Flight Pundit

Michael got me to change my mind about the death penalty a while ago…I excepted his views on this with the idea that criminals should get really tough and rough sentences- no white glove treatment…no easy time in prison. Over in the Netherlands, where it’s legal to kill your child if he/she is born with a disablity, they are opening a state of the art prison. Inmates will enjoy freedoms they have outside prison walls. They claim this is progressive, and in a way I guess it is. But it sure wouldn’t feel like a punishment to anyone contemplating a crime now would it?

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A high-tech prison is opening this week where inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software.

Emotion-recognition software? Do they have these monitors for the children who are euthanized every year?

Authorities are convinced the jail in Lelystad — quickly dubbed “the Big Brother Prison” by the local press — represents the future of correctional facilities: cheap and efficient, without coddling criminals or violating their fundamental rights.

What fundamental rights?? Oh this is Europe. Where doing time for a crime isn’t such a bad thing. For many criminals it’s a step up in the world. They would live a better life at this facility.

Detainees will be kept in six-man dormitory cells. They will do their own cooking, washing and organize their own daytime schedules via a touch-screen monitor at the foot of their beds.

“We hesitate to compare it to a youth hostel because the biggest part of being punished is that you’ve lost your freedom,” Justice Ministry spokesman Hans Janssens said.

Prisoners have limited choices for their activities — electives include drug education classes and exercise — and they are locked in their cells at night.

This isn’t so bad. It pays to commit crimes in the Netherlands. Lost freedoms? I say- allow them nothing, no choices, no schedules, a regimented life with few breaks and lots of hard labor. At the very least. This is white glove treatment if I ever saw it.

Pieter Vleeming of the European Organization for the Protection of Prisoner’s Rights said prisoners should be given more opportunity for self-improvement and job training, though he generally gave the prison positive marks.

(rolling my eyes) An organization to protect prisoner rights? OK I get it. The rights of those who commit crimes leads to these ultra modern, pansy ass *prison centers* where inmates do have it made. Before we know it here in America, civil rights groups will be demanding we model our own systems after this.

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