Making prison safer...

[cjdelphi]

Computer controlled prison neck thingy, a waterproof sealed unit that goes around the neck of every prison inmate with a small LED to indicate it needs charging (solid means do it, flashing means you in big trouble if you don't charge) maybe the prison inmate can sit in a chair and inductively charge the device from wireless power points... if they refuse to do so they get put in soletary confinement for 30 days ..

Anyway on the sealed unit there's a water proof button, on the neck side are 2 electrodes...

Press the button, it sends out a broadcast for 5 seconds or so (programmed) using cheap micro controllers and radio transmits a low radio power range of a radius of 1m. The prison guards can do say 10m radius range with little remote controls

Anyway the prison inmate is in the middle of a kicking or someone is being knifed, the inmate can press his button tazering all of the inmates of 1m for 5 seconds, the beauty is that it can't be abused without abusing yourself and i really don't think people will like you all that much for pressing the button

Would it work? Could it work?

 

[shrtrnd]

Nah.
Insensitivity to the needs of the individual.
Libs would shoot-down the very thought of treating prisoners like prisoners.

 

[Alec_t]

If you made it strong enough to survive the mechanical abuse it would undoubtedly receive, then some idiot would find a way to hang themselves with it. Don't think the authorities would be too pleased having to deal with the inevitable Enquiry and bad publicity that would trigger.

 

[cjdelphi]

Around the ankles then? Lol

 

[shrtrnd]

Getting better. Hang 'em up like Mussolini.
Your idea would work, examples of it abound in sci-fi movies.
Look at all the home-arrest court orders using ankle bracelets and the like.
I was just poking fun at the fact that you're thinking practically.
In today's society, the prisoners somehow become 'victims', and it would be politically incorrect to
single them out for special restraint concepts.
Your concept is sound.

 

[Bluejets]

Sounds a bit like Judge Dredd.

 

[hevans1944]

Read the short story "Coventry" by Robert A. Heinlein. His "solution" (in the story) is to send all prisoners to a "free for all" enclosed area, about the size of a state perhaps, with an impenetrable wall surrounding Coventry. The "prisoners" sort things out among themselves, isolated from "civilized" society. No guards, no rules, no escape. Well, almost no escape... that's what the story is about (among other things). RAH was always political in his writing, and never "politically correct".

 

[shrtrnd]

Heavens (a Heinlein twist on hevan1944) forbid.
Actually assuming prisoners are guilty of something.
I was beginning to wonder if there were any of us left in today's society.
Prisons now are internally run by the various gangs inside of them.
Wardens let them do it so that nobody 'inside' complains publicly, and they keep their jobs.
If you 'rat somebody out' on the inside, the gangs very un-politically correctly, resolve the issue themselves.
Heinlein was on the right track, it's just in use today with politically correct (publicly) adaptation.
(The inmates run the asylum, and nobody complains)

 

[donkey]

personally if I am ever convicted of anything (pfft like anyone could find the evidence or bodies) then I would love to spend my entire time in solitary confinement........ that would be peace on earth........
on a side note rather than shock therapy another solution is a space station for convicts.... if something catastrophic happens... then open the doors and let them all out

 

[hevans1944]

Isolation of convicts to protect society from them is as old as human history. Something to do with our innate desire NOT to execute every miscreant society deems unacceptable to live with.

The extra security of storing people in orbit, or on the moon, or on an isolated continent (as was once done in Australia) comes at great cost to society. If the eventual goal is rehabilitation, the point of Heinlein's short story, then perhaps it would be worth it. However, at least in America, prisons are now commercial profit-centers, and there seems to be little profit in rehabilitation. I see no profit motive for confinement in orbit, on the moon, or anywhere else that requires great expense to set up and maintain.

As for solitary confinement... that would be an extra expense too. Why bother? Might as well execute the prisoner and save time and money all around. With more than seven billion of us around now, it may even be beneficial to the overall gene pool. The problem is (it always is) who decides who lives and who dies?

 

[HellasTechn]

The extra security of storing people in orbit, or on the moon, or on an isolated continent (as was once done in Australia) comes at great cost to society.

How would then the prisoners be separated according to what they have done ? Cane someone that owes the IRS some monay be put in the same space with one that has raped and killed for example ?

 

[hevans1944]

How would then the prisoners be separated according to what they have done ? Cane someone that owes the IRS some monay be put in the same space with one that has raped and killed for example ?

In a just system that would not happen, but it does. There are various levels of confinement, from ankle bracelets with defined perimeters of containment, to "black holes" no one escapes, and lots of things in between. The prison system rarely "rehabilitates" anyone. It does do a fair job of training novice criminals to become better criminals after their release. It's like fishermen who "catch and release" to make fishing a better sport. The fish don't know about the "program" but that doesn't mean it doesn't make for "smarter" fish in the long run. I have no solutions to the problem of what to do with "criminals" of any stripe. It's a societal problem with as many "solutions" as there are people proposing them. Maybe someday a really "just" solution will evolve and be accepted everywhere. Until that happens, we just muddle along.

 

[HellasTechn]

It does do a fair job of training novice criminals to become better criminals after their release

True.

 

[donkey]

I am of the opinion just put people in a coma for x amount of time..... no issue with them causing harm and they would really suffer as everyone around them would age and move on.... for those that actually have family that care visting is safer and no dang phone with glass thingy..... either that or one of those paralysing drugs so they can't move until its over.... the added bonus of both of these is that when they get out the muscle degradation will be so high that they will spend 6 months learning to walk... try to commit a crime when you can't walk.

the opinions above are in no way to reflect on EP, these thoughts belong to Donkey only and he is messed up... like seriously messed up