Many people believe that those who commit crimes should be punished as a sort of simplistic attitude – after all we punish children when they do something wrong – and for old testament style vengeance. Perfectly understandable, and to some extent I agree as I would quite happily see those who burgled my flat locked up for a very long time in a small sewer.
But does it work ? No, of course it does not.
After all these are adult criminals we are talking about, and prisons to them become little more than criminal universities where they take a brief break from a life of crime. And what is more, it is expensive keeping criminals locked up not just in terms of what it actually costs to keep them in prison, but also because prisoners are not ordinary productive members of society contributing to the cost of society (through taxation!).
Going back to the prison conditions, there are those who will have you believe that these are almost holiday camps with all sorts of funky facilities to make life pleasurable. Perhaps (although I would dispute that), but the cost of providing a prisoner with a place in prison is dominated by the cost of security.
Those woolly liberals would have you believe that non-custodial sentences where offenders serve some other kind of punishment such as community service, and especially are provided with a means to correct their life choices are more effective. This is particularly important when it comes to drug addicts – help them with their drug addiction and they no longer have to commit crime to support their habit.
Being nice to criminals is not something that sits easily with the vengeance brigade – they would rather see them suffer. But if being nice to offenders achieves results, I say it is worth doing. I would rather see the number of victims of criminals fall than to see the punishments made worse.