St. Maarten Private Eye

It's a slippery slope to beatings and stonings, cutting of hands, heads, etc etc. Really, learn about Sharia before making such an offhand statement about it, it's really quite backward and horrific. Our crime situation is caused by many things and stuffing prisioners into cells like sardines will do nothing to solve it.

It's social and economic, it's engrained in the societal zeitgiest that bending, breaking or just ignoring laws is the norm. Immigration, social care and education dysfuctionality and neglect are part of the problem too and they all need to be fixed.

Prisons should be correctional, the punishment is the loss of freedom, the aim is that when their time is up, the people coming out of them don't recommit crimes. Society has a responsibilty, ethically, morally and logically for it's own good to do this.

Social education and social care is also very important, many young criminals are created from the society we have, from poverty, poor or dysfuctional parenting, from tragedy and hardship. Like it or not, in an ever more crowded society like ours, govt does have to work harder in all these fields. But as we all know, thy haven't. Our crime rate and problems stem from these things, and others.

I'm sure Caribdude planned to put his in his next WWW post, but I'm going to beat him to it. There is a very interesting post and discussion over on the Agonist about the US prison system that you should go check out.

Prison Brutality - 11th October 2007

Also this one is worth a read

Police Raids in the US - 12th October 2007

And if you have time, and you should try to find it, you can find the documentary talked about in the first one at this next link. It's about 45-50 mins long.

Channel 4 Documentary - Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Hady