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How Should Prisons Be Run

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Submitted By yohomiek
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There Needs To Be A Balance

It seems like people are at an all out battle as to how prisons should be run. Some say punitive prisons are far too harsh and some say rehabilitation centers go way too easy on the prisoners. So why don’t we just come to a middle ground? We should put the serious murder and physical abuse crimes in punitive prisons while putting the drug abusers and people addicted to substances in rehabilitation facilities. It’s highly unfair to the people that are damaged by drugs and need help recovering from them are being put in prisons far too harsh for what their crime really was. On the other spectrum, it’s also highly unfair for someone who has murdered a bunch of people to be put in a prison that treats itself more like rehab. Those criminals deserve to be punished hard for the devastation they caused their victims family and have no right to have to be cushing around. The way prisons would work effectively is if they had different sections in the correction facility that dealt with the varying degrees of crime. On one side of the prison there should be prisoners held there that deserve more of a rehabilitative approach, such as maybe an 18 year old kid who had consensual sexual relations with his 16 year old girlfriend (statutory). On the other side, there should be prisoners held that deserve a more punitive approach such as someone who sexually abused children. While the two both fall under sex crimes, one is a more severe crime than the other and deserves the more punitive approach. These prisoners certainly don’t deserve the same treatment because they didn’t commit to the same level of crime.
The purpose of rehabilitation facilities is to help the criminals become functioning members of society. Putting a drug addict in a strictly punitive prison (such as Tent City) would not help them recover, but rather have them fear for their

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