Do deterrents work? If you make a deterrent awful enough, does it stop crime? Has capital crime ended where the death penalty exists if you don’t count executions as murders? Yana, a criminology researcher from the University of Ottawa is here to help us unpack these things.
Since it’s six figures per prisoner per year in our current system, and if these very expensive, punitive deterrents don’t successfully deter crime, what does? What programs exist that reduce criminals reoffending – that’s called recidivism. So how can we take people who have committed a crime and have them not commit crimes anymore – that’s called rehabilitation.
We pose the question: does knowing you’ll be caught for certain deter crime? And if so, with technology evolving, how easily can we catch people and then offer a small consequence that is enough to deter but not so much it eats through public funds in the wasteful, harmful way our current punitive system does.
Keep in mind we’re spending this much on prisons while simultaneously talking about situations in which people are constantly exposed to violence by guards and other inmates. Rape and assault are not uncommon in prisons and in no way rehabilitating. I don’t think anyone would ever make the claim someone deserves to be raped regardless of what they’ve done. What if I told you that some of your taxes every year funded programs that resulted in non violent offenders being raped? Yeah. Think about that as we talk about motivations, crime, and punishment.
Keep in mind there’s no chance even if it’s possible that we get non violent offenders out temporarily that the Correctional Services of Canada would ever consider letting out dangerous or violent offenders. They are very conservative on their stance and are likely to stay that way in their pursuit of public safety with the ineffectual, expensive, and time-consuming systems and laws we’ve given them.
Link for petition
https://cp-ep.org/protectprisoners/ – Petition/List of Demands
Fundraiser to support prisoners and their families in Ontario: https://www.gofundme.com/f/prisoner-emergency-support-fund?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet
Correctional Service of Canada