KevR wrote:
One things is for sure.
Prisoners are entitled to, and receive, a superior level of accommodation than most military personnel in this country.
I remember when I was in the RAF staying at Redford Barracks, there was no heating or hot water for a fortnight in the middle of winter!
I'm not saying that was justified treatment at all, but at least you could have walked away before it drove you insane.
It strikes me that the people who say prison's too easy are all too often those who've never been in one, and/or those who think that criminals are all sub-human scum.
Also, have a look at
De Profundis (
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/921) for so me thoughts on prison and attitudes to it. Annoyingly, they only have the censored version up, which doesn't go into the heartbreaking detail about his affair, but I think most of the prison stuff is still up.
Quote:
The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of our own rank it is different. With us, prison makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain.
Quote:
Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.