Our prisons are boiling pots for angry people and universities of crime

Zero-tolerance incarceration is the buzzword of prisonocrats who oversee the new-age prison system - a warehousing process where sensory deprivation labours under the masquerade of security and containment. Fresh air and sunlight have become a privilege and not a right. Retribution replaces rehabilitation. And education is at the bottom of the priority list. As the incarceration process moves into the 21st century one can only speculate what the process will produce for future generations.

That speculation was the focus of a respected US Judge, His Honour Judge Dennis Challeen, when he made this critical and candid observation of the incarceration process as I know it:

"We want them to have self worth so we destroy their self worth.
We want them to be responsible so we take away all responsibilities.
We want them to be part of our community so we isolate them from our community.
We want them to be positive and constructive so we degrade them and make them useless.
We want them to be non-violent so we put them where there is violence all around them.
We want them to be kind and loving people so we subject them to hatred and cruelty.
We want them to quit being the tough guy so we put them where the tough guy is respected.
We want them to quit hanging around with losers, so we put all the losers under one roof.
We want them to quit exploiting us so we put them where they exploit each other.
We want them to take control of their own lives, own their own problems and quit being parasites -- so we make them totally dependent on us."
(Quoted in the New Zealand Journal Stimulus in August 1994).

How many successful failures will the prison system continue to produce? Is this what the community really wants?