Do Prisoners deserve yoga rooms, other enrichment?

DeletedUser

I'm serious. This is actually being debated here in California.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Reporting from Sacramento — The battle over California prison inmates' constitutional rights has come down to this: finger-pointing over who dreamed up the idea of giving convicted criminals taxpayer-funded bingo and yoga rooms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown have lambasted effortsby J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed overseer of prison healthcare, to spend $8 billion on a "gold-plated utopian hospital plan" for 10,000 inmates. It features a "holistic" environment with natural light and space for yoga, music, horticulture and art therapy.
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This idea has obviously gotten a mostly negative reception, especially since an 8 billion dollar project doesn't seem very appealling with the state budget crisis. And of course, common sense tells most of us that giving the scum of society luxuries that many honest hard-working citizens don't get is ridiculous. However, J Clark Kelso, the overseer of prison healthcare and creator of the bill, justifies this because:
...the facilities are meant for mentally ill inmates, and that he had simply followed the state's example for treating them. The evidence? Sexual predators forced to live at Coalinga State Hospital, which opened on Schwarzenegger's watch, have access to an electronic bingo board, a state-of-the-art gymnasium with a rubberized floor, a weight room and eight landscaped atriums.
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In my opinion, this is the exact opposite direction we should be going in. I say we put more focus on making prisoners work on government projects and hard labor to at least partially make up for the cost of imprisoning them (within limits).
 
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DeletedUser

Maybe it's an effort to get more wanted criminals to turn themselves in?
 

DeletedUser

conjugal visits are also an issue. Murderers are allowed to have sexual meets with their loved ones, and they have often committed such sick acts that they shouldn't be allowed to breed.
 

DeletedUser

On the other hand, recidivism in the United States is high and, according to wiki, 53% of males and 39% of females respectively are re-incarcerated. So, obviously, the current system isn't working so well. You can't just throw a bunch of people into a prison and hope that when they come out, they will become productive members of society.
If spending $8 billion helps to keep these prisoners from re-offending, then it's money well spent. And money saved on their future housing in these prisons.

And, for the record, I am not advocating that murderers and others who have committed the worst offences be granted special privileges. Personally I feel it is sufficient to provide these people with the bare minimum of food and shelter to keep them alive.
 

DeletedUser14280

I have something to say on this subject, but it's...difficult.

I'd like to hear in the news that someone commited a theft or whatever and asked to be sent to one of these "gold-plated utopian hospitals" when sentenced.
 

DeletedUser

This isn't about plain criminals, it's about the mentally ill.

This whole story is just politicians trying to get one over on each other. The Coalinga facility opened by Schwarzenegger's administration is offering the same kind of facilities as Kelso's but they're splitting hairs by saying that Coalinga is for mentally ill convicts who have served their time rather than Kelso's facilities, which are for current inmates with mental health problems.

It's a pretty lame distinction. If someone was stabbed in prison, would you defer treatment until their sentence was over? If someone with severe diabetes was imprisoned, would you refuse to provide them with dialysis? No. You wouldn't, in any civilized society, leave someone with a physical ailment untreated - so why should mental health be any different?

Don't lose sight here of the fact that these are treatment facilities - not just plain, ordinary prisons.
 

DeletedUser

I'd say its to expensive to be worthwhile, even for the mentally ill.
 

DeletedUser

How severe are they affected with mental illness? Like Andrea Yates? Or just the very least affected that could get you time in the mental health jail?

Anyway, it depends. I think yoga and such DOES do a world of good to HELP those with mental illnesses. Yoga=exercise=happy folks
Art therapy helps in other ways.

However those locked up in these places are so bad off, I doubt anything could help them to be honest. If they did something so bad that it requires lockup in a MH jail, there is a lot wrong with that person. Usually they lock up the ones who plead insanity.

Its hard enough to get a judge or jury to allow an insanity plea.

I dont think it would help very much. Im going to go back to the Yates case(in case you dont know she killed her children after being dignosed with post partum depressing which turned into psychois). Right now when shes medicated she can start to recall what she did and she ends up having another break down. I dont see art therapy or yoga helping her to be honest. I dont think anything could help her.

So many are like her.

Then you get the sociopaths who manage to get into a MH jail, and well give them yoga or art therapy, they may benifit HOWEVER they will never get feelings. They will never be able to feel empathy towards anyone, which would lead to the cycle of killing or harming others again.

In a way, I feel it MAY help a very few in the situation, but for the most part, it would be a waste of time, money, and help that could go to help victims of crimes commited by these folks.

I think if one really is for this, then why not instead look to hospitals that are funded by the govt, and give the folks who have a chance to get better the chance to try yoga and art therapy out b/c it DOES help one get better!
 

DeletedUser

Ollieman said:
I'm serious. This is actually being debated here in California.
From the Los Angeles Times:

This idea has obviously gotten a mostly negative reception, especially since an 8 billion dollar project doesn't seem very appealling with the state budget crisis. And of course, common sense tells most of us that giving the scum of society luxuries that many honest hard-working citizens don't get is ridiculous. However, J Clark Kelso, the overseer of prison healthcare and creator of the bill, justifies this because:

In my opinion, this is the exact opposite direction we should be going in. I say we put more focus on making prisoners work on government projects and hard labor to at least partially make up for the cost of imprisoning them (within limits).
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I think we need to look into this deeper. I haven't really read about it but I remember hearing about the appointment because California prisons were "unconstitutional"

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/04/local/me-prisons-yoga4?pg=1

Page 2 of the article you quoted above, and I quote
The back-and-forth comes as the state chafes against court control of its prison medical care, seized in 2006 by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, who said the system was so poor that inmates were dying unnecessarily. Henderson also sits on a three-judge panel now weighing whether to order the state to reduce prison overcrowding.
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I think there are a lot more going on than what we heard from this short article. I'm more inclined to believe in Clark Kelso as others are politicians.
 

DeletedUser

Betsy said:
On the other hand, recidivism in the United States is high and, according to wiki, 53% of males and 39% of females respectively are re-incarcerated. So, obviously, the current system isn't working so well. You can't just throw a bunch of people into a prison and hope that when they come out, they will become productive members of society.
If spending $8 billion helps to keep these prisoners from re-offending, then it's money well spent. And money saved on their future housing in these prisons.

And, for the record, I am not advocating that murderers and others who have committed the worst offences be granted special privileges. Personally I feel it is sufficient to provide these people with the bare minimum of food and shelter to keep them alive.
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Prison is like college for criminals. You go in a bad one, come out a better one. You learn how everybody else got caught, what they did, make new contacts, etc.
Even for those that sincerely want to turn over a new leaf it's next to impossible. First, you'll always be an ex-con, and thus you'll have trouble getting and maintaining a job, and if they're lucky enough to get a job, it'll be at the bottom of the barrel where they'll be stuck for the rest of their lives. You also have sex offenders who are forced to be put on a list that makes no distinction between consensual sex between two teenagers and rape of an infant. They're the only group that is essentially still in prison, since they're being monitored all the time. Then some worried housewife goes on and sees there's a sex offender living in the town and the next day the person is bombarded with hate, and ends up having to move.


As for the building of the yoga/art/etc. for mentally ill inmates, I'm not a fan. It can be therapeutic, but realistically there are probably more people with physical impairments that could make use of these programs. Yoga for limbs, art and horticulture for dexterity and coordination.
 
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DeletedUser

I truly doubt yoga courses have anything to do with therapy for sex offenders. In fact, there's no indication of that in the links provided, so I'm thinking that line of reasoning serves merely to derail the ongoing debate.
 

DeletedUser

Hellstromm said:
I truly doubt yoga courses have anything to do with therapy for sex offenders. In fact, there's no indication of that in the links provided, so I'm thinking that line of reasoning serves merely to derail the ongoing debate.
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If you're referring to me, that's not even remotely what I was arguing and that was replying to this helping with rehabilitation/recidivism ;)
 

DeletedUser

They're confined.

Bingo and Yoga wouldn't make such an experience enjoyable for me.
 

DeletedUser

Your kidding me bout this right? They deserve no benifits at all, Human rights or not, some folks in there killed and raped, the hell with em! don't give them benifits, I meen the man who stole food cause he's been laied off and ain't getting by, he shouldn't even be in there, cut the man some slack, but the man who raped his girlfreind, torture the hell out of him then give him death.
 

DeletedUser

You are absolutely right thealex.
Treating them like animals will surely make them change their ways!

Everyone deserves a chance.
I'm not saying we should pamper them, but we sure as heck shouldn't mistreat them.
If we make this about getting back at them, then we, society, are no better than the criminals we lock away.
 

DeletedUser

John Rose said:
You are absolutely right thealex.
Treating them like animals will surely make them change their ways!

Everyone deserves a chance.
I'm not saying we should pamper them, but we sure as heck shouldn't mistreat them.
If we make this about getting back at them, then we, society, are no better than the criminals we lock away.
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QFT

It should not be about what criminals deserve, it should always be about what will help them change their ways.

Revenge and retribution are not helpful, in any way, to anyone.

Punishments are important for deterrents, and teaching correct behaviours, but when punishment is used as retribution it does more harm than good, by fostering anger and resentment, and reinforcing the negative traits that lead to crime.
 

DeletedUser

Alex, you really should look into the penal system, and the prisoners therein. Rapists and murderers are only a fraction of the prison population, and specifics about their crimes make offhand labeling grossly dismissive. At the point you dehumanize a human being, you forget your own humanity. Giving someone a label and then dismissing them as "unfit for society" leads to nowhere --- fast.
 
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