This may sound strange to many people but the fact is, some people actually like being in prison. My younger brother has spent a number of years in prison and has told me that many people love life in prison because they are clothed and fed, they have somewhere warm to sleep each night, they are fed three times a day, and get their own TV to watch in their cell; on top of this they have no responsibilities.
I recently attended night school to improve my mathematics skills. Also attending that course was a guy I knew from my childhood, one of the local ruffians. I was very pleased to see him attending further education so that he could get a better job. When he was younger he was well known for spending a lot of his time with another boy. I wasn't surprised to hear this other boy had grown up to become one of these people who are constantly in and out of prison. He told the man on my mathematics course that he was mad for going to night school and working hard to get a job, he should spend his live in prison like him because it's so easy. Thankfully he has much more sense and is still attending night school, his old school friend is now serving life for murder.
The problem is, and my younger brother has told me this many times, is that prison life is too "cushy." Why do these people get TV's in their rooms, access to a gynasium, and various other pleasurable activities? Some of these people are in prison for killing people, molesting children, extreme violence, and all sorts of other very unpleasant crimes. Why are they being treated so well? Prison should be somewhere that is feared. Without the fear of being sent to prison it can never be an effective deterrent. When people are sentenced to time in prison it is supposed to be a form of punishment, so when in prison these people should be punished.
The first thing I think should happen is that there should be no personal pleasures. There should be no televisions in rooms, no photos, no magazines, nothing. Every cell should have a bed, wash basin, and toilet; this is essential as I believe that prisoners should be locked up all day, every day. There should be only one person per cell, with the opportunity to communicate with other prisoners removed this would prevent prisons from acting as a "college for criminals."
Prison's are also about opportunity. Prisoners would be allowed to attend lessons during the daytime to teach them skills such as Mathematics, English, brickwork, plumbing, or any other skills that might help them to gain a job when they are released rather than having to return to a life of crime. Lessons should be tightly controlled so that prisoners do not teach each other new ways of comitting crimes, inappropriate conversation would mean suspension of education rights resulting in the offender spending all day in their cell alone again. Prisoners with no possibility of being released would not be eligable for education as they will never be part of society again in order to contribute in a positive way.
The act of taking a life is irreversible. Anybody commiting such an act should spend the rest of their natural life in prison. The risk that this person might take another life upon release is simply not worth taking. Apart from that, a person who kills doesn't deserve to be allowed a position in society every again, and anyone who is truely sorry for their crime would agree that they do not deserve to be released.
When I was young I was probably on the same path as my friends (most of whom ended up going to prison.) Being introduced to computers gave me a new interest and I soon started to occupy my time with legal activities instead, which is certainly what stopped me from ending up in prison too. I was only 11 years old when my life style changed, at which point our illegal activities had progress from trespassing on factory roofs to occasionally entering the factory and playing with the equipment.
Just like any other child of that age I believed I would never get caught. However, my friends and I would often discuss what would happen if we were caught, how our parents would punish us and so on. The thought of getting a good smacking from my dad was enough to put me off doing certain things, but obviously not enough to stop me from doing some things I shouldn't have been doing. A problem is that some parents reach a point where they feel nothing works and they simply give up, there are no longer any consequences for these children so they do as they please.
One thing I do remember being terrified of when I was young was "Mr Clewer's Pump." Mr Clewer was the headmaster of my junior school, he had a plimsoll pump he used to use when smacking a child for being naughty. Whomever had owned that pump previously had very large feet. Although I was once smacked with that pump and it didn't hurt, strangely enough it was enough to stop me from ever getting into enough trouble at school again to warrant a repeat punishment. The intimidating sight of the pump made me feel I had been lucky the first time and not felt the full force of the pump. Also knowing that everyone in the playground knew I had been smacked felt very embarassing.
I believe that for acts that would be punishable in court for an adult should be punishable for children too. Any child over a certain age (possibly 9 years old) should also be answerable. Punishment would take the form of being publically smacked with a wooden paddle or some other instrument which would sting but not cause damage. I know for a fact that the discomfort of the punishment combined with the embarrasment of people watching it happen would have been more than enough to stop me from taking actions that would have led to me experiencing it for a second time.
Many drug addicts end up in prison. Considering these people are incarcerated why is it that they remain addicted to drugs whilst serving their sentence, and in some cases people who enter prison experience their first exposure to drugs? The answer is obvious, we all know that some people working within the prison service help to take drugs into the prison. These people make reform much harder for people serving a prison sentence.
I propose that anyone convicted of smuggling illegal drugs into a prison should receive a fixed penalty of 3 years in prison. I consider this to be a very serious offence as it subverts the effect of the punishment system.