qt

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
matt b said:
I'm more concerned with people's views of the purpose of prison...
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I think the only purpose that can't be argued about (in terms either of ethics or efficacy) is that at the very least it serves to keep the public protected from criminals for the duration of their sentence. (Ignoring of course crime bosses who continue to order their affairs from inside prison, but violence organised in this way is most likely directed at other career criminals, not the generally-law-abiding public).
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
In Austria, you can punch old people with complete abandon. They're sure to have been complicit in war crimes.
 
matt b

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Mr. Tea said:
I think the only purpose that can't be argued about (in terms either of ethics or efficacy) is that at the very least it serves to keep the public protected from criminals for the duration of their sentence. (Ignoring of course crime bosses who continue to order their affairs from inside prison, but violence organised in this way is most likely directed at other career criminals, not the generally-law-abiding public).
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Obv.

The other purposes are a more interesting point of discussion (esp. the PUNISH THEM. HARD bit ;))
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
baboon2004 said:
people who've committed a crime. Branding people as though crime were part of their very identity is one of the mistakes of most punitive systems.
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OK, that was slack on my part - I'm not trying to imply that there are two non-overlapping sets of people, the criminal Them and the law-abiding Us. But it is nonetheless the case, isn't it, that the vast majority of crime is committed by people who've committed crime in the past and will probably continue to do so even after a stretch inside? So if you'd rather say "people who've committed a crime", fair enough, but by the time someone is actually looking a prison sentence, chances are they've committed not "a" crime, but many crimes - isn't it? Remembering how many crimes go unsolved or even unrecorded in the first place, of course.

I appreciate that prison does not seem to be a particularly effective deterrent for those who've been released from it. And also that this is a subject close to your heart - do you have any stats to hand on the effects of prison on the likelihood of re-offending, or things like that? I'd be interested in seeing some hard figures on this.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Mr. Tea said:
OK, that was slack on my part - I'm not trying to imply that there are two non-overlapping sets of people, the criminal Them and the law-abiding Us. But it is nonetheless the case, isn't it, that the vast majority of crime is committed by people who've committed crime in the past and will probably continue to do so even after a stretch inside? So if you'd rather say "people who've committed a crime", fair enough, but by the time someone is actually looking a prison sentence, chances are they've committed not "a" crime, but many crimes - isn't it? Remembering how many crimes go unsolved or even unrecorded in the first place, of course.

I appreciate that prison does not seem to be a particularly effective deterrent for those who've been released from it. And also that this is a subject close to your heart - do you have any stats to hand on the effects of prison on the likelihood of re-offending, or things like that? I'd be interested in seeing some hard figures on this.
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wasn't being critical, sorry if it came off that way! Just think it's an important point, and stigmatisign people will be one factor in ensuring it's difficult to escape a life of crime (eg lack of firms who will take on ex-prisoners etc, though the list is more impressive than one might think, from one perspective).

Number of people who go thru any women's prison, or a YOI like Feltham in any one year, is massive. 11,000 women in any year, but only 4,000 at any one time. Loads of short sentences for criminal acts that are minor in the scheme of things, and prison spells break up families, have little if any rehabilitative effect, etc etc
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue. If you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too!
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
massrock said:
You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue. If you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too!
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Fucking TUNE. :D

beavis_and_butthead1.jpg
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Is someone actually saying that the very idea of punishment is flawed?

In schools these days, kids don't get punishments they recieve "consequences".

The hard nuts find this laughable. They understand what's going on, and it demeans the authority of teachers even further - do-gooder fools don't have a clue about us or our motives.

In my old school we had punishments like "the early call" - 100 laps of a rugby pitch at 6am, no fun during Breconshire winters. In my first two years the junior house head was a biology teacher who'd make us do a 100 skin diagrams if we fucked around too much. 100 of these, if you imagine:

medtm5.gif


We tended to fuck around a lot less.

This did have the happy result of a black market in pre-drawn skin diagrams sold by one enterprising soul for 10 pence a diagram - he made a fortune! He wasn't a boarder either, so in later years he developed great little ploys - like selling toasted sandwiches during breaktime for a quid. Sliced white bread, cheep cheese, margarine, his parent's sandwich toaster, a hordes of starving boarders. He made massive profits. In the summer term he'd walk around with a backpack filled with ice packs and cans of coke. 50p a can. All this money he made went to feed a massive appetitite for hi fi technology and drugs.

The difference in shcool today is that 1. kids see teachers as below contempt and 2. hey have no ingenuity.

Case, er, closed.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
What would happen if you refused to do said punishments?

Ah, sorry, reading on - lot easier to impose these kind of things at boarding schools.

Teachers don't get the respect they deserve from anyone, in my view.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
The problem with discipline in schools, from my hard experience, and my experience in school all those years ago -- is a general lack of respect for teachers as teachers per se. We are generally laughable idiots, however good we are. The ones who escape this are the old timers and old skool who have equal contempt for the doctrinaire practice of contemporary PGCE/OFSTED mandated teaching practices. As far as I've seen, kids are sick to death of powerpoints and interactive white board wizardery - they go through the motions, but it largely has the dual result of kids taking the piss out of our earnest attempts to "engage them at their level" as well as constantly expecting to do "fun stuff". Things like hot seating and IWB shit have shattered a hole in the heart of English teaching, as far as I can see. I can barely understand what the subject is about at times.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yeah, my parents lost faith in teaching (though it was steadily eroded down the years) when:

(i) Discipline became an absolute joke;
(ii) The words 'Key Stage' were first breathed.

And that was in Physics. As you say, in something like English it must be even worse.

"Engage them at their level" - must be a source of priceless stories...
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
To Craner, M_B and anyone else with teaching experience here: how long do you think it'll take before things start to swing back, with regard to teaching practices in this country? I mean, surely it's pretty obvious to just about everyone - teachers, parents, kids, education policy experts, whoever - that some pretty major ideological cock-ups have been made in the last couple of decades. And how much of a genuine break from the New Labour paradigm would there be with a Tory govt?
 
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