This morning on the Fox 2 news in Detroit there was a report that the 50 year old refrigerator at the Macomb County Jail had mold in it and had to be shut down. That meant that prisoners had to be fed bologna sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the prisoners were complaining… I was shocked by the newscast. The prisoners should be happy to get such good food, their lives must be pretty good in jail if that is something that they feel a need to complain about. On top of it the prisoner’s families were also complaining… Hello… these people are… IN JAIL!
Jail isn’t a place you go to to get a four-star meal. You go there because you did something that was not proper for society and you are being kept away from the rest of society for it. It makes me wonder how much better these prisoners are being treated than say the normal folks in the Detroit area are being treated who are dealing with a near 20% unemployment rate. The prisoners have guaranteed dry/clean rooms, heat, water, and apparently food that is better than sandwiches which is far better than many people in Detroit have. No wonder crime rates are going up. Prisoners shouldn’t have food so good that they complain when they get sandwiches. They should get un-air-conditioned (say down to 52 degrees in the winter[1], up to 90 in the summer[2]) unadorned cells with some oatmeal type sludge, no TV, no radio, they have access to books that teach them something useful[3]. Actual work that they have to do that no, they don’t get paid for. It shouldn’t be a vacation, it shouldn’t be a choice someone would make because it is better than what they can get in the “real” world. They are IN JAIL! If someone doesn’t think that would be a good place to go, all the better, keep your nose clean and don’t go there. If you commit a crime, you pay the consequences and one of those consequences should be a jail that you absolutely abhor and can’t stand to be at. It definitely shouldn’t be a place that is so good that when you get bologna sandwiches you feel impelled to complain about it.
Maybe instead of jail we use Coventry like in Heinlein’s book of the same name. Take a state like North Dakota or Utah, move the honest good citizens out and and fence it off and just toss all the prisoners from across the country into it with no supplies, nothing, and let them fend for themselves in there. This goes for the murderers as well as the hit and run folks and druggies and even the embezzlers. If people know that is the punishment, maybe the deed will not seem so exciting to perform.
joe
[1] This is what my house gets down to in the evenings. It heats up to 61 during the day because I am NOT in jail and I am personally paying for it so have the choice to spend money in that way.
[2] Ditto but for air-conditioning.
[3] No, they shouldn’t have fictional works “to pass the time”. They should pass the time doing useful work for society (not themselves) and thinking about how they are going to better control their urges the next time they are out in society so as not to come back.
