Could life in prison be better than life outside?
Possibly, according to Michael M. O’Hear via Andrew Sullivan:
Life goes on for inmates [sentenced to life without parole]… They adapt to prison. They are able to acquire privileges through good behavior. They enjoy recreational opportunities, a social life, and family visits. They receive food, shelter, and medical care at state expense. By contrast, research on life after even relatively short stays in prison suggests that ex-inmates typically face extraordinary, long-term challenges to reintegration and a return to the level of well-being they enjoyed before prison.
Along the same lines, Doug Mataconis highlights a study finding that black men survive longer inside prison than outside it.
Without a doubt life is better outside than in and nobody can say otherwise. Freedom to go anywhere you like and do anything is not rewarded in prison. You can give inmates all the free tv and dental they like, but just being able to take a walk in a park or go to another city for vacation or even step outside without a guard watching you is taken away. Or even being able to have a family or a shitty job is better than prison. When you break the laws of society, you forfeit many of those rights and privileges; all the good behavior in the world can’t bring back many of the simple freedoms. And if life is worse outside of prison in terms of quality of life, then that needs to be changed.
And as a side note, this mentality that life in prison is better than life outside prison for black people was the same mentality used to justify slavery. One of the reasons the KKK was formed was to “get back” at blacks for being free and later on segregation was used as the new way to “put them in their place.” And then when black people rose up against segregation, the racists and the KKK cockroaches came back out in full force. Now with segregation gone, blacks face a new injustice: prison. We should work to correct this new injustice of “black men surviving longer inside prison than outside it.” Prison is the new slavery.
Whatever happened to them sleeping on jagged stones and hay?
An actual bed? ugh.
is it good in prison
now do 28 killed 26
wy is it good inprison
Why don’t you look into privatized prisons and how they grow with the allegeded war on drugs, by the way Im woundering if my doctor will refill my Xanax! No lie… But just like the argument that “attorneys” make to much and poor doctors needed tort reform your blowing smoke while the [B]ig businesses stand. Great blog, sarcasim, just in case you didn’t understand that one too.