West Belfast MP Gerry Adams posts that prisoners have 'rights' which must be protected. Now, what I am about to write will no doubt provoke howls of protest, but WTF.
In my book convicted criminals, ie prisoners, have broken the rules of society so why should they enjoy the 'rights' of a society they so obviously scorned?
3 comments:
Couldn't agree more.
They also have the right to poo in a slop bucket (in my opinion)
I agree. I believe we as a society should give everyone rights but that anyone who chooses to act in a way that deprives others of their rights should forfeit their own in proportion.
Nah ... human beings have rights ... inalienable rights. Imprisonment by the state involves removal of the right of freedom and much else ... but not all rights are removed - the right to life, for instance.
What we have not been good at doing is defining what other rights are foregone ... or the fact that prison regimes are so variable and different that there is neither sense nor equity in the current regimes.
Rather than messing around at the edges, therefore, it might be better if we looked long and hard at what prison was supposed to do, and how better it might achieve its aims (and then where prison is being misused, in circumstances where it cannot achieve its aims).
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