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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
What are you classifying as success?
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Success presuming the prevention was a failure? A healthy, well adjusted person emerges from the doctor's office, and then goes to prison a bit with a full understanding of what he or she did.
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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
Yes I do agree there is a problem with the entire mental health field in general. In terms of mental illness, any case of rehabilitation (that being defined as they are independent with federal financial assistance, and more importantly they do not repeat a criminal act) is an accomplishment. The other side is prison in general. Are prisons meant to rehab people, a place where they will pay for their crimes with time, a place to put dangerous people to they don’t hurt anyone else, or a combination of all three? If rehab is part of a prison’s goal I would view one failure (a criminal is released and murders another innocent person) a complete injustice.
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I think it would be better to put it this way: Prisons are intended to be places of rehabilitation; a big time out. The idea was to punish and isolate to allow for self reflection. An interesting idea, sure, but I doubt that it's ever enjoyed a high success rate for the thousands of years we've used it. Prison in actuality is a way for us to lock our problems away instead of dealing with them and in addition to that has become a very destructive industry that is responsible for preventing rehabilitation in order to get the repeat offenders and be profitable. I don't want to get into this too much, as it's got enough crap to take up 10 threads, but it needs to be said as often as possible: prisons don't work. Prevention works. We won't be safe or happy until we are as active in prevention as we are in punishment.
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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
As you pointed out I do have emotion tied to my view on the issue. I agree and admit this is a sensitive area for me. When I was in health care I remember working on a pediatric ICU for five months. I saw so many victims of child abuse that it began to have a negative impact resulting in my elected departure. I gained the insight that it was becoming increasingly difficult to carry a professional demeanor when I met the parents of the children they beat when in an inch of life. I knew that it was a weak area for so I chose to not be in that environment. This is probable the same for me.
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My mother works with abused children at EMQ and has tales (without names or specifics, of course) to tell. I'm sorry you had to be exposed to that. I can't imagine how painful that would be.
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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
It is very difficult for me see justice in granting someone another chance when the have committed a malicious crime eligible enough for current capital punishment sentences. I have not found statistics on situations like what viewers saw in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” where the character Red stated he knew it was a stupid act in committing murder- thus contributed to him getting released.
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I don't know about the "granting them another chance" thing, though. That almost presumes that it should be our (collective "our") decision whether or not someone should die. Is the taking of a life really something that you think everyone should have? Beyond that, how does the taking of the life really help anyone?
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Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
I pose another question to those against capital punishment, is there any situation at all where you would see it as justice?
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Honestly? Not really. Even as a function of retributive justice, it really only comes down to an eye for an eye type of thing... and I don't know many people who believe that an eye for an eye is justice. I know I don't.