hobbit said:
The Romans put the baddies in the mines for mercury and the inhalation of mercury fumes killed 'em pretty quick.Although this is no longer an option a more appropriate system can be seen on this web site
http://www.crime-times.org/subj.htm. This deals with cause rather than effect for anyone interested in this area, rehabilitation. Importantly what is being done now isn't working so an entirely new approach is needed and the above web site provides possible answers
8)
Before starting this I would like to say that my answer to the poll is build more prisons, but tempered by what I have to say. Prison as it stands is not working and is not providing value for money. The fundametal purpose is to bth punish the criminal by depriving them of their liberty and to give the public some protection by keeping dangerous people of the streets for some period. These it does quite well, but in the third role of prisons that is to encourage the inmates that not offending again is a good idea it fails miserably.
WE need a fundamental review about how we both punish offenders, and equally how we discourage them from offending again, and we must do this with some level of humanity, as without humanity we will both fail and bring ourselves down to their level, which is somewhere I would prefer not to be.
So we need the punishment bit, and certainly for the more dangerous elements we need the protection of the public bit (and when one considers that some one who steals big money will get a worse jail sentence than some one who commits GBH perhaps we havent go the balance right here yet) we really have to do something about persuading criminals that not being a criminal is better. Until we do that better and especially with the Yobs, Chavs and general youe ne'er do wells, we will only see things get worse not better.
Peter
PS Hanging isn't the answer either because the vast majority of the people we need to deal with will never be hung, unless of course you introduce the death penalty for some pretty minor crimes