The Prison Supposition    

    ©  Roy G Symonds 1995 - 2006

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 Last-Modified: 01/01/06 08:48 GMT  

The Sahara Supposition  -  Prisons

Forgoing all that is political, forgoing all hostile opinions, what must be held in our sights is Earth-2100 and all the surprises we have waiting for us there. 

Whatever the condition of our planet, of our society and culture will be in the year 2100, is not cast in stone. 

What the people of the year 2000 and beyond do and think will set the template for the future of Humankind. How they shape their societies and how their leaders show how they lead, will create the future. How future leaders can show how they can protect their citizens will be the true mark of how we will approach the year 2100, not only domestically but Globally.

The leaders who can protect us all from poverty, lack of clean water, terrorism, and all crimes, will stand out among the others. Safeguard us from crimes against the planet as well as against the person will be the greatest sanction any chief would make.

If Political Leaders cannot protect Society from its own ills though, it must be remembered that in the USA there is a gun for every man, woman and child and if a government cannot protect and serve, will it be reasonable for the man on the street to protect himself, and his family, the best way he sees fit?

©  Roy G Symonds 2001 - 2006 

Prisons

But what do we do to those who would commit murder, theft, pain and hurt, especially as a good society realizes that it is unreasonable to take the law into your own hands. Confinement in jail is sometimes the only middle-ground solution.  The Prison Supposition was one intention that yielded the thoughts to write the Sahara Supposition document in the first place. Thus we would wish to respectively inform about an idea concerning penal restitution. However, we would hope that you would see the correlation between the two ideas. The Prison Supposition maybe seemingly gauche and looks for funding, but it will not matter where the investment will stem, only that it must be available. In fact, Capitalism must be a major player in curing all our ills. Capitalism must be seen to be the benefactor paying back any ill-conceived ideas of destruction that it has made through greed in the past. 

Prisons   -    The UK

We were amazed to hear that prison inmate numbers, in the UK have nearly doubled in only six years and that the prison budget is around £2,000,000,000.00 per year. This is $3.3B. Should this trend continue, by 2010 this annual figure will be at least £6B. Whilst it can be argued that £2B is not an immense amount in the scheme of government outlay, it is still seemingly outrageous that a prisoner can cost between £50 - £150 each day to keep incarcerated. ($250.00). 

Therefore, it would seem then that one of the biggest arguments against incarcerating people is often the cost. We have heard the stories of the expenditure running into hundreds of pounds each week for each inmate. As a government, it must suffer this expensive burden due to the wrong doings of some that are among us. It must suffer it as some answer or punishment against those who would break the laws that any society lays down. Criminals are in the front-line when it comes to 'Takers'. Therefore it is an ineluctable cost, which cannot necessarily be avoided by any government.

Moreover, to the reasonable person it is always an issue, as this expenditure is seemingly beyond words and never-ending, and almost obscene. Especially as they know that they themselves could stay in a Top Class hotel for similar amounts, so the situation can only attract bad publicity. Notwithstanding the situation that society needs shielding from persistent criminals anyway, is it not, the duty of any government to attempt to reduce some of these outrageous costs, which we all hear about? 

We understand it cannot be the cost of the inmate’s food as this is only around £1.20 per day. Under $2.00!

For that reason, we have an idea that is in the initial part an expensive exercise but in the long term could prove fruitful, if not profitable. If we look at some of the penal institutions of some governments in the past, the idea is not that unusual. What is more, such could be the financial saving in penal costs that some benefit package, at a fraction of this amount be implemented, to prevent potential offenders from ever needing to get involved in crime in the first place.

Therefore, may we respectfully suggest that the British, Americans and / or G8 Governments and others, lease or preferably buy a very remote area of foreign land to build a penal institution? A huge organization that would offer good, clean, stimulating and reasonable secure accommodation.

A facility within a territory, which would hold and accommodate quite comfortably, at least 150,000 - 250,000 occupants. This number of inmates would make it one of the biggest institutions on the planet; as big as a lot of cities. However, it must be remembered that over 1500 good citizens of the United States are incarcerated every week of the year. A piece of ground would have to be in an area of the world that makes it an almost impossibility to successfully escape. Siberia or the Sarah Desert comes to mind. 

Nevertheless, it would be fundamentally a penal institution with European standards as if on home soil, with all warders trained to high standards. ‘Local’ employees would command emoluments at a local rate. In Russia, an average wage is between $10-30 per month. However, you could pay the national employees at a seemingly much more lucrative allowance. Similar income can be obtained in the African region also. To pay an African worker 3-5 times, what he would expect at home could indeed help many areas to develop, spreading the wealth of the world in a fairer distribution. We believe that to pay any worker, would help them best if it was in US dollars. This is because the US dollar is already the coin of a New World realm.     The Internet is the future, and it operates for just one real currency. The wheels and cogs of Cyberspace are greased with the mighty dollar, and one day, maybe by 2100 if we are still here, all other currency will be its child. The workers involved in This Prison Supposition will be its preverbal backbone.

Whilst prison workers were on duty they would be on a tour of say six weeks on and three weeks off. This would be similar to how the oil industry operates, which has members living hundreds of miles from their work place. The supposition to terra-form The Sahara could hold a myriad of potential benefits, all this might work out as costing relatively very little if it could be initially combined with the use of help that might be obtained from the prisoners of the world, and International Companies. 

Part of any negotiation with the ex-host would be to use their local work force to help run the prison infrastructure by employing their fellow citizens. Using them to run the prison under European or American standardized prison rules, and supervision and inspection.

High quality workers would be picked and enlisted from the nearest reasonable catchments and if their earnings were well above their local average this would, bring in favorable ‘hard currency’ to these areas boosting the local economies. Whilst the construction of this penal venture would be in the many hundreds of millions of dollars, its actual day to day running would be a fraction of a comparable prison in the UK or United States.

Money saved by using this penal institution could be otherwise spent at home on other crime busting schemes such as prevention and deterrents; retraining first time offenders.

Furthermore, the inmate figure mentioned above, would be more than enough to accommodate any number sent from say Britain or France, therefore a charge could be levied for all countries to incarcerate some of their less desirable and more expensive characters.

As far as British candidates for a placement in the prison are concerned, only a certain category of inmate would be suitable. Say any prisoner, who is a perpetual offender receiving a sentence of over seven years. Alternatively, indeed a first time offender who had a sentence of over ten years. These prisoners are generally the most expensive to keep and supervise.

 Nevertheless, such prisoners in SuperMax confinements in the United States may not be suitable for this venture, unless countries were willing to pay the additional security fees. 

Private Enterprise

Not only would this scheme start a world prison regime it would go some way to deter criminals from offending; they would know that they could end up here. This inchoate conception could even be placed for tender before an independent private world organization as a long-term investment, encouraged by government. However, because of the great cost, some world governmental support would also be needed. 

If the establishment is designed afresh with, state of the art technology and with the consequence that its position would deter any potential escapees, security could be minimal but maximized to compound this situation. Nevertheless, a large UN army base could be positioned nearby as not only a deterrent but also as a strategically placed training ground. Again, open to all nations to use at a nominal profitable cost.

Human Rights of prisoners are recognized here; Political Correctness and staunch magnanimous Liberalism could easily raise its head to be heard. Nevertheless, we must ask that we just suppose that if all the iniquitous ills our societies, that continue to grow everyday, maintain expansion at their present rate, where will they be in 2100, where will society be. Will there ever be a day when the BAD will out number the GOOD?  Surely good and bad are to some degree subjective, but when the bad are the majority will the virtuous become the offenders? Will there ever be a time when democracy and society will work against 'good', when the electorate will actually vote for what we think now is bad?

We see and hear of crimes every day that only 50 years ago would not have been heard of. In the UK, in the early 1900's murder was almost unheard of. Murder was front-page news. Today the act of murder is all around us and may well be on a decline but crimes of vandalism, arson, assault and rape are on the increase.

Oct 2003 - Search on Google the phrase "Crime Statistics", is it strange that 666,000 results are found.

Rape is presently running at many times greater than homicide.      In the USA there is a rape REPORTED every FIVE minutes of every day. But 60% of all rapes are NOT reported. Furthermore, 40% of the total number of rapists are known to the victim.

Science-Fiction is the Mother of Science-Fact and its Father is Money  -  Foogle Business

Science – Fiction      has shaped and foretold the greater part of factual knowledge and has shaped technology that is with us today, might other written fabrications also come true?

Films such as Escape from New York and the Mad Max movies, might they just foretell some future that we might have to come? If they had made a movie of the 9-11 atrocity where two of the largest skyscrapers on the planet were brought to the ground before September 2001, would it have been believed?

Would the retired President William Jefferson Clinton comment that society is breaking down? Would the 42nd President of the United States wish to remark on the levels of society's morality as we race into the first century of a new millennium?

 Would William Mckinley       ( Pres. USA - March 4th 1897 to September 14th 1901),     the 25th President, if he could be questioned, comment that society in the year 2000 is out of control, compared with the halcyon days of the last turn of the century?

Maybe not, but up to 25,000 American police officers are injured in the line of duty each year, with nearly 200 killed. Up to 25,000 Americans are murdered each year. That is on average 500 per year for each State, or ten each week. So on average more than one police officer is injured and one person is murdered everyday in every State. Every day in the United States TEN children are killed by gun violence. As you put your socks on tomorrow morning, tell yourself it could never be you, or your child.

The Producer of Bladerunner, the Englishman Michael Deeley, commented that his film was a: 

" . . . . vision of the World, which was plausible."       

One of the actors stated that in the time portrayed in the movie,      

" . . . . .  LA was a cess-pool." 

How far away is it when Fact will follow Fiction in this instance? When nineteenth century writers wrote about flying to the Moon the World scoffed and declared them as mad-men. So when movies portray a world where criminals rule in the future, how impossible is this?

Is there any young person reading this document now who will, in say fifty years time, have his or her head crushed-in by some sociopath because the government of the day could not protect their citizens. 

How sad is it that a person can live a  good, honest and  happy long life, only for it to be cut short by a disillusioned fellow human being. 

So what does flash before us a that point in life that has been pondered upon a million times; the point of death.

Do we think:      " . . . . .  if only!"

Is anyone, just a little scared?

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So how do we control the darker side of the population? Do we listen to the increasing number of Liberals and forgive those who have violated another member of society. Do we close all prisons and help and assist 'criminals' to the path of righteousness, or do we punish them through incarceration?

When we reach Earth-2100, we will know whether or not, we have done what was right or wrong. But again, any view is subjective and might the BAD out number the GOOD in Earth-2100, and that 'crimes' such as rape become so common place as to be nothing but a dalliance?

Those who would scoff here must remember that Osama Bin Laden, planned and orchestrated the destruction of the WTC in New York because he thought that it was the right thing to do, and that it was for the GOOD of his people and humankind. 

Moreover, in his mind, his God would praise his actions as if they could only have been carried through Allah's will and divine acquiescence. In Bin Laden's world, in our opinion at least, the BAD already out number the GOOD.

The development of the penitentiary in the late 18th century was in part a reaction to the conditions of the jails of the period. Sanitation in English prisons at this time was such that disease was widespread among prisoners, who were generally held without any segregation according to sex or classification; outbreaks of “jail fever” occasionally killed not only the prisoners but also the jailers, and even on occasions the judges and lawyers involved in their trials. At this time many prisoners in England were confined not in buildings but in the hulks of ships moored in the Thames River and elsewhere; in theory they were waiting to sail for Australia under a sentence of transportation, but in practice many of them served their sentences in the hulks and were released without ever leaving the country. The appalling conditions in the many local prisons of late 18th-century England were exposed by John Howard, who had traveled throughout Britain, and later throughout Europe, for the preparation of his book The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777). Reaction against the gross severity of the former penal system of death and transportation and against the physical conditions of the jails led in England to the building of “convict prisons” by the central government; the local jails remained under the control of local authorities until 1877. In that year the whole prison system of England and Wales was brought under central government control, to be administered by a body known as the Prison Commission.

In the United States the prison system is more complex; offenders who are sentenced by federal courts for crimes against the federal criminal code serve their sentences in federal penitentiaries managed by the federal government, but the majority of offenders who are in custody are in state or local institutions, which form part of the penal system of the particular state. This consists of one or more state penitentiaries, possibly supplemented by a number of institutions offering a lower degree of security, such as prison camps or farms, and local jails, each managed and financed by the local jurisdiction in which it is situated. The principal function of the jail is still that of holding persons awaiting trial, but usually short sentences (less than 12 months) are served in the local jail rather than the state penitentiary.

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