Go Straight To Jail

Published 2008-08-05 – 12:30:50 Reading yet another news article about a man raping his daughter and this time the rapist was convicted and sentenced to 4 year imprisonment, which the article stated was the lowest punishment for child rape (in Sweden), my first thought - why did guy get the lowest sentence and secondly why and when is jail an appropriate punishment. The phenomena of jails and how long one has to stay in there are interesting on multiple levels - how we rate the seriousness of crimes and length of sentences accordingly, but more interesting (I find) is how and why the world has decided that the best/worst punishment for anyone doing something hurtful to something or someone in a manner that society does not condone of, is being forced to live with restricted freedom for a limited period of time. Some societies have of course decided that one has to pay with his/her life as punishments for some acts but most criminals are sent to jail. I find it fascinating that being confined is sufficient payback for crimes committed. One would think that we would want to either punish these people for their crimes, in which there are many many many other situations that are worse than being restricted of some freedoms, or we would want to rehabilitate them/teach them something in which being locked up with other criminals (although evidently not the best ones) might not be such a great idea. My point is jail doesn’t seem to be all that bad; I rape you and (in the unlikely event) I get caught I have 6 months of living in a piss poor hostel that I cannot leave with strict routines and some scary people. How does that add up? How did we reach the conclusion that that is punishment? Now I have not been to jail so I would not really know but if I had to chose between spending 6 months in Holloway Jail or in a gang in Somalia I know which one to choose. As I see it there are two reasons for sending people to jail 1) to get them out of society and away from people and 2) as a punishment. However it's not particularly efficient on either account. Firstly if we want these out of society why do we let them out again since we’re not really rehabilitating them? And secondly if we want it to act as a deterrent it has to be a lot worse than what it is. For a lot of people jail is better than the outside world. I obviously understand that it is a cost efficient way to deal with crime – keeping them locked up is cheaper than rehabilitation, but as with everything political long term solutions are always better. I cant help but think that eye for an eye (I sell drugs = helping drug victims/working in a rehab centre) might be an idea in some cases. In other cases keeping them out of society i.e. locked up for ever is suitable and in other cases where people find themselves involuntary doing crimes in order to survive giving them the opportunity to sort themselves out is the rights thing to do. The punishment and treatment of criminals need to be a lot more flexible and tailored to the individual circumstances in order to create a less criminal society