentiaries anyway?

Most people realize that the court and penal systems in North America are seriously broken and must be fixed, yet contemplating doing away with penitentiaries sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Barely 200 years ago, an experiment began which has cost us untold billions of dollars. Just last year, this experiment resulted in 1.4 million adults incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries (a figure which has quadrupled since 1980) at a cost of nearly $40,000 each.

As Alan Elsner pointed out in a recent Washington Post article, 2.2 million people are engaged in catching criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars, and "corrections" has become one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate employers in the country. In many "prison town" counties, the number one employer is the Department of Corrections. This is a staggering expense of over $50 billion, an amount that increases by additional billions for each year of the last 25 years of explosive prison growth. As the prison population ages, the taxpayer is paying for medical procedures he can't afford for himself, and the victims of these criminals realize no compensation at all.

Few realize that the first penitentiary in the world was founded in Philadelphia in 1792. Jails had always existed for the purpose of holding the accused until trial, after which the guilty would pay a fine, make restitution to the victim, be banished, be executed, etc. However, the concept of warehousing criminals to cause them to repent was entirely new.

Imagine a criminal justice system where penitentiaries didn't even exist, but where a person paid for his crimes rather than having society pay to keep him incarcerated.

One such nation existed. If you stole someone's property, say a sheep, and were caught with the animal in your possession, you repaid the victim with two sheep, but you didn't go to a penitentiary. The victim also got a financial settlement, satisfying the desire for victim restitution in our time.

If you sold the stolen sheep, thereby being more involved in the crime, you paid the victim four sheep.

If you committed a capital crime, (murder, rape, kidnapping, etc.) you paid with your life, but you didn't go to a penitentiary. Such facilities didn't exist in this nation. They were not needed.

Such a system would completely do away with our newest growth industry, penitentiaries, and restore the victim of crime financially.

I'm not going to tell you where I got the idea for this system, but it's from a reliable source. Of course, it will never happen here because a powerful lobby has grown up around the prison system that will fight hard to protect the status quo. Correction officers have formed powerful labor unions, and their financial contributions to our politicians will easily outweigh the will of the people. I know, I know, I'm such a young man to be so cynical.

If the thief could afford to repay his victim, he wouldn't be a thief in the first place.

If you are healthy enough to steal you are healthy enough to work...thieves don't steal for sustenance... they steal for the fun of stealing...its a high...its about power...its about displacing anger on those who are not powerful enough to defeat you or deny you or kill you...

That is why God invented the gun...the gun is about justice...denying the thief the rapist the murderer his ill gotten gain and protecting yourself and family from such...protection from even the thieves who pretend to be shepherds...

imo

21 posted on 11/26/2004 8:55:09 AM PST by joesnuffy ("The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it." Horatio Seymour)

How stupid is this idiot, and what drives him to advocate this anyway? The key to the past treatment of criminals is execution, they executed people for just about anything. Penitentiaries are the kind alternative.

Few realize that the first penitentiary in the world was founded in Philadelphia in 1792.

I have doubts about the accuracy of any "facts" in this post. The Tower of London, built over 800 years before 1792, although never called a penitentary, was certainly used as a prison for hundreds of years before Philadelphia ever existed.

I'm sure that others can come up with a few dozen more.

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