Alternatives to Prison Summary

need of correction than the prisoner. The caring communities have unless to be built. from Instead of Prisons A Handbook for Abolitionists Why De iniquitousize? Abolitionists power drastically limiting the role of criminal law. We do this not because we deal to encourage certain behavior, but because we realize that criminal sanctions are not an effective way of dealing with social problems. There are farthest too many laws on the books. It would be prohibitively expensive to lend oneself them all. This results in unjust and arbitrary law enforcement. Powerless persons are enwrapped while more powerful persons go free.People of colour, first nations and ugly people bear the brunt of unequal law enforcement. The crimes intimately frequently considered for decriminalisation are those which are victimless. offenses that do not result in anyones timber that she has been injured so as to impel himher to bring the offense to the financial aid of the authorities . behaviour not i njurious to others but made criminal by statutes based on moral standards which disapprove of certain forms of behaviour while ignoring others that are comparable. A system bursting at its seams is perhaps the most visible effect of overcriminalization.Overcriminalization encourages the wide use of discretionary power in law enforcement. Because there is no complainant, police resort to questionable inwardness of enforcement. Investigative techniques used to gather evidence are often degenerate and sometimes illegal. These include entrapment, use of informers, wiretapping and use of constitutional rights such as illegal search and seizure, invasion of the right to privacy and self-incrimination. from Instead of Prisons Alternatives to incarceration Imprisonment should be a last resort. The presumption should be against its use. beforehand any offender is incarcerated, the prosecution should bear the burden of proving in an evidentiary hearing that no other alternative exists. An equal burden should be required for the denial or revocation of good time, probation and parole, which actually are only other ways of imposing imprisonment We should except reduce our excessive reliance on prisons by making extensive use of alternatives to imprisonment, such as fines, restitution, and other probationary methods, which could at least as effectively meet societys need for legal sanctions.However, such alternatives essential be made available to all people who have committed similar offenses, so as not to become a essence for the more affluent to buy their way out of prison. And where some salmagundi of confinement seems necessary, halfway houses, community centres, group homes intermittent sentences, and other center of keeping offenders within the community should be preferred to prison. from A platform for Prison Reform