tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239070883775529047.post1955324183123285480..comments2019-08-09T06:53:21.813-04:00Comments on The Middletown Insider: Our Stance On Violent Crime Is CriminalMiddletown Insiderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10242085742226763775noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239070883775529047.post-86951395817397227092017-03-30T19:07:08.471-04:002017-03-30T19:07:08.471-04:00Thank you for your comment, Dr. Jones. I&#39;m la...Thank you for your comment, Dr. Jones. I&#39;m largely in agreement. But the problems in our prison system are many. It&#39;s called the &quot;Department of Correction&quot; but there is absolutely nothing done to correct ANYTHING. Prisoners are warehoused, harassed by guards who think it is their duty to inflict hardship on inmates, denied basic medical care and access to treatment and accomdation guaranteed them by the ADA; things as simple as a mattress.<br /><br />Anyone interested can search this blog for the &quot;Behind Bars&quot; series, and they can get an idea.Middletown Insiderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10242085742226763775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239070883775529047.post-6018696779152686732017-03-30T15:59:22.897-04:002017-03-30T15:59:22.897-04:00Thank you for this post and thank you to Brian E C...Thank you for this post and thank you to Brian E Clark for writing this article. I have to agree with you. Crime should be taken very seriously by our society and the response we should be giving should be a very tough one. I agree with you, that we, within the context of our societal norm, have made it very easy for a criminal to be a criminal and to stay a criminal. It is because of our lax stance on breaking the law that we have give criminals the &quot;right&quot; to continue to victimize our society, as if there is some acceptable reason why criminals commit crime. The reason they commit crime is because no one within the legal system has ever told them &quot;NO&quot; and actually mean it. The system does not back its &quot;NO&quot; with doing whatever is necessary to make &quot;NO&quot; mean &quot;NO&quot;. <br />We continue to &quot;punish&quot; criminals by sending them &quot;back home&quot; to prison, to all that is familiar and victimizing and build their skills, as a criminal to be just a better criminal when they get out. There is no restitution or recompense expected. Somehow we have been led to believe that time behind bars is meaningful to the criminal. It isn&#39;t. It would be meaningful for a non-criminal person to live in prison but for the criminal it is merely a way to expand their skills and plan their next crime. <br />We should not have dropped the death sentence and instead should be realizing, that crime will not stop until the response is great enough, of a &quot;No. No, you will not commit a crime. No, you will not receive leniency. No, we do not accept crime from you.&quot; The response we should be giving should be such a serious No(!) response that the criminal actually becomes afraid to commit crime. Perhaps then we will see criminal rates go down and real rehabilitation actually happen. The only reason that the prison system continues as it does, is because it provides jobs for the workers needed to keep a prison and its system alive. We should be putting our efforts into stopping crime by actually making very hard sentences, and in the case of murder, the death sentence. Until we take criminal behavior and the system used to &quot;control&quot; them much more seriously and more demanding and difficult for the convicted criminal, then we, the non-criminal people in our society will continue to be victimized. Frankly, we are creating our own problems, and we really should be growing up and getting out of this very flawed and very incompetent response to criminals. Crime is not acceptable and we should be treating it as such. NO should mean NO.Nancy Jones, MDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16285074699918681929noreply@blogger.com