On prisons and a little about misinformation

Prisoners are a problem in possibly every country, and when their number grow, the consequences become more evident. It's a subject that was touched upon in class, and in Brazil, there are many news about overcrowded prisons, so I decided to write about it.

What is to be done with people who have been convicted of a crime and deemed dangerous to society in some way? The simplest answer would be to incarcerate; someone who is imprisoned is not able to commit further crimes, at least until released, and we hope that being confined was enough of a punishment as to incentive a felon to not commit further crimes.

Problem solved, right? Just take everyone of them and throw them in jail...What about the cost of all that? The cost to construct and maintain prisons, prisoner's food and clothes, the salaries of prison guards, their equipment, usage of utilities such as electricity and water. In California, for example, the cost to incarcerate an inmate is $47,102.00[1].

It's a lot of money, but as long as it brings benefits to the people, it might be worth it. So let's think about the benefits. We arrest criminals, they spend some time in prison with nothing to do but think about what they've done and repent... or at least become afraid of being incarcerated again and live a clean life afterwards. The criminal rate goes down, and normal citizens enjoy their safety.

That's how it's supposed to work, however if we try and think in the point of view of a employer, it's simple to see that there's at least one basic flaw with all this. Who's going to hire someone who has committed a crime grave enough to warrant his imprisonment and hasn't done any sort of work or study for many years? And what is someone who can't get a job to do?

Prisoners must be trained and given an opportunity to work before being released. In many countries, including Australia, penal labour has been instituted. It's a good way to lessen the cost of incarceration, make the inmates able to work, own money by themselves and even help the victims and their families. It's not without problems, of course. There is, for example, concern with the prisoners being paid less than an average worker would; as a result, the prisoner doesn't receive as much as he or she should, the average workers suffer from unfair competition, and the employers benefit from the low cost labour[2].

Although it's already practised in many places, penal labour is something I wanted to talk about because in social networks, or at least Brazilian social networks, it's really easy to see people enraged about the costs of prisoners and demanding that their rights be cut, many times utilising false arguments[3]. This sort of misinformation is not uncommon, and if one of the problems caused by the easy access to information I thought about when writing my last post.

[1]http://www.lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost, California Legislative Analyst Office, retrieved 15 January 2014.

[2]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/union-says-prisoners-working-at-nt-salt-mine-27like-slave-labo/4952642, ABC news, retrieved 15 January 2014.

[3]http://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/app/noticia/brasil/2010/04/22/interna_brasil,187866/index.shtml, Correio Braziliense, retrieved 15 January 2014.

This reference is in Portuguese, so I'll translate the part which I find most important.

“The pension helps the dependent of inmates who used to contribute to Social Security at the time of the arrest and the maximum value is of R$798.30.”

“In messages spread on the internet about the reclusion pension, it's informed that an inmate may receive up to R$4,000.00.”