23 October 2006

Victims of crime group just doesn't get it....

| Jonathon Reynolds
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The ABC News Online is reporting that a local victims of crime group is complaining that the new ACT prison is going to be far too luxurious for its inmates and happy prisoners don’t make good prisoners.

What they seem to fail to realise is that people who go to prison, are send there both to pay penance for the crime they have committed (keeping them out and away of the general population for their non-parole prison term) and the other basic concept is to provide rehabilitation during that period so these same inmates are not tempted to re-offend once they are finally released.

I would suggest that if a particularly heinous crime has been committed they wont be spending their time at the Jerrabomberra Hilton, but rather the Goulburn Super Max more likely at her Majesty’s pleasure.

[ED – Personally I love how they want razor wire festooned around the place just for the look of the thing]

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I think the wet-behind-the-ears, softly softly approach to imprisonment was due for a pendulum swing-back. Most of the people who actually end up with a custodial sentence are a***holes. Frankly it might be easier just to keep the crims in in a low-budget, no-frills fashion. I’d like the government to spend the savings on social programs, like educating kids out of poverty, and let the inmates figure out in conversation with voluntary counsellors or the Salvos that if they rehabilitate themselves they won’t have to go back in …

VYBerlinaV8 Not a problem! anytime, many people on here haven’t done their background on the subject!

Thumper the person from Vocal does know what they are talking about as they know of the crimes commited and have to try and help the victims of crimes through their ordeals, eg: getting back on track with their lives, the people from Vocal or victims of crime deal with this all the time.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy8:51 am 26 Feb 09

Well shit, thanks for clearing that up Joy123.

We should be like China if their guilty of murder and is proven JUST SHOOT THEM! No more tax payers money being spent! So simple
A life for a life!

Also I would take away the gym, as we don’t want strong big men do we, only punnie crims

VY BERLINAV8 A couple of chats with a counsellor and piss off your fine!

I don’t know where you get your infomation from, but you are wrong, you can go as long as you need through Vocal, you are thinking victims of crime through the courts counsellor, ever then if you need more counselling you can have it

I’m all for rehab…..but it simply isn’t working. Drugs/alcohol is now used as an excuse for criminal behavior. What do they get….rehab. again, again again and again…… What is the answer ?????

Victims rights are taken away by offenders with nil consequence and yet the offenders are the first to scream when they’re rights are allegedly infringed on….go figure.

local Victims of Crime are so right, the prisoners would enjoy the new prison so much they would look forward to a holiday, and reafend thinking ‘oh well going on another holiday’ not saying they should not have rehab or anything like that but they should be aware that they are in prison for punishment, and what about the victim’s???????????? What rights do they have?

Ok What about a murderer? Someone who had been in prison for attemped murder and grevious bodly harm, doe’s about three years then gets out and murders two inoccent people six weeks later, what went wrong? Some preople are born EVIL!

Great idea to give thieves a useful trade with which to gain entry to people’s houses.

They could wire up your new plasma TV on the Saturday and then relieve you of it while you’re at work on the Monday.

yes jr – i was also generalising but I would like to think that whilst anyone is in prison they not only take time to ‘reflect’, be ‘punished’ and get ‘rehab’ but the time they are in there is spent doing something more productive that may actually turn a person into a ‘more productive member of society’. I could write up an exhaustive list of all the different types of people and what each of them should do but VY already covered that… christ at the end of the day at least the accountant wouldn’t need to call a sparkie to put a new telephone line in.

My suggestion was one of bringing light the notion that punishment and rehab may not be all that could be done in preventing crim’s from re-offending once they are out of gaol.

Mr Evil – hard labour would be fine; but Celine Dion is just plain cruel and unusual.

Absent Diane3:31 pm 24 Oct 06

I was going to say blast the top 40 gangster hip hop songs into the place… but the kinds in prison would probably like that..unlike the rest of us with taste.

Pipe Celine Dion ‘singing’ through the place 24/7: that’ll make the motherfuckers think twice about committing crime again.

Who gives 2 craps whether it’s ALL people or not. Make everyone learn something new. Is it really going to hurt an accountant to learn how to wire up a power point? They might dislike it enough to not reoffend. If we’re talking about professional types here (and I think we are), then they knowingly committed their crime, and were probably more aware than the average retard crim of the possible consequences.

It’s not just about teaching them something new, it’s about occupying their time usefully.

Snahon, do you really find the concept of coiled razor wire glinting in the morning sun and a sign over the prison gate reading “arbeit macht frei” that attractive?

You are making the bold assumption that ALL people that end up in prison need to learn a trade because they didn’t have a job in the first place or won’t have one to go to when they get back out.

What if you were a professional type (for the sake of the exercise say programmer, accountant, policy writer, sales person or consultant – I’m sure you get the general gist) before you committed a crime tell me why you would need to learn a “blue collar” trade for the purposes of rehabilitation and getting a job once you come out of prison?

Hmmm

Well we apparently have a skills shortage, how about giving people some skills so that when they re-enter society they don’t fall in the same cycles.

How about making it mandatory that:
1. Do the rehab part
2. Give them physical labour as ‘punishment’
and
3. Get them all started on training for a trade – plumbing, electrical, gas fitting etc etc
4. have a continuation program once they are out of gaol to complete their training if they can’t find a company to complete it with.

By giving people skills to earn money, you generate much more positive outcomes then just punishing them and releasing them back into the same environment from whence they came.

It will start to address our skills shortage, these people still serve time in gaol as punishment, and *hopefully* give them some basis to become a more productive member of society and break the cycle of criminal activity.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we committed this level of public resources to ‘rehabilitating’ the victims of crime? What do they get? A couple of chats with a counsellor and piss off you’re fine.

What’s needed is something to pass the criminals’ time so that when they get to their cells they just want to sleep. Hmmm, let me think….hard work ought to do the trick. People joke about chain gangs, but if you give someone something to keep them busy and tire them physically, they will have a lot less need for other forms of entertainment.

What do they do now for rehabilitation?

The argument may have been poor, but the rights of victims in our judicial system…..well lets say they have none. They have zero impact on proceedings.

Prison shouldnt be a happy, comfortable holiday, but neither should it be a Gulag. With plasmas, cottages and a roam around as you like atmosphere it sounds like what they call a prison would be a nice retreat.

The first aim of it is punishment, rehab comes a long 2nd. Justr about every crook in the system has had a go at ‘rehabilitation’. It has gotten us nowhere

By the sounds of their “cottage style units” they may be living to a higher standard than they were on the outside.
“I’ll commit (insert crime here), what’s the worst that could happen? I’ll end up at the Jerrabomberra Hilton? It’s better than Bega Flats anyway, and I get a live in chef there.”

“We are are trying to be very modern and humane in making it comfortable for them, but at the same time a degree of comfort that goes past what is needed is no what the victims of crime want to see,” she said.

As a victim of crime I’d like to state definitively that Marie-Noelle Cure DOESN’T SPEAK ON MY BEHALF.

isn’t there 4 reasons for locking people up, punishment, rehab, isolation (removal from society) and revenge (or justice if you prefer)

happy to be corrected is there are more or they have proper names or terms

depriving a person of their liberty for a period of time is punishment. treating them like inmates of a nazi concentration camp is inhumane.

however i disagree with the rehabilitation part.

id make sure they misse out on tv, radio, cd’s etc for the duration also.

let them reflect upon the error of their ways in quiet contemplation.

Is air con and central heating part of the deal?
If it is then it is far to soft an approach.

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