OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

I like the concept, but would like to see more detail. Who decides what work people do? Who decides what work is acceptable?

I'm not sure, I was hoping for others to have more insight.

If you're expecting them to have customers, there is serious potential for fraud or abuse.

If they create consumer goods, they may skimp on quality.

If there is a group organized for this, they need to be separated from the rest of the prison population. Good work allows them to stay with modest benefits. Teams are occasionally restructured to weed out collusion. The work would be non-profit and organized through non-profit organizations.

LOL! We don't have that already?

customers under very restricted conditions may be ok by probably wouldn't happen. Although rehabilitation into the general public isn't a bad idea at release time.

I think we do have highway cleanup and similar jobs. I'm curious what jobs you are proposing. Common trades include construction, automotive repair, and stuff like that.

Lots of prisoners do work. They make 19 cents an hour while their families have to live on welfare. I think we should provide all prisoners the opportunity to work at least at minimum wage. Then they can care for their families while they're serving time.

I like hamptonrachel20025's idea, federal minimum wage paid for inmates in the federal system who work, and each state should enact similar using teir minimum wage). The jobs should be jobs that benefit society, like the training of help dogs (guide dogs, etc.) that is done in the women's prison in WA state. Better they get training in a job skill they can use once they are freed than that they just get an education how to better commit crimes.

Minimum wage is a horrible idea and even its original reasons have nothing to do with prison life. If their work isn't worth minimum wage, they shouldn't get paid it. Meanwhile, people who do good work should be compensated accordingly. Teaching them otherwise will only hurt them in the real world.

Lets try a 12 hour day, six days per week, and move up from there! Prison is supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime, so lets make sure it is unpleasant. Make it easier and more rewarding to work for a living than to commit felonies.

jwelborn3434, have you ever seen the inside of jail or prison? Most of them are filthy holes, the guards are often sadistic, the food more garbage than healthful.

If we want those who are jailed/imprisoned to come out of incarceration with a healthy attitude, "rehabilitated", ready to be law abiding, productive citizens (for the first time or again), then we are certainly NOT going to achieve that goal the way we are currently doing things. Our governments and our society are far too focused on punishment (and cruel punishment, at that) and not enough on rehabilitation and/or restitution (restitution -- making the victim whole again). Therefore, I have some common sense suggestions as to how to change that.

Inmates should be well fed with a nutritionally sound diet and allowed the occasional non-nutritional treat, they should be allowed adequate time in the sunlight to build Vitamin D (if sunlight is lacking, their diets should be supplemented with Vitamin D-3), and they should be allowed sufficient exercise, we need to keep them completely healthy, anything less is inhumane. We prosecute an animal owner for not providing at least that much for their animal(s), so why should jails and prisons be allowed to deprive inmates of their full health with impunity?.

Inmates should also be protected from the violence of other inmates, and sadistic guards, particularly those inmates who are incarcerated pre-trial (where and when the hell did the idea of "presumed innocence" disappear?) and especially those who have been convicted of non-violent and/or victimless "crimes". Again we would do whatever we could to protect an abused animal, why do we allow PEOPLE to be mistreated this way? That Sheriff in AZ, Arpaio?, is an excellent example of what NOT to do, he should be incarcerated himself, one week, under his own rules, for treating those inmates the way he does, perhaps he'd come out the other side with a bit more compassion.

You should recall that many of those incarcerated are innocent of the charges against them (just look at the recent cases where DNA has shown quite a few people who were convicted to be innocent; and also there has been a lot of coverage lately of cases where poor, or even criminal, forensic practices and/or police tactics convicted innocent people of crimes) sometimes those innocents spend decades in prison before their innocence comes to light. How do you think those innocents feel once they are free? Angry? Resentful? How should they feel?

If every innocent person who was convicted under any questionable circumstances were to sue the prosecutors in their cases, I'm certain that we'd soon see a lot more careful attention to making certain ALL the evidence clearly shows the suspect as the ONLY possible perpetrator of the crime before taking the case to trial. Unfortunately, most of those freed innocents just want to move on, live their lives, and forget all about those months or years in prison; so the abuses continue.

Every court system (municipal, district, superior and federal) in the nation should have a division of advocates for the families of the defendants to help them navigate the labyrinth of the "justice" system (at least until the unjust system is actually made just again). This could be an agency made up of volunteers or paid employees or any combination of those, but they should be all about helping the families understand what is happening, where to go for hearings and court dates, a list of Attorneys and a notation which ones are willing to take on pro bono cases, what the rules are (re: the defendant, the court, the jail, the bail, etc.), what they can do to help the defendant, the defense, and each other, etc.. The voters in the locality of each court's venue should have the choice which system would be put in place -- volunteerism, taxpayer provided, or a mix -- if taxpayers are to provide the funding for the service. Alternatively, it could be funded by donations.

To expand on the pro bono thought, attorneys should be encouraged to take at least one case a month pro bono. the public defender system is too overloaded and therefore is to focused on plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is not a bargain, for either the victim or the defendant. If the defendant is innocent of any wrongdoing he is encouraged, often coerced, into taking a plea bargain just to get out of jail, now, or the prospect of getting out sooner. If the defendant is guilty, s/he is getting away with being convicted on a lesser crime, probably getting lighter sentence, and therefore the victim loses out on real justice in the long run.

Of course, a good percentage of the reason why the courts, public defenders offices and jails/prisons are so overwhelmed and overcrowded is due to the so called "war on drugs". End that and a whole lot of these problems go away by themselves. The police would have more time and resources to devote to doing a thorough investigation. The courts would have fewer cases on the dockets and would no longer need to encourage plea bargains or to push cases through too quickly for a truly fair trial. The prisons would have room for the truly violent and dangerous among us who truly need to be kept apart from society. Halfway houses, and leg bracelet/home incarceration could take care of those who are guilty of lesser crimes, and jails could then be left for only the pretrial flight risks and the overnight stays of the drunk, the disorderly, the DUIs, etc..

So having the incarcerated work at a job that teaches them a marketable skill would help them transition from prison to freedom, not to mention keep them occupied while incarcerated, so they have less time to learn better methods of committing crimes from fellow inmates.

One more thing, we should NEVER incarcerate non-violent offenders in the same prisons as violent criminals, which is why I suggested home incarceration and halfway houses for non-violent crimes.

Prison labor is slave labor. Lets not mince words here.

witchwindy,

I agree on some points.

- I do believe hard work and new learned skills is a form of rehabilitation and not cruel punishment or slave labor. The only way to learn and grow is to do not sit.

- I do believe some wrongly accused have been prisoned but not the majority. - Absolutely the violent and nonviolent should never be mixed!

- Home arrests, sounds interesting and doable in some cases. But are we just moving the cost? police, equipment, officials, and so on will need to be added. Besides a nice comfort zone is not always the way to rehabilitate or learn what is right and wrong.

- Questionable circumstances: We need very strict penalties to stop this kind of abuse from the public and the lawyers who can use it as a tool.

- Advocates are OK, if trained and not running on personal opinions. I have run into advocates using the system to better a personal belief or organization. This is just as bad in the end and serves only one organizations ideology.

-Mistreatments in prison are awful and a fact but let’s not forget the prisoners are not always innocent, monitoring and constant outside inspections of facilities could help some.

- If we are talking about wrongly jailed because we don’t agree with the law at standing.. That’s a different topic… :)

Lots of objections here.

Is this supposed to be voluntary? I hope so.

We know making people do anything will amount to nothing, I would say it should be voluntary.

It should be voluntary.

witchwindy--Rehabilitation is a nice idea but has never proven effective. Of course prison's are inhumane! Locking a human being in a cage is an offense against his dignity. However, something has to be done to prevent those with a predatory mindset from victimizing others and the popular belief among pseudo-intellectuals is that caging a person like an animal is somehow kinder that a quick, clean, dignified execution.

Josh Senecal---when you volunteer to prey on other human beings, one way or the other, that should be the last voluntary action you EVER take.

Can anyone tell me of a case where a violent offender attacked anyone else after being executed?

Jwelborn3434,

Are you telling about the death sentence? I didnt include it, I saw that as another topic...

I am saying that whether society chooses death or imprisonment as a way to remove those dangerous to other, those who have committed offenses should have NO choice what so ever.

I'm excluding, so called, morality crimes and specifically discussing offenses against another person.

sorry telling was to be talking..

jwelborn3434,

Not all that are violent deserve to die, I support case by case approach not blanket killing.

jwelborn3434 -Rehabilitation is a nice idea but has never proven effective

I honestly don't have any numbers on this sort of thing but it could also be fair to say we have never chosen an effective rehabilitation program.

Then it goes back to my earlier point, if imprisonment is used, it should be unpleasant. A gentleman named Buddy Williams once proposed allowing convicted capitol felons to choose between execution and life, without parole, at hard labor.

How would you propose to implement an effective rehabilitation system, especially if you could not compel participation?

I would agree with allowing someone who will never be set free and has been proven 100% Buddy William's suggestion.

I don't have the answer to that, I would suggest it to be researched and studied...

This isn't a bad idea at all, but the first problems that need to be dealt with is how to make sure that less innocent people are convicted of crimes they did not commit--and thereby forced into what is essentially slave labour--and how to be sure that laws are not created (such as cannabis possession laws, and the like) which simply criminalize people for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

To be more specific, Common Law states quite clearly that, if there is no victim, there is no crime...yet hundreds of thousands of people in the US and Canada are arrested, fined, tried and jailed for "crimes which have no victims."

If society is to regain even the slightest semblance of intelligence again, we must do away with these "no victim crimes" which are, in all cases, "statutory offences", which are only legally applicable in corporate law...not in Natural Law or Common Law, which are those laws which affect living human beings.

Within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, each inmate MUST work. Each inmate is assigned a job and DOES work. When the inmate is released (the sentence is over), the inmate, as a part of his/her probation must work a job.

Each state prison has its own requirements but they have jobs assigned to each inmate.

I don't know what the purpose of this proposal is. The inmates already work!

Does this mean you want them RELEASED into society to work? They are working within their facilities doing real work. Maintenance, teaching, food service, etc.