ex cons shocked at the world after long prison sentenses

EX CONS SHOCKED AT THE WORLD AFTER LONG PRISON SENTENSES CODE

The US also has some of the longest prison sentences in the world due to its cultural values including an extreme emphasis on personal responsibility, religious belief in good and evil, and the idea that a community has the moral imperative to stamp out bad deeds. “They can always go back to, ‘I’m gonna be tough on crime and keep you safe.’ A lot of these themes are really resonant in 2018.” It is a key talking point for politicians running,” says King. And they still do.įrom that period the US saw an absolute explosion in prison population: from 200,000 in 1974 to more than 1,500,000 in 2002. In turn, that led to unrest and fear among the population. The country was in the throes of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, which led to protests and riots. He points back to the late 1960s, a turbulent time in US history. The threat of a long prison sentence does not therefore deter them from a criminal lifestyle. One reason is because many criminals think they won’t get caught… even after they’ve been caught once, experts say. In the UK, almost 70% are reconvicted within a year of release. A 2009 study found that in the US, after three years in prison, 67% of the prisoners were rearrested for a new offence, 46.9% were reconvicted for a new crime, and 25.4% were resentenced to prison. Studies also show that reoffending remains high. Education played a role too, with lesser educated criminals seemingly less put off by a harsher sentence. Criminals seem to value the future less than non criminals, one study found, meaning that long sentences can seem “arbitrary”, and only work to deter up to a point. In addition to being somewhat arbitrary (why 13,275 years?), there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that the threat of prison time actually deters ex-prisoners from committing crimes. Research shows that long prison sentences don’t really work on several fronts. There’s retribution (punishing the person for doing something wrong), rehabilitation (correcting problematic behaviour), safety (keeping threats out of the community) and deterrence (making sure both they, and others, are scared off of breaking the law in the future). When a judge hands a sentence to someone who’s about to go to jail, there are four main factors that go into the decision. And while Kittitradilok’s case was mostly optics, plenty of people around the world really do spend their whole lives behind bars.įor example, Terry Nichols, one of the accomplices in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was given 161 life sentences with no possibility for parole.īut does a long prison sentence actually keep the streets safer? We considered the evidence. Still, there’s something about the idea of a long prison term that gives the impression that justice is being served.

EX CONS SHOCKED AT THE WORLD AFTER LONG PRISON SENTENSES CODE

But in actuality, thanks to Thailand’s penal code that limits prison sentences, Kittitradilok will only end up serving 20 years. He was sentenced to a staggering 13,275 years in jail – an amount of time longer than the entire Neolithic era. It's an anxious panic to catch up after that.In December 2017, a Thai man named Phudit Kittitradilok was convicted of swindling 2,400 people out of 574 million baht (£13 million) in a Ponzi scheme that promised high return investments. While you're stuck in a constant loop of the same day every day, the rest of the world moves on without you. People think about a prisoner doing time but don't understand that the time does them. When I got out it was a trip to get on Facebook and Instagram and see how everyone I was ever close to had moved on with their lives, having kids, getting married, getting fat, losing weight, starting and quitting jobs, falling out with each other, some even passing away. When I got locked up I left a lot of friends and family behind and did 3 years on my own, no visitors, no calls, no mail. With social media and everything, there's the acknowledgement of the passage of time. But when you get out you have the rest of the book available. In prison you have a certain number of smells that you're exposed to every day, think of them as the first page in a book. What it feels like to shower completely alone and without flip flops on. Like the way carpet feels on the bottoms of your feet.

Ex cons shocked at the world after long prison sentenses