Should prison inmates be allowed to watch tv ?

tommysgirl

Wait just a minute... They are locked up in a cement walled prison for killing/maiming/raping etc someone. Well within these cement walls, how is the tv reception? What? No reception? How can they watch tv? WHAT? CABLE? Wait just a damn minute, they get free cable for committing a major crime & I have to pay for it because I am an upstanding citizen? What is wrong with this country? NO THEY should NOT have tv/cable/computers or anything that they can derive enjoyment from. It's just WRONG! They should sit & rot in their cells. They had their entertainment when they were free persons.

Life is good

Nothing electronic at all. One newspaper a week will tell them everything they need to know.

As for riots. Give the guards better guns.

We have become a society where bad behaviour and failure are rewarded. And we just keep pyssing money away in the process. It is high time that we made people aware of the fact that good, honest, hardworking taxpayers are sick and tired of seeing the wrong people benefit from their labours.

Cmak

i think they should
depending on behavior

LMAO

i think it should depend on the crime commeted

Logic316

No.
If they want to keep up with the outside world, newspapers are good enough.

Jesse B

Well, if your only talking convicted murderers and rapists then you would need to seperate them from the other prisoners who are in there for property offenses and lessor crimes against person offenses. If you do that, then cool.

The reality is, prisons have a mixture of pure evil and some folks who really do intend to fix their life. Eventually most convicts return to the streets and we have to deal with them so we really want to be careful about how much punishment they recieve verses attempts at rehabilitation. If prisons housed only those who would never live in society or down the street from me I would have no problem with super harsh conditions. The truth is, of the prisoners in there today, some will be your neighbors in the future. I sure would like to have one that was treated a little humanely and perhaps educated enough to hold a job and consider an alternative to crime... but thats just me

socalxbabe

i think they shouldn't.
jail is jail, not vacation.
i agree with you, stay in the cell, and think about the crap you did. it's their fault they're there!!

if you want to watch TV, don't commit crimes! it's that easy!

911Kimberly

TV keeps the peace in prison. I agree they should have it but they should be restricted to certain channels. Educational and news should be it. No prime time comedies, no football games, no movie of the week, etc. Someone else mentioned that there are a select few that actually do want to better themselves. Who those are vs. the ones that don't can sometimes be hard to determine, but yet they exist. They made a mistake yet they deserve a chance to make things right. It would be much harder for that to happen if they had no contact with reality and what is going on in the world. Like I said, educational and news is it.

mimi

I don't think watching TV is really that bad for the inmates in the evening when they have put in a days work for the cost of incarcerating them.They should all have to work if they want to eat and have some luxuries in prison.We have made it almost like a vacation.They use to have to work the land or pick up trash or do something constructive instead of just sit around and wait for their next meal.

8***L

Do research on prisons in China.

If they get a pad to sleep on and food, they are fortunate.

We spend too much on our prisoners.

Mack B

You don't KNOW congress passed a LAW requiring Federal Prison to PROVIDE inmates with cable TV? They tried to take it away in '95, but got shot down because of this law. They DID take away R-rated movies and HBO / Spotlight movie channels. They were forced to maintain minimum or basic channels. Zimmer tried hard to make it REAL PRISON...read press releases....

http://www.strengthtech.com/correct/laws/federal/luxurypr.htm#feb9

http://www.fedcure.org/documents/S672_000.pdf (See section 3 - b.5)

HATE 2 PAY

no no they don't need tv i agree but they ae human and they will go insane if there is no interactions with other people,i think they should be on a chain gang all day long guarded by guards with shotguns. let them work off there sentence

Heisenberg

around 1990 or so, convicts in the Riverhead, NY prison went on strike for full cable tv. they won.

i didnt have any form of cable tv until 1998 yet my tax dollars paid for people who are supposed to be punished, paid for them to watch HBO.

no, prison is a punishment. along with not having tv, they should not be allowed to body build.

there's a sheriff in CO or some state near there who has the right idea about a prison. he's required to have full cable tv service run to the prison but, he blocks out all channels except for disney and the weather channel.

Brigid McSomeone

Watching T.V. helps to keep them from rioting.

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