Yep the main thing wrong with our society today is that the ideas of people like SWLiddle & Paul1405, have held sway for far too long. It is an experiment that has proven a failure, & should have been stopped years ago.

We need to come down on first offenders like a ton of bricks, which in many cases would mean no second offence. Hard labour in work gangs just may sort out a lot of young fools, where taps on the wrist, & dumb psychologists bleeding all over them, just makes them laugh at the system.

I often laugh at us proposing to teach Indonesians. What we need is a few Indonesian jail governors down here showing our lot the right way to treat criminals.

I agree whole-heartedly with Hasbeen,
I have first hand experience witnessing how Police deal with the first-time crooks. A good slapping but not harsh, just sufficient to let it sink in what's lurking around the corner if they play up again. I really wished we had some Indonesian Police doing courses in Australia.
I have witnessed a lot of common sense up there amongst Police. No cruelty or excess force at all. I have made friends with people in Intel & you can take my word for it they have common sense & a sense of right & wrong. They're not bound by idiotic libertarians like here who are quite stumm when innocent people get persecuted but criminals get all the assistance money can buy. Our system is just so rotten. I once rang Terry O'Gorman's office of the Civil Libertarians in Qld to ask what assistance I could ask for. The bloke on the phone said quote "Mate, you should contact a Lawyer, we're batting for the other team" unquote. How nice !

Dear Rehctub,

<<They were given a choice, ranging from chicken, beef, pork, lamb, seafood, and each Sunday was roast day, where they had a choice between roast meat (pork, lamb or beef) and roast chicken.>>

That's a description from hell! Totally disgusting - no wonder they come out hardened criminals than ever!

As a vegetarian, I would rather starve to death than have anything with dead-animal ingredients enter my mouth.

<<Of cause the other thing that amused me, as I have mentioned, was the fact that many were gluten free, or dairy free, even no seafood for some.>>

Apart from being vegetarian, my body is also intolerant of gluten and dairy - they make it sick, so any stay in jail for me means a death sentence.

Not everyone who gets in jail is a criminal, certainly not a hardened criminal: some get there for dreaming behind the wheel, others for conscientiously defying the state and its laws (we had for example journalists who refused to disclose their source of information, young men who refused to go to Vietnam and kill others, old men who euthanased their beloved ill wife to stop her suffering, then let us not forget Assange and Snowden and the list get longer), others get in jail by being implicated or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet others get there to cover for family members.

Dear Individual,

<<Jail in Australia is equivalent to 5 Star accommodation>>

From what I know, jail in Australia is worse than in most countries. Australian prisoners are not allowed to keep any personal items, no books and educational materials, not their own toothbrush, clothing, or teddy-bear, memoirs, photos or musical instrument, practically nothing. Their visitors are searched and not allowed to bring anything in, so they are never allowed to eat Mom's birthday cake when she visits. In most other countries they can. Even terrorists in Israeli jails study and receive university degrees in correspondence. In most countries, past a certain portion of their sentence well-behaved prisoners get some weekend leaves - not in Australia.

Jail in Australia is equivalent to 5 Star accommodation.....
Yuyutsu,
and what of the rest the rest ? And yes in comparison to other jails australian jails ARE 5 Star.
i.e. they're hardly a deterrent for an evil mind. Yes i do agree that many prisoners aren't of bad character & are in jail because of a moment's inattention but that's either injustice or flawed justice & has nothing to do with the standard of prison facilities,
it amazes me to see here on OLO how many don't bother the slightest about the victims & that's an indictment on our society as a whole when all effort is collected to aid the offender whilst the victim is forgotten.
If a bloke has an accident & kills someone he gets hounded to the end whilst a crime who wilfully murders gets a few years in a prison which has more facilities than the average home .Do-gooders do make me sick at times.

Hi Indiviual,

Very interesting discussions here.

Surely it is better for somebody to be training for a job than to be getting paid to sit on their freckle watching 'Days of Our Lives?'

If so, the same for prisoners: how about this crazy idea ?

Step One: Provide more or less the bare minimum of comforts for prisoners. Whatever their sentence may be, that's it, no time-off - IF they just want to do their time and get back to thieving or whatever, they do their full time.

BUT if they agree to enrol a genuine course of study or training, then they can get, say, a third of their time off, WHEN they have completed it.

For example, some bloke goes in for three years for 250 cases of burglary (I had a friend with about that many, now deceased). IF he enrols - and completes - a wo-year course, a genuine course, or trade, then he's out. Trained for something else.

Step Two: If they commit more ofences, they get an increased sentence - say, four and a half years for similar offences, i.e. another 250 burglaries. Okay - they are offered the chance to do a three-year degree, and if they comlete that, they're out gin. Better trained.

And so on. Bare conditions. Increased sentences for repeat offenses. Discounted sentences IF the offenders COMPLETE training programs. Genuine programs. Useful programs.

A bit like the Generation One approach - find the jobs, train the people for them.

I'm especially interested in your response to that crazy scheme.

Cheers,

Joe

PS. Yeah, that friend was hooked on heroin and needed his thousand bucks a day. One time, he was burgling a place and found fifty thouand dollars in a drawer. I said to him when he told me, much later, 'Christ, you got out of there, didn't you ?' 'No,' he said, 'I took the money.' Brave man.

Dear Individual,

Australian jails may perhaps hardly be a deterrent for an evil mind, but they are a constant source of anxiety and even horror for ordinary good citizens.

I agree that most of the jail-population is criminal, but imprisonment is something that could happen to any of us, including you and me, even while we are at no true fault.

Whence this straw-man claim as if those who advocate more humane jail conditions don't bother the slightest about the victims?

Often there are no victims in the first place. More often, the victims themselves are criminals and having accepted that lifestyle do not deserve police-protection in the first place. Even when there are victims, most of them do not benefit one iota from the perpetrator's jail-sentence (in fact they too pay higher taxes to keep him there). For some it's too late while others could benefit so much more for example if they knew that the perpetrator is out of the country and may never return to Australia to haunt them, or if they knew that the perpetrator is writhing in pain after receiving such a good hiding that they'll never contemplate repeating the offence, perhaps even no longer physically able to perform that offence as a result. Better still, the victims may benefit most if the perpetrator slaved away for the rest of their life to compensate them financially or render them other services.

My concern is primarily for the percentage of the jail-population who are not guilty. As there is no absolute sure-proof way to separate them from the criminals, I rather err on their side. You too will thank this attitude if, God-forbid, you happen to fall in that place yourself.

The harshness of Australian jails is not worth the nightmares of Australian children who grow-up fearing they would be taken there one day.

Dear Loudmouth,

The answer to your burglar friend, is to be able to buy his heroin cheaply in his local pharmacy, then he wouldn't have to break into our houses and also then, he would sooner be leaving this world for good.