Incarcerations for criminal offenses are an existing yet standard procedure for addressing the problem of crime. Arrest and detention or incarceration is an historically common way to sequester those who were deemed to be enemies of civil order.
Incarceration is debatably an improvement over the way legal justice systems worked in ancient times. Incarceration is equivalent to time in the ice hockey penalty box, instead of having one hands cut off for theft as in Sharia.
Many government inefficiencies are not changed until something compels it. The U.S. government spendsn13 billion dollars apiece on Ford class aircraft carriers (aircraft carriers were invented by the Japanese who launched the first one in 1922) instead of inventing a more modern way to launch fighter aircraft from the sea or wherever.
Global warming concerns are pressurizing government to move away a little from producing greenhouse gassing and automobiles that burn gasoline, yet not fast enough. Few have any real interest in upgrading corrections systems. For-profit prisons are like for-profit Obamacare-health care for the poor. Expand instead of innovate and invent. It is easier to criticize it than to realistically fix it. And this is still the age of neo-romanticism, subjectivism and moral relativism. Government people are left alone to be concerned about new tax cuts for the 1% they would like to make.
The ancient Germana-Francic Salic Law of King Clovis is an example of change in the west (from the way it is now).
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/salic.asp quote from the Salic law...
“Title XVII. Concerning Wounds.
1. If any one have wished to kill another person, and the blow have missed, he on whom it was proved shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
2. If any person have wished to strike another with a poisoned arrow, and the arrow have glanced aside, and it shall be proved on him; he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
3. If any person strike another on the head so that the brain appears, and the three bones which lie above the brain shall project, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.
4. But if it shall have been between the ribs or in the stomach, so that the wound appears and reaches to the entrails, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars-which make 30 shillings-besides five shillings for the physician's pay.
5. If any one shall have struck a man so that blood falls to the floor, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.
6. But if a freeman strike a freeman with his fist so that blood does not flow, he shall be sentenced for each blow-up to 3 blows-to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.
Title XVIII. Concerning him who, before the King, accuses an innocent Man.
If any one, before the king, accuse an innocent man who is absent, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.”
-end quote
Three modern problems with incarceration are;
1) It costs too much- $30,000 to $40,000 annually per person
2) Incarceration as it is presently isn’t efficient at correcting with a 70% recidivism rate
3) Incarceration sends criminals to training academy for career criminals
The remedy for all three problems is in technology. Inmates should be physically isolated from other criminals, not concentrated, and subject to a rigorous body and mind training course using all the efficiencies of technology available today for instruction.
Being in prison should be like being in the Marine Corp regarding discipline, yet with inmates force-fed academic intelligence in isolation. There only social contacts should be with staff, councilors and those without a felony conviction including instructors.
One should be able to design individual training courses for individual inmates that would get corrections done in a third of the time of sentence as it is. If recidivism occurred a different approach might be warranted from the old play-book from the middle ages to make prison less desirable-such as the wind cage yet not until death.
