PowerSwitch

Ok , lets assume we are in the year 2030 and the economy is clinging by withered pubic hair.

What do we do with 70,000+ prisoners in UK prisons? Slave labour? Shoot them? or is it back to bread and water?

If we get the anarchy scenario, if you are the prison warden , do you let the prisoners out to join the chaos, or would you be selective?(ie let the murders and rapists rot , but let the fraudsters go?)

Thought this might churn out some interesting ideas!

If things get that far you might see more concentration camps, where people are locked away for minor offences (like having the wrong type of nose) but you could also see the prison system collapsing as well and then they will all be out on the streets.

Totally_Baffled wrote: What do we do with 70,000+ prisoners in UK prisons?

Hook them into the National Grid



Sticking prisoners on a treadmill is effectively what is already being done by the privatised prisons in the USA . You're looking at it the wrong way. Prisoners arent a problem - they're a slave labour opportunity to be exploited. A way of being competitive with the slave labour that powers the Chinese economy.

Post peak... put them out in the fields. Tractor replacement. Anything that requires cheap manual labour and lots of it. They could all be fitted with explosive collars, based on the current electronic tagging technology so if any try to run away you just press a button and blow their heads off.

I honestly think they'd be one of the earliest groups to die off. Initially it maybe survival of the fittest (or violentist (is that a word?). Eventually and very quickly, due to H2O and Food it will soon become a case of Survival of the Smartest.

It'll all depend on the type of govenrment we have by then, and anything is possible. Leaving that aside if we expect an increase in the breakdown of law & order, as I would (we do in a minor way every recession anyway) then any government is going to be faced with a series of options:
1 - To avoid overfilling the prisons be a lot laxer on minor crimes, rely more on tagging, probation, etc
2 - Build more prisons & fill them up - difficult to do politically but possible if they have sufficient will/things are bad enough
3 - Bring back capital punishment (though this wouldn't seriously impact on the numbers of those imprisoned)
4 - Forced labour is a possibility, but there is still the problem of housing & securing prisoners - I don't think exploding collars would be seriously considered.
5 - Offering minor criminals an option - prison or the army - has been done elsewhere & is likely if they don't want to bring back the draft & need troops.

If things got really bad & prisons ran out of food/etc I think we'd be facing real problems as what prison officer is going to bother to turn up for work - either people would die in their cells or some would get out (with or without the help of compasionate guards) & there would be problems for the surrounding area.

Wayne72 wrote:I honestly think they'd be one of the earliest groups to die off. Initially it maybe survival of the fittest (or violentist (is that a word?). Eventually and very quickly, due to H2O and Food it will soon become a case of Survival of the Smartest.

I think you may be being a bit optimistic there, just because folk are in prison doesn't mean that they aren't smart - or that intelligence will always win out over violence & the will to use it.

AllanH

Wayne72 wrote:I honestly think they'd be one of the earliest groups to die off. Initially it maybe survival of the fittest (or violentist (is that a word?). Eventually and very quickly, due to H2O and Food it will soon become a case of Survival of the Smartest.

I think you may be being a bit optimistic there, just because folk are in prison doesn't mean that they aren't smart - or that intelligence will always win out over violence & the will to use it.

AllanH[/quote]

I realise there are quite a lot of inteligent people in prison. What I mean is that to survive in the sort of World I think we are facing, then you'll need to devolop groups of communities were everyone gets on, so these smarter criminals will just integrate rather cause trouble, for their own survival needs. Now the less inteligent and violent criminals and even civillians will prosper at the early stages of the Chaotic times. I do think long term survivalists will be the smarter people.

I ejoyed being called a "bit optimistic", as of late i've become the most pessimisitic person I know. I hope to change my way of thinking though.

I very much doubt that survivalists (in the sense of lone men in the wilderness foraging) will be effective, even short term. Realistically in the UK at least the number of people with the opportunity and skills to make this succeed is minimal.

In the short term, the current prison population are there for taking what they think they need, and being violent to those getting in the way. These behaviours are unlikely to change, and are quite possibly an effective survival strategy if TSHTF. It should be noted, however, that the drug addiction excuse may be removed by a dramatic reduction in supply.

The difference will be in society's ability to find and punish the culprits. If we turn in to a police state, the criminals are more likely to be caught. If we re-localise, as many think we will, then in the short term, particularly in urban environments, detection is likely to decrease.

Society's best hope is to re-localise in small - medium sustainable communities, which, in the medium/long term might (a) foster a community spirit likely to induce shame in the potential criminal and (b) make actual criminals immediately recognisable because everyone knows everyone else in the community.

YossarianUK wrote:
Society's best hope is to re-localise in small - medium sustainable communities, which, in the medium/long term might (a) foster a community spirit likely to induce shame in the potential criminal and (b) make actual criminals immediately recognisable because everyone knows everyone else in the community.

Which in away is how it more or less worked in pre-industrial societies. Even kids know not to miss behave too badly when they know that people around them know who they are and who their parents are. That however, will only work with those people who have some sense in their heads.

Oh dear, oh dear, this is a heavy one...

"Prisoners" and more specifically "punishment" are pretty new concepts in human history. A gift from the Abrahamitic religions in the middle east. Earlier on it was all about "restitution" - If you cause damage to someone, you have to compensate the victim in order to avoid revenge. OK, emperors and empires have always used various versions of force or fraud to get people to their armed forces, but it was not based on the abstract "punishment", more like "gotcha!"