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A lot of our violent crimes are committed by people who got out of prison, by parole or otherwise. What if we put all of our prisons on remote islands, took away the citizenship of all violent criminals, and paroled them to those islands when they got out of prison? If they wanted to reform and become good citizens, they could become good citizens of those islands. Nonviolent criminals, we could keep on our mainland, and out of prison, by only sentencing them to community service and other such non-prison sentences.
How well did penal colonies work in the past? Such as New South Wales, Australia, as a penal colony for the UK? There were also other European countries that had prisons in colonies and prohibited prisoners from returning to the European country after the end of their sentence. But is there any way to know how well they worked? How can we be sure the crime rates in those European countries were actually lower than they would have been without such policies?
What if we tried it as an experiment? Such as, for the next 20 years, 100% of all violent criminals would be sentenced to prisons on remote islands, and would be paroled, after serving their time, to those islands, to start new colonies there, of ex-prisoners? And we could keep careful records and do all kinds of research on how well it was working.
If we wanted to be especially liberal about it, we could consider each such island to be a new country, and could give them foreign aid. Such as sending naval forces there to protect them from foreign invasions, and sending them the same kind of food aid we send to war-torn countries, until they could develop their economy and agriculture enough to be able to live comfortably there.
Myself, I'm more afraid of non-violent criminals than violent criminals.
Many of the non-violent are passive-aggressive, and it's no secret that the passive-aggressive types, subconsciously, bring out the anger and violence in others!
I'd be all for this idea if they included the white collar criminals, even though what they're doing is legal.
Never forget: a college education gives you a license to steal, legally!
I agree that there are some people that have proved to be stains on the fabric of humanity and they need to be washed away. Why not send the worse to a penal colony where they could kill each other off? The only problem would be is that someone could escape from such an island using modern technology. 100 plus years ago there was only one way off the island and that was by the ship that brought you there.
Is there any place on earth that is remote enough to be out of reach? Obama is working hard to close Gitmo.
There was a recent movie starring Arnold Swartzenegger and Sly Stallone where they were on a ship that was a prison.
In the far future of science fiction there are prison planets.
Instead of a penal colony why not just toss the worst of the worst in with each other and let nature takes its course. There would be no guards to protect the prisoners from each other just the daily pickup of the dead bodies and feeding routines.
Where would that island even be? What culture would we destroy to do this? What beautiful land would we commandeer because we're too lazy to address crime in an effective way?
I'm against this. If we want prison reform that teaches prisoners to live in a constructive community, by all means, give it a shot. But I'm absolutely against creating a prison colony on some remote island. It's a wasteful expense, and frankly, there isn't any land available. There technically wasn't' any when England did it with Australia and the Americas, but now we know invading another cultures land for our own selfish needs is wrong. Back then, they at least had the excuse of not knowing it.
Plenty of islands around.We could airdrop all the out of date food to them.I think it would be preferable to being incarcerated for life and we could all feel a little safer in bed at night and, a damn site cheaper for the taxpayers
The people sent to Australia were mostly for petty crimes or political prisoners.
Generally speaking violent crimes, rape, murder, etc were not transportable offenses.
So even if you knew the statistics for crime in the penal colonies, it would not apply to this case.
A lot of our violent crimes are committed by people who got out of prison, by parole or otherwise. What if we put all of our prisons on remote islands, took away the citizenship of all violent criminals, and paroled them to those islands when they got out of prison? If they wanted to reform and become good citizens, they could become good citizens of those islands.
What this would be, in effect, is a lifetime sentence. What would be the difference between being imprisoned on the island, vs. being "released" from prison only to remain where they were? Not to mention, It's awfully hard to reform and become a good citizen when you are surrounded by nothing but bad, evil people.
That said, I do think that it might be a good idea to exile violent criminals to their own island. Except, as opposed to the OP's idea, I would make it a permanent lifetime sentence, so only the worst of the worst -- the ones whom society has deemed beyond redemption -- would be sent there.
An ideal choice of location would be an island that is fairly close (but not within swimming distance) of another island where regular people might want to live, so that the guards and administrators could live separately from their charges and "commute" via boat or seaplane or land plane to the penal island.
I am sure that there are plenty of places that would fit the bill. For instance, only 8 of the more than 100 islands in the Hawaiian chain (7 of the 8 main islands, plus Midway) are inhabited. Or, only about 30 of the 700 or so islands in the Bahamas are inhabited, leaving plenty of choices for a penal island within reasonable distance of a regular one. (Of course, we couldn't just go in and grab one of those. The Bahamas are a sovereign country, so we would need to negotiate with them and make it worth their while to do this.)
I agree with bus man. It would have to be for violent offenders only and for life.
I envision sort of like what they had going on in Papillon.
They had their little piece of land to grow a garden, as well as some chickens and a little hut.
Far better than us paying 31K per year for these guys.
I don't even know why you'd need guards. If they end up killing one another that's their business. At least they are no longer a threat to civilized people.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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Yeah, let's give them Hawaii. It's far enough away they can't swim back and there's room for our millions of criminals.
Actually Mexico does this. They have prison islands south of Baja.
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