Should we build a giant prison?

Prisons work by segregating. If the aim was to cohesify, the prisons would be broken at a basic psychological level.

Prisons work by segregating. If the aim was to cohesify, the prisons would be broken at a basic psychological level.

You can segregate within a giant prison complex much better than you can in a locality defined prison. Get off your faux-intellectual soapbox.

Ha, nothing that harsh. I don't know to be fair. But they're certainly to lax at the moment. Some people come out and don't mind going back in.

It's not necessarily that they don't mind going back in, it's perhaps more to do with the cr*p conditions when they leave prisons, and prison is seen as a more desirable alternative; they know that at prison you can get a bed, three meals a day etc. - when people leave prison they're given next to nothing with regards to support in aiding them to fit back into life outside prison, hence why some will re-offend.

It's not really slavery, they owe a debt to society and can work it off in a very literal sense. The worst most unskilled jobs could be fulfilled by these reprobates allowing the companies to save money to expand or take on those civilized enough not to break the law and give them more comfortable employment.

It's not revenge, revenge would be torturing them

It worked, that's the truth of the matter. It gives prisoners a sense of normality; they still work and they're not couped up in inhumane holes all day. We can give them the jobs no-one wants to do; recycled waste filtering, human waste handling or animal waste handling.

Nope. Prisons are better managed with smaller inmate populations, where a guard can get to know the prisoners on a first name basis. Imagine a riot with 100,000 prisoners in one spot? It would take the Armed Forces to quell it. Also prisoners should be housed near to where they live so visiting is easier for their family. Plus by putting all prisoners in one place you are concentrating all the prison jobs, meaning other towns which rely on prisons for employment will suffer. We need to make bigger, more modern prisons but making a super 100,000 all in one facility is a bad idea.

But it would be a grouped identity from one location, and there'd be inevitable mixing that is hard to monitor. The judges doing sentencing don't trawl through facebook friends to check there's no mutuals with their cell block


No need for insults, just came to discuss it. I don't know much about it and am happy to learn.

I'm not suggesting a giant all-in-one prison with one guard looking after 100,000 convicts. You'd probably need at least 10,000 guards and that would need to be spread dependent on the number of convicts. That however is a significant reduction on the 22k looking after prisoners now and would save a tonne of money

Yeah, but that puts 12k people out of work. In the long run it would probably save money, but the costs of building a 100,000 capacity prison would be astronomical. Labour's plans to increase capacity by just 12,000 was going to cost £2 billion and that was quite a while back. Plus there is the logistical problem, providing healthcare, food and other provisions will be an absolute nightmare causing gridlock where ever you place this prison. The influx of 10,000 guards would put pressure on the housing market in that area, and the government would most likely need to fund housing developments for all the staff that will be directly employed by the prison, and that isn't even taking into account those indirectly employed by it.

A better idea would be to create a number of new prisons catering for each region; one for London, one for the South, one of the Midlands, one for the North, one for Wales and one for Scotland. Logistically it would be much simpler, and would spread jobs out across the country. Plus it makes visitation much easier.

Shove it in the middle of nowhere or under the ocean, you can then get the prisoners to provide services the guards need etc and reduce strain on the locality.

Hmm yes. Because putting something in the middle of nowhere does not mean that extensive infrastructure has to be created to support it. Under the ocean? Yeah good luck with that.

It's a bunch of retrogade societal scum, if they all rot to death nobody cares. That's the beauty you don't need infrastructure.

If that is your opinion why not just build death camps for them?

But oh wait, even death camps require extensive infrastructure to function.

It's a bunch of retrogade societal scum, if they all rot to death nobody cares. That's the beauty you don't need infrastructure.