Thursday, April 05, 2007

Prison Comforts. There's no place like home?

So the other day we're sitting around with some friends, grilling out food. One friend is with Hamilton County S.O. but works at the jail. And J is still in court services, so naturally the conversation turns to prisoner transports and such. As it turns out, some of the inmates have figured out which correctional facilities they'd rather be at, based on the amenities. Some of the prisons have cable, and TVs in most of the cells. Other facilities have CD players in each cell. My argument is that they broke the law, why do they get extra comforts paid for by our tax dollars? This pisses me off, actually! I'm pretty liberal, especially for being a LEO wife, but hell no! They do not deserve comforts!
Our friend working at the jail didn't exactly argue that they deserved them, but he did bring up a good point. They are low-cost means of keeping prisoners subdued. I can see the point, but really, are prisoners more likely to riot or cause trouble if they don't have high-tech entertainment?
Thoughts?

2 comments:

Cathy said...

Amy, I actually do think it is probably a good idea. With all that time on their hands and nothing to do except think, they might just think (and plan) really bad things if they aren't somewhat entertained.

My rational mind tells me that "hell no" they don't deserve these things but in the same sense I can understand why they allow it. Dave use to go to this used book store and buy about 1,000.00 of used books at a time for the inmates. He had to be careful not to get any "true crime" books, because they didn't wnat to give criminals any ideas of how to do even more crimes. Alot of old westerns is what he bought them.

Brandon said...

Amy,

My Intro to Corrections prof was a shrink in an Illinois prison before he got his masters, he explained to us that the reason that the prisoners have tv is that the guards will have something to hold over their heads as a reward for good behavior or punishment for breaking the rules.