Prisons In Australia

Recently whilst reading an article about the condition of prisons in Zimbabwe, I was stimulated into writing a piece about Australian prisons and if they are a successful form of rehabilitation for the charged and for the community. This is what happened. 

           

The average male prisoner is a thirty-three year old man who has committed an assault or drug charge, who is illiterate and has re-offended and serving their second period of time in jail. 56 per cent of current prisoners had already served a sentence in adult prisons before their current episode. This shows that prisons are not a successful means of rehabilitation and even after they are released from prison, are still a threat to society. If a drug addict is sent to prison for drug related crime, be it theft or possession, the prisons have little to no programs to help this man get off the drugs but rather make him a more hardened and violent criminal as drugs are easily available in prisons. Also a young boy how is troubled and thrown in jail for a small term for a non-violent crime, like car theft, will be taken in and the inmates will eat him alive. He’ll be violated and be taught that violence is the way of life and he will become a seasoned criminal. So when he is released he will most definitely re-offend.

           

Most prisoners go in, cost the state lots of money, being illiterate, become more violent, hatch some more plans for more criminal activities, be released, then commit more crimes and then the cycle will repeat itself. Inmates need some motivation to curb this cycle. Sure, there are programs set to help but there is no incentive for prisoners to do them. In America prisoners are offered quite a significant reduction of there sentence if a rehabilitation program is completed and also for becoming literate. Australia needs to adopt these policies.

           

 Recently, community conferences have been brought in to ‘shame’ the offenders. A community conference is where the offenders face the victims and the victims get their say. For non-violent criminals this is a perfect punishment. It is shown that 85% of people who have done the community conferences have not re-offended and had straightened their lives out. It is also amazingly cheaper than keeping a man in prison for any extended time.  Community service is also a good way for non-violent offenders to put back into the community that they have wronged.

           

Prisons should be a last resort and reserved for hardened, violent criminals who are a threat to society, not for anyone else. People change in prison and come out socially disabled unable to shake their history. I believe we should keep as many people out of jails as we can. The common view that we should lock everyone up and throw away the key, is wrong and they should be looking for alternative ways to punish and rehabilitate and not make the situation worse. It is also much cheaper and the government can spend the extra money on schools or hospitals.

 

The crikey blog that provoked me:

http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090331-Zimbabwes-prisons-are-death-traps.html

 

Blogs suck

Blogs are one of the wost things ever invented. People who take blogging seriously are very sad beings. People who rather sit on their computers for 15 hours a day forcing opinions on other blog users whilst sitting home eating pizza and being crap at life, suck. Blogs are a waste of time. Please do not force opinions on me beacause i will hate you. Blogs suck.

Blog review

The Redneck Mommy

Firstly, I hated everything about this blog and most of the other ones i checked out.

The style of this persons blog is that of a mother’s point of view and someone who thought they were technology literate despite that she was of an older generation.  She made bad jokes all the way through and her topics were rubbish.  Some of the writing techniques she used was listing, just listing all the stuff she thought was funny. She seemed quite literate i think.  She also came across as intelligent, too intelligent  The blogs main themes were issues about her child/ren and what it is like being older and what the younger generations have been missing out on.

I have probably missed the point of this assignment, but most blogs are about people whinging or people trying to be funny. They are both massive pet peeves of mine. So hopefully I have whinged and made you laugh…………

Love

Matthew Rooke

so rookie whats up

not much