Yeah I know about the comparisons of Military VS Prison life, the inmates were complaining about the chow they were eating, I told them hey you guys eat just as good if not better than when I was in the Army. Their reply was “yeah but you volunteered for that, we didn’t volunteer for this’”. Crazy crap.. you do wrong, you lose, it’s as simple as that. We all know that, except the convicted or about to be convicted, they blame society if that don’t work it had to be the parents fault but never their own. Our main problem is that we are a culture that can’t handle the hardships of life, we want it all or what the other person has and there are a lot of folks who believe that they are entitled to it also. why work hard for it when you can just take it. Get caught," wasn’t me or my fault".the main catch all reply to their actions. Heck most parents today teach their childern that from the begining " all baby don’t worry it wasn’t your fault" they are started early here.

The devil made me do it?

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You are actually going to hold onto your comparison of military training and prisons by offering the idea: “People are volunteering to come to prison because they committed a crime.”

I think my work here is done…

Crazy question: Who decides a person should commit a crime?
Simple answer: They do.

Every guilty person in prison volunteered to be there by committing a crime, that’s the basis of personal responsibility. Your scenario describes an event that’s reactive, that’s not going to offer you any benefit from a conduct point of view. If you use the same system of privilege as a proactive system, you’ll see a real benefit. First, it’s wrong to create a mixed application the system of control. Everyone should be subject to it, not just trouble makers. Second, there are simple rules of interaction between individuals that are always true, like reciprocity. It doesn’t matter how mentally handicapped anyone is, they can all understand that non-compliance will result in the reduction of privilege.

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Yes Mudflap, that is exactly what I am saying, despite JoeDuggins assertion otherwise.

Offering military training as a comparison is specious at best. A vast majority of the population in prisons have an issue with mental illness and do not process information of direction in the manner of military recruits. Military is VOLUNTARY…is prison!?!?

Let us rephrase for just a minute…

Here is the scenario… Johnny Dangerously is found with a shank. As result, we throw him into Seg for a week, restricting his access to books/magazines/commissary/etc.

What is the typical result? What caused the typical result? The Seg, the restriction, or a combination?

Saying that they can be denied items but not to beneficial effect, is silly. Anyone been through Basic Military Training? The denial of and access to specific items is a highly effective, commonly used process to develop civilians into military members. I don’t think anyone would argue that inmates deserve less then basic trainees.

The only viable argument you can make against an “item control” policy is the same argument you can make against the existence of prisons. Most convicts are not first time offenders, and have been incarcerated before. As such, prisons don’t rehabilitate, and should only be used to disable perpetually violent individuals without implementing a large scale social eugenics program. You don’t weigh the value of an action by looking at the success rate, you weigh it by determining the if the level of benefit exceeds the total cost. If you control reading materials and as a result you can show a 5% decline in violence, then you should compare the effort in quelling 5% violence vs the effort used controlling reading materials. I would tend to be a fan of controlling reading materials, as not giving a guy a magazine is far less dangerous then confiscating a shank .

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Mudflap, I have pretty much maintained the DOC can do what we want in regard to what the offenders get or do not get. We do this, regardless of what the law states. Will denial of these books/magazines prove to be an incentive for better behavior? I do not think so. All recorded behavior science studies indicate no.

Thanks, Jon. You’re saying we CAN deny items but it doesn’t help, yes?

Shakey,

Some still do. A study done 4 years ago by a group of PsyD (Clinically oriented psychologists) students and instructors looked at the use of the DSM IV. Students are taught to interview the client, review their notes from the interview, then look in the DSM IV for the symptoms and select the diagnosis from that.

Actual practice is for the therapist to decide what is wrong with the client by refering back to their value system, find the diagnosis that matches that and make that designation. Quite troubling.

Even the most effective form of treatment (by clinicians own acknowledgement) is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Studies done by independent bodies (non-psychologists: sometimes done by the AMA, sometimes by NIHM) show that even CBT is no more effective than placebo procedures……

Bahavior Sciene thought that mastubating was a sign of mental illness not to long ago. Saw that on the History Channel on the BIG HOUSE in PA. They would throw you in isolation, give you a bible untill you……Wait a min…..is this where Christian Science came from..

Mudflap, I have pretty much maintained the DOC can do what we want in regard to what the offenders get or do not get. We do this, regardless of what the law states. Will denial of these books/magazines prove to be an incentive for better behavior? I do not think so. All recorded behavior science studies indicate no.

See what a SEG placement creates! Another indication of just don’t go there……

It was just a simple question about using a reward system for stuff thats freely obtained by inmates now. And yes in Ohio’s DRC. we do that (to a point) it’s called SEG, mess up enough to warrant a SEG placement, you lose the extra little things that make you happy.

Did JoeDuggins say “yes” and Jon say “no”?

Jon,

You are correct on who wrote the Constitution: Madison had more of a managing function during the writting of the Constitution. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania did the physical act of writting the Constitution. The Virginia Declaration, which had an impact on the Constitution, was written by George Mason, which parts of the Constitution was modeled on. Thank you for pointing this fact out.

Madison wrote the Virginia Plan while waiting for the Constitutional Convention ot begin. The Virginia Plan had a major impact on the design of the US Government: the bicameral legislature, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. The Plan also laid out the powers of each branck. This document was written by Madison and the framework of the Constitution can be readily seen in this document. In this sense, Madison did write the Constitution as he laid out the fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. Madison drew from the ideas presented by John Locke in Locke’s Two Treatise on Government (although there is a contentious discussion of this, this idea is generally held to be an accurate assessment of his role and impact). Here, Locke drew on the idea of property as the basic reason for human cooperation and the basic reason humans organize themselves into societies.

As to reward/punishment, external forms of reward quickly lose their effectiveness. This occurs either because the reward or punishment is overused or it becomes a tool for manipulation by the person whose behavior is trying to be molded. The example generally given is: you do a certain behavior and I give you a reward. What is being taught is: in doing a act, there is a reward for doing it; no reward, no act. The goal is the reward not the act which is what is desired.

Intrinsic rewards can fall into the same trap: it requires knowledge of the individual in order to be successful. This later is a far more effective tool. However, to be truly effective, the reward schedule must move from initially rewarding effort to rewarding the performance. It is the first stage that runs into problems as many people refuse to acknowledge the importance of this first stage.

What is more affective is to create a logical connection between behavior and consequent. The example usually given is: you made the mess, you need to clean it. The action of creating a problem is then related to a consequent action of having to make the solution. The logical connection is being made rather than a simple reward schema.

Straight B.F. Skinner. It’s true. The more you can regiment and control aspects of an individuals life, the less they care to rebel.
I should have clarified, possession, not possession with intent.

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Oh, let’s see…drugs never find their way into the hands of unsuspecting 8 year old kid, right?

I would prefer to not digress any further from the topic at hand, as I find too many inconsistencies as it is.

So back to books and magazines.

Positive/negative reinforcment works better than any form of punishment. Empirically demonstrable.

Do you think child molesters deserve to be counted with the rest of us? I’m not a monster, I don’t lack compassion or empathy, I simply don’t appreciate people that choose to violate the law in ways that hurt others. There are some crimes that I find silly, like non-violent drug offenses. But, I can’t stand people preying on each other, it degrades all of us as people.

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“Slave owning, heretical, elitist, and terrorist.” Yeah, gotcha.

As opposed to labeling someone “barely human.”

Sounds a little more similar to the 3/5 proposal.

I’m always happy when I can say something that provokes intelligent debate. The declaration of universal human rights runs along the same lines. Documents that promote the idea of rights that exist simply because someone is human. I won’t say that I disagree with the idea, if I did I wouldn’t be any better than a racist. There are certain actions that can be undertaken by and to people that I suspect are unarguably immoral. Cruelty, I think that cruelty is always wrong. Now, that leads to another question, what constitutes cruelty? I have, on many occasion, been rude, loud, impolite, and downright unpleasant but my intent is never malicious. Everything I ever do, I do because I believe it contributes to the well being of our society or organization. The idea of rights that transcend the development of a society throughout time is absurd to me.

It doesn’t seem to me that there are rights, and then we notice them. It seems more like we notice a general need for something and create a right that fills the void.

I wouldn’t say I was superior to the slave owning, heretical, elitist, terrorist, founders of America. I would say that I have the benefit of living some 233 years after their great accomplishment. I can sit in the seat of the information age with an education that exceeds the nobles of their time and draw conclusions based on information that just wasn’t available to them.

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Madison did not “write” the Constitution. He did write the agenda and had a great influence over the language contained in the Constitution.

Furthermore, how can you work in corrections and advocate or engage in the practice of labeling people, “barely human.” I am more than disheartened to realize there are people still capable of this level of intellectual and emotional quotients in possession of a computer.

JoeDuggins said: “So, what is my incentive to “play civilized” if I’ll do better if I don’t.”

What possible world do you advocate where you would ‘do better,’ by not ‘playing’ civilized?

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson with minor revisions by the Continental Congress. The Constitution of the United States was written by James Madison, who also co-authored the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. Jefferson clearly favored the Individual over the ‘State’ while Hamilton, Jay and Madison prefered a strong central government, weaker state governments and restricted individual rights. A majority of voters today would not have the franchise in 1796; only landed white males had the right to vote. Only these individuals were seen to have the experience to see beyond the petty issues of the masses to make the proper decisions regarding rule of the country. The Bill of Rights were forced on the original writers as a compromise to get the Constitution passed by enough states to form the United States of America.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Much the same people writing and formulating the Constitution, also wrote the document from which the paragraph was sliced.

I realize you may believe you would have some sort of abilities perhaps exceeding these people who created the nation in which we live, but I submit you have an immense struggle with simple basic concepts.

The issue with rights is they ALWAYS EXIST. Restriction does not negate existence.

I always like the perspective that a divine being winked everything into existence and made people special in the meanwhile. While it would be really nice if rights came from divinity, they don’t. Not even the constitution makes that claim. But, I digress. The constitution is the source of all law in America. All federal and state authority is drawn from it. Here’s the crazy part, it’s just a piece of paper. It only has value because we agree to honor it. I would propose, if the source of all law has value only because we assign it, then the law of the land comes from a social consensus. If you disagree, that’s ok. It’s a rather broad idea. Either way you think about it, I would think that you wouldn’t say that convicts deserve the same rights we free people do? I do not kill, steal, maim, violate, dishonor, and only periodically offend. So, what is my incentive to “play civilized” if I’ll do better if I don’t.

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