wyot wrote:
I am starting to consider that maybe I am just too out of step with this site generally on this topic...I havent changed my mind, but perhaps this isnt the forum for me to be commenting on this area.


I encourage you to stay and talk it out with those you feel out of step with.

Very often, we are conditioned to believe certain tropes or schemas. Or rather, we unthinkingly adopt them because they're presented to us so pervasively. So I also encourage you to think about why you hold the views you do, and see if they hold up to logical scrutiny. On which points do you agree and disagree with Holocaust21 or me or whoever, and why?

Hedda you raise an interesting point; when I was inside I saw a fascinating truth that doesn't seem to have struck politicians; it was the short termers that suffered most; us "long termers" (7 years in my case - for crimes that never took place) who, after getting over the shock and horror of imprisonment, settled in and enjoyed ourselves (no alternative). I think politicians have got it the wrong way around - continue to give the first timers the short, sharp shock of jail (although try to get it right) and release long termers far earlier, by which time they are often rehabilitated and won't re-offend.