I read some stuff about prisons, it made me sad that we lock so many people up with so little attempt to change them for the better when they’re in the state’s hands. The article talked about the mental strain of being locked in a room with little stimulation, and how little point that serves. Those long hours alone seem unlikely make the bad guys wring their hands and weep with remorse, but are surely more likely to make them hate themselves and the world, and turn inwards or perhaps go screwy.
I don’t know the true purpose of prisons, whether they should be hard punishment or whether prisoners should get home comforts, but I do know we all want less criminals, we want our criminals to leave prison and join our working, nice guy community instead of going back to crime.
I think there are ways to help prisoners to change for the better through their time alone. So I would like to invent a machine to connect prisoners to a positive world outside prison, with a plan for them to learn about the rights and wrongs of things, to better understand themselves, and to get friendship, support and a head start on life when they are free. This would obviously be some kind of computer, it might involve an internet link to special websites (but not free access to the internet) and there might be people (perhaps trained volunteers) who had a plan to teach, counsel, help, prisoners to get the help they need to change their lives around.
Put a man in a cell with nothing and he’s likely to leave with nothing, put him in a room with a link to some hope and I hope he might become a better person.
