CAJUNLAWYER
Member
The below is an excerpt taken from an article who's primary question was along the lines of "would you rather take ___ years in prison or removal of a hand as punishment" Seems that the mean from responses was around10 years. The interesting part of the essay appears below and I post it without comment any way or the other.
"Three Different Phases
1. Pre-Sentence
The bulk of the punishment occurs right up front, before you ever get to prison. Arrest, media, social injury, job loss, repeated court appearances, spending large sums of money on legal fees, months and years of being unable to make any general life plans, friends and family withdrawing from you. Buy a new car? Change jobs? Put money away? If you are sentenced to prison, you can suddenly lose all of it. Everything. Very quickly. Living with that kind of uncertainty for 1–3 years is extremely difficult for most people. It is one of the reasons people plead guilty so readily: it's the only viable path to some prospect of normalcy.
During this time, sensible people straighten right up. Further punishment is mostly for public pageantry. This is maybe 20–35% of prison inmates.
Or, they continue to make bad choices, which inevitably makes their situation much-much worse. Violating bail or getting new charges.
This is important. Part of the very concept of punishment is that it is aimed to correct behavior. Without any meaningful opportunity to change behavior, there is no punishment. It is simple retaliation for bad conduct. But again, that will depend what you think the aim of punishment is.
In our system, these are all "collateral consequences". The systems itself does not consider these things to be any kind of punishment.
2. Prison
By comparison, being sent to prison is simple and a relief. No, contrary to opinion, people who are innocent don't "worry endlessly" because they are truly innocent. That's a nonsense television trope.
Why? Because at least matters have been decided—undesirable to that person as they are—and there is some known end. And, during that time, most of your material needs are at least marginally taken care of. You have no significant choices to make or discretion to exercise—and you're placed in an environment with topsy-turvy social norms. (Long-term exposure to them are probably socially damaging.)
Likewise, you're separating from loved ones for a long period of time. And for people in provider-roles, this is very difficult, because their loved ones are now also suffering because of the sentence. But, I assure you, that isn't corrective in any way: it creates extreme resentment.
After a while, you're just following the schedule that you're mostly given. This is usually uneventful. And I mean that in the sense of, no one is demanding much of you or asking you to do or think about anything. This is the "storing people in boxes" industry. They don't really do much else. There is no other goal they are trying to achieve, except wait until your clock ticks down.
I once asked a prison case counselor, "Do you keep statistics on case outcomes, program participation, and recidivism?"
And her response was: "Why would we do that?"
A rational person would (or just someone having common sense) not expect that any significant number of inmates would internalize changes to their thinking or behavior through any long-term process like this.
And so, as the "long nothing" proceeds, inmates just get used to it. It takes… maybe a year or so. Some even comment, from time to time, that if they had 2–4 different things (e.g. decent food, sex, marijuana, cigarettes, seeing their kids), they would have no reason to leave prison.
Food for thought, if you want poorly behaved people to segregate themselves from the rest of society, indefinitely, without much resistance.
3. Release
Later, when an inmate is released from prison, that is—from the inmate's perspective—exceptionally punishing. Just, in a different way. Similar to Step 1, these are all collateral consequences. The system does not recognize that as punishment.
Most inmates do not have a simple time returning to ordinary life. Many prisoners will be penniless, without clothing, without a home, without a job. Over their prison stay, many of their friend and family relationships have degraded or become non-existent. Their work history has a giant gap and many people have learned no skills which might assist them in earning an income.
It's basically like dropping someone in the middle of the desert and expecting them to walk out. Confinement has damaged them in multiple aspects, and you're expecting them to walk out and conform to society's expectations.
This is not a reasonable or even rational expectation. And it is why both new substance abuse, homeless, unemployment, and recidivism are so high.
So, in terms of the subjective perception of punishment, prison is a bit of a very boring lull.
Is it effective punishment? Up to a point. After a while, probably not. It just becomes routine. Normal. Normal life is not readily perceived as punishment. It is just… normal.
I would spitball that after 2-3 years, you're not effectively punishing anyone. The idea that behavioral change should happen—or that there's any point to it—becomes the last thing in anyone's mind.
At that point, you're just segregating them from the rest of society (which is a reason for imprisonment, but it isn't what the question asks). At that point, systemically, you're not changing anyone's behavior. And you're probably starting to damage some people psychologically. There's variation around that. Some people are just more resilient than other. Some adults are afraid of spiders.
To that end, you could collapse a lot of the prison resources that go into longer punishments into those first 1–3 years and I suspect you'd probably get better, long-term outcomes.
What would be more effective punishment? Well. That's a different question altogether. You'd have to rethink a few very big concepts about correctional systems.
But if you don't know your purpose for putting them there—and some known goal you're trying to achieve—you're probably not going to achieve much of anything particular."
From my perspective over 30 plus years this pretty much nails it
"Three Different Phases
1. Pre-Sentence
The bulk of the punishment occurs right up front, before you ever get to prison. Arrest, media, social injury, job loss, repeated court appearances, spending large sums of money on legal fees, months and years of being unable to make any general life plans, friends and family withdrawing from you. Buy a new car? Change jobs? Put money away? If you are sentenced to prison, you can suddenly lose all of it. Everything. Very quickly. Living with that kind of uncertainty for 1–3 years is extremely difficult for most people. It is one of the reasons people plead guilty so readily: it's the only viable path to some prospect of normalcy.
During this time, sensible people straighten right up. Further punishment is mostly for public pageantry. This is maybe 20–35% of prison inmates.
Or, they continue to make bad choices, which inevitably makes their situation much-much worse. Violating bail or getting new charges.
This is important. Part of the very concept of punishment is that it is aimed to correct behavior. Without any meaningful opportunity to change behavior, there is no punishment. It is simple retaliation for bad conduct. But again, that will depend what you think the aim of punishment is.
In our system, these are all "collateral consequences". The systems itself does not consider these things to be any kind of punishment.
2. Prison
By comparison, being sent to prison is simple and a relief. No, contrary to opinion, people who are innocent don't "worry endlessly" because they are truly innocent. That's a nonsense television trope.
Why? Because at least matters have been decided—undesirable to that person as they are—and there is some known end. And, during that time, most of your material needs are at least marginally taken care of. You have no significant choices to make or discretion to exercise—and you're placed in an environment with topsy-turvy social norms. (Long-term exposure to them are probably socially damaging.)
Likewise, you're separating from loved ones for a long period of time. And for people in provider-roles, this is very difficult, because their loved ones are now also suffering because of the sentence. But, I assure you, that isn't corrective in any way: it creates extreme resentment.
After a while, you're just following the schedule that you're mostly given. This is usually uneventful. And I mean that in the sense of, no one is demanding much of you or asking you to do or think about anything. This is the "storing people in boxes" industry. They don't really do much else. There is no other goal they are trying to achieve, except wait until your clock ticks down.
I once asked a prison case counselor, "Do you keep statistics on case outcomes, program participation, and recidivism?"
And her response was: "Why would we do that?"
A rational person would (or just someone having common sense) not expect that any significant number of inmates would internalize changes to their thinking or behavior through any long-term process like this.
And so, as the "long nothing" proceeds, inmates just get used to it. It takes… maybe a year or so. Some even comment, from time to time, that if they had 2–4 different things (e.g. decent food, sex, marijuana, cigarettes, seeing their kids), they would have no reason to leave prison.
Food for thought, if you want poorly behaved people to segregate themselves from the rest of society, indefinitely, without much resistance.
3. Release
Later, when an inmate is released from prison, that is—from the inmate's perspective—exceptionally punishing. Just, in a different way. Similar to Step 1, these are all collateral consequences. The system does not recognize that as punishment.
Most inmates do not have a simple time returning to ordinary life. Many prisoners will be penniless, without clothing, without a home, without a job. Over their prison stay, many of their friend and family relationships have degraded or become non-existent. Their work history has a giant gap and many people have learned no skills which might assist them in earning an income.
It's basically like dropping someone in the middle of the desert and expecting them to walk out. Confinement has damaged them in multiple aspects, and you're expecting them to walk out and conform to society's expectations.
This is not a reasonable or even rational expectation. And it is why both new substance abuse, homeless, unemployment, and recidivism are so high.
So, in terms of the subjective perception of punishment, prison is a bit of a very boring lull.
Is it effective punishment? Up to a point. After a while, probably not. It just becomes routine. Normal. Normal life is not readily perceived as punishment. It is just… normal.
I would spitball that after 2-3 years, you're not effectively punishing anyone. The idea that behavioral change should happen—or that there's any point to it—becomes the last thing in anyone's mind.
At that point, you're just segregating them from the rest of society (which is a reason for imprisonment, but it isn't what the question asks). At that point, systemically, you're not changing anyone's behavior. And you're probably starting to damage some people psychologically. There's variation around that. Some people are just more resilient than other. Some adults are afraid of spiders.
To that end, you could collapse a lot of the prison resources that go into longer punishments into those first 1–3 years and I suspect you'd probably get better, long-term outcomes.
What would be more effective punishment? Well. That's a different question altogether. You'd have to rethink a few very big concepts about correctional systems.
But if you don't know your purpose for putting them there—and some known goal you're trying to achieve—you're probably not going to achieve much of anything particular."
From my perspective over 30 plus years this pretty much nails it
