I'm thinking maybe to treat prisoners like teenagers. At the beginning you slowly give them adult privileges letting them know very clearly at each step, that with privilege comes responsibility. Things like going from pink jumper to dungarees. Or burr haircut to prisoner's choice. Shoe polish. Little things are important. And you clamp down immediately and especially hard on the first couple of transgressions. If they quickly come around you unclamp just as quickly. Gotta see punishment directly connected to reward. Slowly you grant them more and more until finally, they're out the door.

Oh yeah, the otehr thing about teenagers. A parent never sleeps better than when the teen goes to bed dog-tired, muscles like jello after a hot shower. I'll bet a tired prisoner is a compliant prisoner.

OK, Bot for Commissioner of Corrections, a new cabinet post. () (about the 'new cabinet post' part)

Sounds good to me. One idea I had for a youth facility, maybe up to age 25 (approx) would be to have a nifty little media room complete with WWWeb, a small one or two person sized facility, and keep it soundly locked for use as a reward for good behavior.

A hobby horse of mine, I suppose, is the excessive amount of time young Americans (not to mention Asians) spend on listening to music, playing video games, etc. Not that these things are completely bad but holy crap, I've seen the excesses of this stuff.

Better to have the kid spend 8 hours a day building a house or learning plumbing with a half hour of media time at night, if'n they act right, that is.

Also, given the TV/movie hungry nature of many people, absent the constant competition of fluff like TV wrestling, etc., an evening movie of some worthwhile drama (In the Heat of the Night, various Kurosawa movies, etc.) or PBS Nature or History Channel bits could satisfy the TV jones of some of these youngsters and spoon feed some education at the same time.

This would be a rural camp of some sort, an undying fantasy project of mine. God knows there's plenty of room for competition in that field.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K