Australian Prison Has Better Living Quarters Than My Apartment. This is called humane.

[KainRacure 0]

According to this article I currently live in a less than humane situation, I do not have my very own cottage with key card entry, wood-look kitchen, lounge/dining area with television, individual bedrooms with shelving and a combined share laundry. I live in a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen that you can't fit in if you open the oven or fridge and I gotta go a 10 minute drive into town to do my laundry.

ACT Corrections Minister Simon Corbell said that the facilities were vital to rehabilitating prisoners.

Objectives with the prison was to make it human rights compliant and in terms of design that means ... an atmosphere which is healthy not just for prisoners and staff but for everyone who uses the facility,

The ACT Government estimates that this prison will cost tax payers $336 a day per inmate based on a population of 200 inmates in the facility that cost $131 million.

There are however some more traditional cells in the prison which are called either "soft" or "hard". Differences include carpeting on the soft side and vinyl flooring on the hard side or a porcelain toilet vs a steel one.

On the campus like setting there are computer rooms, classrooms, a medical facility, trade rooms, a large commercial kitchen and laundry, a women's community centre, barbecue areas, paved courtyards, art rooms, basketball courts and a sports oval.

Also the facility has none of the traditional razor wire, guard towers, or bars on the windows. Corrections officers patrol the grounds and there are small office like huts with corrections officers stationed there instaid.

As far as claims that the prison is "too nice" Mr Corbell has said

"The punishment for serious crimes in our society is to be imprisoned, to lose your liberty and to be detained by the state and that is what the prison does," In short saying your punishment really is just that you cant go places.
"You are detained, you lose your liberty, you lose basic things that we take for granted, when you can go out, what sort of clothes you can wear and what sort of food you eat. These are all things that are seriously restricted when you go into prison and that must never be forgotten, but that does not mean we can't provide an environment which encourages people to reflect on their behaviour, to pay the penalty society has imposed on them and to take advantage of that to improve themselves and become better people when they leave prison." said Corbell.

To me this sounds like some form of summer camp for felons. The taxpayers are paying hard earned cash to send these guys away to some cushy little resort and all you have to do to get in there is say mug someone and be a good little boy where the corrections officers can see you.

If they keep on building prisons like this I suspect a rise in crime. Heck I worked on a resort a few years ago that offered the exact same thing and people PAID to go there.

This is pathetic, criminals should be treated as criminals, the sad fact is you in some way hurt society and you should be punished for it, not sent to a resort. If I lived where I had to pay taxes to this place I would be MAD.

If some guy wants to try out his soft little cushy program for prisoners let him do it on his own money, not other people's hard earned cash.

Original story here.

[Inhuman 0]

That makes absolutely no sense and it's freakin ridiculous. What you're sayin is, If I lived in the area that had this thing, I could murder a whole house hold, steal their stuff, burn it down and end up with BETTER living conditions than before? I swear this world just gets dumber and dumber by the second. Next thing ya know, they'll let them out of prison for being good.....oh wait. I think they do. :|

[sonesay 7]

This prison will have people wanting to break in instead of out. I have to say who ever thought of this idea should be seriously beat with a black jack. The day we start treating criminals better then is necessary required we are saying its OK if you commit crimes we'll look you up but it will be nice and comfortable.. I think a better use for them would be to put them in the army instead of drafting normal people. I can see a problem with this though if they go rouge it will probably cause serious problems in the field, so I guess lock them back up and make them work hard until they are released.

[KainRacure 0]

Problem with prisoners in the army is that some have nothing to lose either way and your arming them and teaching them how to kill. Besides people fight better if they have a cause to fight for. With a cause of some form then they will not be doing crap like running from battle or killing each other. Felons have already shown a disregard for the safety of others and for rules and stuff in general so they would most likely do the same on the battle field where proper discipline and covering your buddies behind is a must.

[kobra500 1]

Well if I was a hobo etc or starving on the street I would get arrested on purpose for that! I think its stupid ... Right you murdered 27 people! Do you wan't Ice in your cocktail? If you went to prison your probably went against someone else's human rights which in my book means you forfit your right to yours!

[cangor 0]

Wow... that... is... ridiculous. Prison is supposed to deter you from committing crimes. If prison is better than where you are now then what's to stop you from wanting to go and commit a crime? This is such a stupid idea, there are hundreds of other things the money could be better spent on.

[Vixen_Poetic 0]

This is a tricky subject. The arguements surrounding stuff like this stems from competing philosophies concerning what our objective is in locking someone up. Are we getting a danger to society off the steets and remaking them into a contributing member of society or are we insisting that someone who has offended society's rules repay society with enforced work to benefit society. The guiding philosophy for incarcerations used to be the latter but we found that there was a percentage of hardcases for whom the rough treatment they recieved only turned their anti-social issues into a hard shell of victimhood or justification for continuing their behavior when they were let out. Meanwhile the rough conditions of prison life were a serious deterrent for more mentally stable or less desperate folk. And then book learned psychologists got involved and these 'squeeky wheel' hardcases for which the system wasn't working got an excessive amount of attention and the psycological reasoning changed and with it the incarceration conditions. And now we have a new problem, prison conditions are no longer a deterent from crime. The problem is that the role of government in society is to protect it from anyone that would do it harm, from people to communities, and they have forgotten that by commiting crimes against people and communities these criminals have removed themselves from the orginization called society. Another problem they have been trying to address is the large number of people who go into prison with few job qualifications and come out with less feeding the cycle of desperation. However, training programs do not require the resort living they are gifting their convicts with.

[amirborna 0]

LOL your right, prisons should be like this

 

This is rediculous. I mean to be honest, if I lived there and didn't have enough money, I'll go to a video game store, try to jack *BLEEP*, if I don't get caught then what's good, if I do then soft carpet flooring tv room loung'd kitchen here i come!

 

Seriously this is some stupid shice. I think the government and stuff needs to come together and fix this retarted things becaue this is just retarted.

[adriantc 0]

Even though I don't live in Australia things like this make me mad... And it's not only in Australia - everywhere in the world prisoners get more and more rights.If it were by me prisons should be completely self sustained - I mean why do tax payers have to pay for someone who has hurt them? (by "them" I mean society in general) In my country (which is not very very far from the luxury conditions you stated) a prisoner needs more money then some people make by working in a month. And it's all because the European Union believes society should take care of all it's scums. Prisons should be a place of punishment not of good living. People go there not because they have don't something good, but because they have broken the laws of society. So if a prisoner works for 10$ a day that's what he will eat 8$. Some of his pay will go to pay his guards and another part to pay for maintaining the prison. If he won't work he won't eat and he will sleep under the sky. And that should only be for that cases why, happily, can be reintegrated into society. As for other cases, as rapers, killers, ... there is only one punishment - death. Society should no longer carry the burden of someone who has done so much bad and who can't be set free ever again. I believe in a simple equation for punishments. You break someone's right and you loose you own right. If you kill someone then you loose the right to live.Or if the world doesn't want to kill them because of various reasons then there should be an island somewhere to put them. No technology, no escape... Society no longer feeds them, no longer houses them... If they have not seen fit to respect the higher laws of society then they should not be a part of society. It's the best way to go!

Edited June 20, 2008 by adriantc (see edit history)

[ivantoar 0]

I think it's such a fool. People doing a crime and sent to prison to make them suffer! So they didn't do it again. So, if the prison is better, why not buy a flight to Australia and do a crime there? You can live better there LOL

[street 0]

That is unbelievable,do a crime get to live better than you were outside. When someone does a crime they should hate being in jail not loving every single minute,when someone commits a crime they should not be treated like a king for the actions that got them in their in the first place.

[Forbez 0]

Well that's hardly fair, they've been sent to a prison for a reason. They've committed a crime and deserve to but away with little to no rights and not to have luxurious living conditions.I'm not surprised though, their always adding more funding to the wrong places. I know there was some discussion of improving the level of luxury inside the prisons.

[.:Piper_2051:. 0]

Seriously man, take that to the government, threaten to do something to get put in their so you can have (A Humane Standard of Living)... that is absolutley ridiculous that most ppl's living conditions are inferior to that of a F'n Convict...

[tatati 0]

Prisons accomodate the bad seed, some criminals are so good on what they do that they will get their lawyers to bribe every judge to get them out, if its not possible they will bribe every prison caretaker to get whatever they need to feel comfort inside the prison and still run their businesses through their lawyers from inside the jail! The rest of society pay taxes to keep these elements away from the rest of us! Crime is organized nowadays and if one smart criminal get unsatisfied in a cell full of people he has the support of a violent army and can organize a riot then nobody will ever want to go work in a place full of unsatisfied violent inmates. Do you really want to taint your morals just to live in that neighborhood?

[networker 0]

It seems they reward these prisoners for commiting they're crimes.If they made jails realy harsh with working chain gangs and such it would be a deterent to crime. As it is,the criminals just aren't scared to commit these crimesso normal society is paying the price both in tax and safety.