So you think SE Asia has inhumane prisons?

[Gaybutton]

I'm still at a loss to know how else to exert control.

"Cruelty with a purpose is not cruelty. It's expediency."
Trevor Howard (Captain Bligh), 'Mutiny on the Bounty' - 1962

[windwalker]

Prisons in the USA are big business with a big B for Bucks especially so with the privatization of prisons. Much of it starts with politicians trying to get elected by passing "getting tough" on crime laws leading to more police, more prisons, more court personnel, more service personnel and more "corrections officers" if there ever was an oxymoron. These COs are often the unemployable who if not working for the system would be on the other side of the bars. Likely given decent living conditions in prisons, including housing and food, there would be less violence and less need for the harsh and often inhumane conditions of some prisons.

[lvdkeyes]

US prisons are like country clubs compared to SE Asian prisons.

[windwalker]

Perhaps, but have you spent time in a US prison to really know what they are like?

[lvdkeyes]

No, but I know two people who have both spent time twice.

[christianpfc]

A prison should be a place where nobody want to be - but not that way. From time to time, there are reports in newspapers that people commit minor offences to get into prison to get free healthcare, food and accommodation.

No prisoner should cost the society any money, in fact, prisons should generate money. It boggles my mind that it costs the society more to lock someone away than I earn. And it absolutely amazes me how people can get cigarettes, alcohol, cell phones smuggled into prisons.

[windwalker]

Christian, you are a very naive young man.

[christianpfc]

I wanted to say if I were in charge of a prison, it wouldn't cost the society money, instead it would generate money, and there would be no alcohol, cigarettes, drugs or cell phones.

[ceejay]

I wanted to say if I were in charge of a prison, it wouldn't cost the society money, instead it would generate money.................

It's a very bad idea to give governments a financial incentive to put people in prison. Stalin's paranoia aside, one of the motivations behind the Gulag system in the Soviet Union was to provide a slave labour force.

[windwalker]

I wanted to say if I were in charge of a prison, it wouldn't cost the society money, instead it would generate money, and there would be no alcohol, cigarettes, drugs or cell phones.

Much of the contraband brought into prisons is by the guards (Correction Officers). The private sector does not want prisons taking away their profits by providing cheap labor.