Friday, March 26, 2010

Simple Solutions to Prison Problems

We are AMERICANS! We can solve ANY crisis!
Here are some ideas I have for reducing the cost of maintaining prisons:
Idea #1:
  1. Order a whole lot of body bags
  2. Remove everything that's not bolted down from the mess hall
  3. Maybe 'accidentally' leave some silverware laying around - guards can be so careless ...
  4. "Invite" problematic inmates to the "picnic in the mess hall night"
  5. Invite all of a problematic inmate's "best" friends (you know, the guys in that 'other' gang, to the dance too). Mix it up with lots of inmates from different gangs
  6. Let them all stay and enjoy themselves for at least two days
  7. Use the body bags to clean up the mess
  8. VoilĂ ! No more prison overcrowding! Reduced expenses all around!
Idea #2:
  1. Some inmates are very violent
  2. It can take 6-8 guards to shackle him and escort him to his one hour of sunlight each day
  3. Guards make around $40K - $50K per year (or more), plus training, plus riot gear, plus hazard pay. That's a lot of money to spend on these ungrateful violent offenders!
  4. It takes each guard at least three hours to help the inmate get some sun.
  5. They have to shackle the guy, wait for him to have his one hour of "fun in the sun", escort him back to his cell, and then do it all over again for the next guy. Those cages in the sunny yard aren't cheap either.
  6. If there are lot of these guys, they have to hire scores, if not hundreds, of highly trained guards to make sure each inmate is not "deprived" of his "right" to sunlight. Heaven forbid we should mention any of the things of which he deprived his victims.
  7. Each inmate's one hour of "fun in the sun" costs taxpayers thousands of dollars.
  8. I have a better idea: Put each such inmate into a drug-induced coma. Cost of medications: $250 per year.
  9. Stick really large needles in his thighs, calves, arms, neck, and head, and suspend him from the ceiling (so he doesn't get bed sores and save on the cost of beds), catheterize him, give him a colostomy bag, and give him an IV drip to keep him "calm".
  10. Wait until he is done with his life sentence by dying, or at least until everyone he knows is dead.
  11. Use one of the body bags from idea #1 to finish the job.
Idea #3
  1. Arbitrarily and accidentally burn down one or two prisons a year. It would be like winning the lottery!
  2. Since the inmates are all locked up, they might have trouble escaping the conflagration. Aww ...
  3. If someone is waiting in prison before his trial for stealing $22 worth of costume jewelry and gets caught in such a fire, too bad.
  4. Wouldn't this be a "better" deterrent to others to keep them from committing even the smallest crime?
  5. I think this would be a much better deterrent than just the fear of being locked up and being taught how to be a better criminal by your prison butt buddies.
  6. Oh yeah, buy some more body bags.
Idea #4
  1. Fire all the logistics people at the prison that have to play slumber-party mix-n-match with the members of each gang to keep them from rooming together and killing each other.
  2. On the other hand, maybe we should stop worrying about whom you get for a room mate. Maybe Darwin and his "survival of the fittest" theory is the right idea!
  3. Take all the money that we save (after having reduced the number of inmates and prisons) and give it to the schools.
  4. If the schools had all the money they needed to hire good teachers and do their job well, we might never have to build another prison, ever!
Just some thoughts.

No comments: