John Walsh Show: Prisoner's Rights, should they have any?

[Dionysus]

Originally posted by Honeykiss1974
....... about any of us becoming a prisoner. It can happen. All it takes is something like a someone unexpectedly darting out in traffic and before you can react it, you hit him/her....now you are on trial for murder facing prison. Yes, you...with your clean record and all. Granted, it was a total accident and you did nothing wrong, but there you in an orange jumpsuit are standing in a court of law.

Naw...accidents won't be the only reason if a GCer becomes a prisoner one day...there are some morally apprehensible people on here.

[James]

To make prison a hell you would have to shorten the stay. You can tell that politicians invent jail sentences with no regards to either common sense or how the mind works.

5 years is a long time. 10 years is an awful long time. You can get 20 years in prison for having 200 hits of Ecstasy on you, something extremely common in the club scene. If you are in a fairly worldy chapter with clubbers, chancers are you have E-users in your chapter.

If you put someone in prison long enough to become used to it, they lose some of their fear for it. If it was terrible and short term, you would have more people that truly feared it.

Originally posted by Lady Pi Phi
I agree that when one has been convicted of a crime and is sentenced, they have not lost their humanity. Their basic needs must definitly be met. Food, clothing, proper healthcare, whether it be physical or mental.
I feel that those that have smaller sentences should be rehabilitated. I think they should have the opportunity to earn their GED if they need to. However, they should not be able to get a college education on the backs of the tax payers. If they want to go to college after they are released they should work hard and apply like everyone else. I feel they should work while in prison. They should have the opportunity to gain skills that will help them once they are released.
Now for those that are serving life sentences should not have those same kind of privileges. I'm sorry, but if you're not EVER getting out, you don't need a college education. If you really want it, you can pay for it yourself! You don't have any money?! We'll find you a job you can do in prison and you can save up to pay tuition.
The fact of the matter is, prision or jail should never be better than the life you had on the outside. Once released, I would like to hear them say that prison was hell, and that they never want to go back. I don't ever want to hear any prisioner, whether it's 1 or 100 say that they had a better life in prison than they did on the outside.