Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Work, The Ultimate Deterent

People argue that the death penalty isn't a deterrent, not me, but other people. I think death is most definitely a deterrent, I try to avoid it everyday. My point is this, if you really want to deter people from committing crimes, start putting prisoners to work. Not like punch out license plates work, but mind numbing, demeaning, self-loathing, boss-is-a-fun-suck, kind of work. Apart from the gang rapes, stabbings, and gut wrenching nightly screams of terror, I imagine prison to be a paid vacation to a really really boring place, well, like prison, for example. However, if your average criminal was faced with the prospect of spending 9-11 hours a day processing TPS reports, scheduling meetings for the purpose of planning other more important meetings, fighting with IT people because your Outlook sucks and your printer is down because it doesn't play well with others, like coffee, they might chose to go legit and get a nice job at Kinko's/Fed-Ex. If going to prison didn't suck beyond all reason, I too, might chose a life of crime. Maybe something less awful like tax fraud, except I probably wouldn't go to prison, also I might accidentally be appointed by Obama. I would need to chose a crime that isn't horrible and won't scar my family for life. So drugs are out. Maybe illegal weapons sales.  But I would only sell to nice bad people.

1 comment:

RedHorse said...

Death is also the ultimate detergent.