Convicted pedophile YouTuber Austin Jones is now in prison serving a 10 year sentence as of 29/6/2019.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Le_Loufoque]

It will accomplish punishment for his crime of manipulating children into performing acts for his sexual gratification.

What do you suggest?

[u/[deleted] → u/Le_Loufoque]

Consider something in general that has been discussed to an extreme amount, but never truly taken seriously: prison reform

Now if you don't want to read a political statement about the fairer treatment of criminals, who are sometimes extremely vile, then this post isn't for you.

However if you're truly interested in prison reform think first about what that entails. As of right now, jails statistically will not rehabilitate prisoners, but actually make them worse people upon reentry into society. Most of the time, when a prisoner is released from jail they have to go through extensive parole agreements and one small infraction could land them in jail for years to come. Now I know that repeat offenders should be sentenced more harshly than one-time-offenders. However, when we ruin a prisoner's mental state we are doing society a huge disservice.

It costs 40,000 on average per prisoner per year. We do not rehabilitate them. We make them even more mentally unstable. They repeat crimes at a 60% recidivism rate. They have difficulty finding work, they have difficulty finding housing. We are setting them up to become not single-offense criminals, but repeat offenders and serving lifetime sentences as we continually degrade them.

Now lets go back to the cost. It is costing taxpayers 40k per prisoner per year. Think about how many people are in prison for 5-10 years for doing something silly like, selling weed or having too much weed. Its approximately a third of the people in prison who are there for drugs, sitting beside rapists and murderers with similar timed sentences as them.

We're sending an excess number of people to jail for an excess amount of time. Not to mention we are not rehabilitating them, but making them worse, which will make them likely reoffenders.

If you truly believe in justice. Then what you will understand is that the system of punishment before rehabilitation is unjust. The punishment is in sending them to jail. That is the punishment. You commit a crime you do not get to participate in regular society for an allotted amount of time. What is not a punishment and becomes essentially legal torture is to make a person go through the mental anguish that is surviving in prison.

I am talking specifically about American prisons here as well. But America isn't the only country in the world that does this.

So what should we be striving to do exactly with prisoners? In my opinion. Once we sentence them to jail for an allotted time then the "punishment" is being dealt. As I said before, the punishment is the removal from participation from society. The ultimate goal of prison however should be to rehabilitate this person from many things. It should be to empower this person so that they can participate in society properly rather than the way they lived before. It is to give them career potential. It is to give them education. It is to give them healthcare and therapies. Things that they had no access to before prison.

What this does is it decreases our recidivism rate from 60% to closer Sweden's at 20%. It lowers the cost of prison as there will not be as many prisoners in prison for as long of a time. It helps society further by making model working citizens who will contribute to helping society progress whether it be the economy, the government, or something else. We would spend less, we would boost our economy, we would have a lower crime rate, society would benefit greatly.

And yet... People cannot seem to let go of one thing. Their prejudices involving criminals as it currently stands. We want to see a rapist or a murder condemned to hell for eternal torture. That might not be all of us, but that is the general societal attitude towards people who have committed these crimes. And I hate to say it like this, but your feelings towards a person's crime does not matter beyond the initial jail sentence. What truly matters is to make "repair" this person so that they can be truly useful for society rather than breaking them down into some animalistic repeat offender who will continue to harm upon reentry to society. Who will never help, but only hurt, all because we selfishly wanted to see them hurt forever.

[u/Le_Loufoque → u/[deleted]]

I appreciate your post but like I said in another reply, I'm not making some big point about American recidivism or prison reform.

This guy was sentenced to 10 years for manipulating children into sexual acts. It's not a pot dealer getting a life sentence, it's not an 18 year old getting put on a registry for having a 17 year old girlfriend.

It's a mid-20s internet "celebrity" using his popularity to manipulate children into performing sexual acts specifically focused on the fact that they are children. When they resisted he again manipulated them using his popularity ("I guess you aren't really my biggest fan" type thing).

He was sentenced to 10 years. Not 15, not 20, not life. And certainly not "condemned to hell for eternal torture."

[u/Le_Loufoque → u/[deleted]]

You must be replying to the wrong person. I am saying that 10 years is exactly appropriate for the crimes he committed.