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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[smirk]

It means not spending resources keeping them alive and healthy in the already overcrowded and expensive prisons (assuming it didn't take years more worth of trials and mountains of legal paperwork, but that's another issue).

Just a side note - this is a problem much better addressed by reformation of incarceration laws. A lot of the burden on the prison system comes from jailing people who would be much better served with some form of rehabilitation program, notably the large number of jailed non-violent drug offenders who are the side effect of our badly-implemented "war on drugs". I'd hesitate to use scarce resources as an argument for the death penalty; likely that wouldn't be more than a blip on the Misspending Radar.

This might have something to do with the prison-industrial complex. Link

According to another Wikipedia article, most of these people are on probation or parole. I would also argue that many of the ideas behind modern rehab could be considered at least soft brainwashing.

We will probably just have to agree to disagree, then. I feel that allowing a person to maintain some of the dignity of the person they are, even if it means death or life imprisonment, is preferable to manipulating and twisting everything they ever were into a more "socially acceptable" form. I detest the thought of manipulating people in that manner. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

"Soft brainwashing" is a pretty squishy term, though. Unless you're imagining something Clockwork Orange-y? Which I doubt is what happens. The average person's personality tends to change with environment and social group, so giving them a support system that encourages more acceptable behaviour could be considered a form of social brainwashing. And on the flip side, putting a person in a location for an extended period of time where their main social circles are other criminals could be considered a negative form of social brainwashing. Again, I don't think it's anything so drastic as squeezing brains into horrible facsimiles of social averages. It's a pretty normal social process.

Given that the USA's recidivism rate is somewhere around 60% and rehabilitation-focused Norway's is down around 20%, they might be onto something there. Different societies and cultures of course, but still.

[Dutchling]

It means not spending resources keeping them alive and healthy in the already overcrowded and expensive prisons (assuming it didn't take years more worth of trials and mountains of legal paperwork, but that's another issue).

Just a side note - this is a problem much better addressed by reformation of incarceration laws. A lot of the burden on the prison system comes from jailing people who would be much better served with some form of rehabilitation program, notably the large number of jailed non-violent drug offenders who are the side effect of our badly-implemented "war on drugs". I'd hesitate to use scarce resources as an argument for the death penalty; likely that wouldn't be more than a blip on the Misspending Radar.

This might have something to do with the prison-industrial complex. Link

According to another Wikipedia article, most of these people are on probation or parole. I would also argue that many of the ideas behind modern rehab could be considered at least soft brainwashing.

Isn't "soft brainwashing"* the entire point of rehabilitation? It's not like anyone has criminal kidneys or something

*I am assuming there is no non-vague definition of this.

[10ebbor10]

It depends though, not all criminals have criminal tendencies. A lot of small criminals have other troubles (addictions, poverty, whatever) which force them to steal.

[Lagslayer]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It means not spending resources keeping them alive and healthy in the already overcrowded and expensive prisons (assuming it didn't take years more worth of trials and mountains of legal paperwork, but that's another issue).

Just a side note - this is a problem much better addressed by reformation of incarceration laws. A lot of the burden on the prison system comes from jailing people who would be much better served with some form of rehabilitation program, notably the large number of jailed non-violent drug offenders who are the side effect of our badly-implemented "war on drugs". I'd hesitate to use scarce resources as an argument for the death penalty; likely that wouldn't be more than a blip on the Misspending Radar.

This might have something to do with the prison-industrial complex. Link

According to another Wikipedia article, most of these people are on probation or parole. I would also argue that many of the ideas behind modern rehab could be considered at least soft brainwashing.

Isn't "soft brainwashing"* the entire point of rehabilitation? It's not like anyone has criminal kidneys or something

*I am assuming there is no non-vague definition of this.

I just sort of came up with the term on the spot. I meant "soft" as in a deceptive, passive-aggressive sort of manner where they pretend to help you reform yourself, but are actually just manipulating you the be whatever they want you to be.

As opposed to hard brainwashing, which would be something closer to flat out torture.

I would also like to clarify that I'm not necessarily against all rehab, just that I don't really trust how people would use the concept. It probably doesn't help that anyone I have ever talked to about my issues didn't really help solve the problem. I even went to a psychiatrist, and he was a hack, pure and simple. He didn't even address the issue or anything close to it.

[Leafsnail]

I take it you also oppose education of any form?

[smirk]

I would also like to clarify that I'm not necessarily against all rehab, just that I don't really trust how people would use the concept. It probably doesn't help that anyone I have ever talked to about my issues didn't really help solve the problem. I even went to a psychiatrist, and he was a hack, pure and simple. He didn't even address the issue or anything close to it.

Fair. It's still a fairly squishy area of medicine/science, although less so than it used to be. Still a long way to go, and there's always gonna be mistakes and wrong directions, but it's got a lot of potential. At least we've moved out of the "mental asylum" phase =P

I take it you also oppose education of any form?

C'mon, keep it civil now.

[10ebbor10]

On a side note, I think you have entirely a wrong view of rehabilitation. Rehab programs have limited spots, so prisoners have to do a serious effort to even get in one. It's completely voluntary.

[Lagslayer]

I take it you also oppose education of any form?

That was uncalled for, but I'll entertain it with a response. Please forgive me if i get off on a tangent, but I believe the context is necessary.

What is and is not acceptable is relative and subject to an individual's perspective. With most subjects, this doesn't come in to play so much. With something like math, pretty much everyone agrees that it's straight facts/information, and there is very little to no emotional or moral aspect involved with it. But certain subjects, in order to mean anything, have to take on a perspective, and that is where is becomes controversial. History in particular comes to mind. To me, history means nothing without stories. Stories give context and meaning to what would otherwise just be memorization of dates and names (which is how it's taught in the U.S.). But if you are going to tell these stories, how do you decide which stories to tell? There are the near-universally accepted bad guys like the Nazis, but at the same time, aren't the victors the ones who get to write most of the history? If the Nazis had won, they would have probably painted their opposition as barbaric, as we have painted them. Should students be exposed to the diary of a hardcore Nazi soldier, who would glorify their goals and methods of creating a better world (in their eyes, at least. I want to make it very clear that I am not a Nazi). Or would that just put "corrupt ideas" into their impressionable minds?

I believe it is important to understand the opposition, even if you disagree with them. A lot of people feel that attempting to understand leads to corruption. Sometimes, with some people, it does, because they are very impressionable, and will believe anything that anybody tells them.

I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone on this forum in in the minority on at least some of their beliefs. Should your ideas and perspectives be repressed like the Nazis, or are yours somehow not as bad or corrupting? Who gets to decide this? You? Of course you would champion your own cause. If you were in a position to do so, would you force people to learn your way of doing things?

At the same time, a society without anything to bind it is not a society at all. With no common morals or ideas, people have no way to relate to each other, and so there is no cohesion. Some standards have to be in place for people to conform too. But when is the cohesion worth suppressing an opposing idea?

This isn't about what you believe. It's about why you believe.

edit: Ninjas, man. I was concocting this response for a good half hour, so I should have expected it.

[scriver]

A very interesting study showed that a lot of criminals sentenced to jail, especially among heavy drug criminals, could be diagnosed with ADD (I can't remember 100% certain, but I think that was it), and when properly medicated, they were able to achieve lot of pro-rehabilitation task (like finishing high-school or trade training and so on). It was hypnotised that the reason they got in contact with the drug business in the first place was as a form of self-medication for an undiagnosed issue (and further that society needs to get better at noticing these people in advance and so on).

The Norwegians have an interesting system involving open prisons and such as part of a wider rehabilitation process. The prisoners I saw could ride horses and smoke cigarettes in the woods with their friends on a remote island.

I remember maybe 5-7 years ago or something you started hearing about a lot of promising or successful prison/rehabilitation projects from Norway and Denmark that were very interesting... I remember thinking that that was the kind of enterprises we should have here too (Can't let the Dane be better than us!). I don't know if they still have such things going (I wouldn't guarantee anything from the kind of governments Denmark has had since the last couple of elections and the recession and all but Norway at least still has all their oil money and a social-democratic government up until just this month) or if any of them were ever even codified or continued. But yes, I was very intrigued by them and would like to see a lot of more investment into that direction.

[smirk]

It was hypnotised that the reason they got in contact with the drug business in the first place was as a form of self-medication for an undiagnosed issue (and further that society needs to get better at noticing these people in advance and so on).

You're not helping with the 'brainwashing' scare =P 
Also, link I put up a couple posts ago (linky link) is from 2010 about "Norway's most humane prison". Seems like they're still going strong.

-tangent-

It's the History/Social Studies problem! When you start taking history classes in 3rd grade or whenever, you learn neat little stories about 'The First Thanksgiving' and 'Columbus Discovering America'. Then the next year in history you get told "remember those stories from last year? Well, they were a mix of simplification and outright lies. Here's what really happened:" And then the year after that you hear the same thing again.

It's one of those education problems that are extremely complex and have no good resolution (that we know of yet, anyway). Do kids need simplification at first so they can properly grasp complexity later? And how is "properly" defined in that previous sentence? Would they be better off presented with all the grisly details we have right from the beginning, or is it important for us to build up their context first? And does that count as brainwashing? And is that necessary for keeping our society together? Is that a good or bad thing? How do we educate these tiny brains?!

Moral: teachers have it rough, man.

Anyway, this tangent is drifting way too far off from American politics, so I'm gonna drop it there.

[Owlbread]

It's the History/Social Studies problem! When you start taking history classes in 3rd grade or whenever, you learn neat little stories about 'The First Thanksgiving' and 'Columbus Discovering America'. Then the next year in history you get told "remember those stories from last year? Well, they were a mix of simplification and outright lies. Here's what really happened:" And then the year after that you hear the same thing again.

It's one of those education problems that are extremely complex and have no good resolution (that we know of yet, anyway). Do kids need simplification at first so they can properly grasp complexity later? And how is "properly" defined in that previous sentence? Would they be better off presented with all the grisly details we have right from the beginning, or is it important for us to build up their context first? And does that count as brainwashing? And is that necessary for keeping our society together? Is that a good or bad thing? How do we educate these tiny brains?!

Moral: teachers have it rough, man.

Anyway, this tangent is drifting way too far off from American politics, so I'm gonna drop it there.

I'm sorry, I know you want to drop the tangent but it is too damned interesting. It's also related to American politics I suppose in that you're discussing how history should be taught in American schools, which is a matter of policy for political parties to consider.

In Scotland, we didn't get taught any history at all in our equivalent of the third grade. We only learned about history on very rare occasions throughout primary (elementary) school, but it was mostly done through self learning so at the age of around 10 we'd be told to go and research a "topic" that interested us, such as dinosaurs, dogs/cats, castles etc. I remember doing my best on "cryptozoology". We'd then collect the information that we were able to find and put it all together in a booklet. We did get taught history a bit about once a year as part of a small unit, for instance when I was about 8 or 9 I remember reading booklets and talking in a class prepared by the Headmaster about the Scottish Wars of Independence. I remember they were pretty good, nothing too oversimplified but enough for us to understand. That was probably the coolest unit I ever did.

We were only taught history properly as a subject when we begun secondary (high) school. At that point we'd already picked up the stories that are our equivalents of things like "the first thanksgiving" etc from our parents, from movies, certain teachers making reference to it in school at assemblies or whatever. We certainly learned about religious stories through R.E. which was actually taught as a subject in primary school, history wasn't. Sometimes the school minister would tell us stories about Jesus or other stuff from the bible, usually once a week. If not him then the Headmaster would tell us other Christian-related stories about kindness and selflessness, forgiveness and all that.

So, in other words, we didn't have to go through that simplification/complication process, we just started afresh. By my experience it worked pretty well but there were some people who knew practically nothing and it was all new to them, that didn't stop them enjoying it though and doing pretty well.

[smirk]

Huh, they don't really teach it 'til 9th over there? If it works, I suppose, though I don't think it'd fly in the US. We like our stories too much =P  And our church/state boundary keeps homilies mostly out of public schools, though we're still religious enough as a people that religious knowledge comes in fairly quickly anyway.

To tie it (kinda) back to politics - One of the most interesting explanations I ever heard for our style of history teaching went like this: the USA is a big place. A damn big place, which covers a multitude of cultures and countless subcultures under one oversized umbrella. Why doesn't it fracture into discrete parts? How do you keep it all together? Well, national pride and shared history are very good ways to make people feel they're part of a whole. And the easiest way to instil those are teach it to young kids, who are pretty impressionable. If you teach simple, feel-good historical stories to 'em, then even when you build up to more complicated and ambiguous things later then they still have that foundational lens through which to view it all. Bam! Increased national cohesion.

Now: is that kind of thing brainwashing, or simply a good social construct? Is it necessary? Is it more good than harmful, or more harmful than good? Is that simplification actively detrimental to our later understanding, as people tend to default to simplicities that they like? Is this method, in fact, responsible for the rise of the Tea Party? Is that the price we pay to keep the good ol' US of A together?

And now I need to go get ready for work, so it's dropped for really reals this time =D

[FearfulJesuit]

The stupid, it is palpable.

[misko27]

So how bout dat

The stupid, it is palpable.

I've heard a lot about republicans filing suits against teaching critical thinking, attempting to have judges throw out scientific studies, etc. But, I think a extreme branch may eventually attempt to have other opinions banned on the theory that they hurt America.

[da_nang]

The stupid, it is palpable.

I can't decide whether to facedesk or tableflip a la Katia.

THE STUPID. 'TIS TOO MUCH.