Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The state of prisons worldwide is turning into an international joke!
From one extreme to another, you either find places like Guantanamo Bay and other torture chambers you read about in less developed countries, whose jailers mistreat their prisoners in the worst possible way or you have the other extreme where in certain UK jails they’re now giving inmates keys to their own cells. Apparently this latest move is an incentive to encourage them to take more responsibility for themselves as well as give them more respect and decency.
My question is why on earth should they be given any respect and decency? What respect and decency did they give their victims? It seems that prisoners already have it all too easy these days with facilities resembling more like those of a hotel. Televisions, libraries, gymnasiums, stores where they can buy the things they need, three square meals, phone privileges and visitation right are now a staple in most prisons in the UK and US.
The whole point of going to prison is to it make such an intolerable experience that the guilty party thinks twice about ever offending again. Why should tax payers be paying for hardened criminals to be made more comfortable in prison than life on the outside?
The US had it right with their chain-gangs where people who were doing hard time for serious crimes were chained together to do menial and back-breaking work. Murders, rapist and paedophiles are the scum of the earth and don’t deserve to sent away on holiday.
Only last week a US television entertainment program showed footage of a Pop Idol-type event held in one of the US prisons where the winner was awarded pizza and Big Macs for his entire cell block. What’s next? A Caribbean cruise for the most violent inmate and half a dozen of his cronies?
