Isolation, mental illness and a call for legislation

I recently read an article by Scott Henson http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com, where he discusses solitary confinement and its negative effects for the prisoner as well as communities.  To be honest, I never really thought about possible consequences of this for society.  Like many people, I thought it’s a necessary punishment that must be used.  I thought this article was well written and informative. 

  It gave me insight on some ideas that I rarely ever hear about.  It claims segregation policies and practices are costing Americans a lot of money and are undermining public safety.  When inmates are put into solitary confinement, the conditions are so harsh that they can no longer function adequately in society.  The author states that many of these inmates are in fact innocent, and eventually are released from prison and begin their lives in society again.  I think it is crazy to think that such a harsh punishment is given to people who don’t fall into the more serious crimes, who are not in prison for life.  I agree completely with the author when he says, “because the conditions are so harsh, it should be used sparingly as the costs are high for offenders, taxpayers and public safety.”

  These people will return to our communities and live amongst us.  We don’t need to contribute to the number of mentally ill.   The author is not against solitary confinement, but rather using it carefully, as there are consequences for using such measures. Legislation currently has two bills that will look at administration segregation policies, that may hopefully find better solutions to solitary confinement.

 Overall, I thought the article was informative and well organized, I also liked the links he provided to give more background information on the subject.

Commentary on plastic bag ban

In the post Plastic Bag Ban plastic bag ban, the author does a good job of clearly making her argument on why she disagrees with the new ban on plastic ban. However, I disagree with her position because I think environmental protection is important, and this law is a simple, and effective in moving us in that direction.

 The post stated several reasons why the ban is a problem, such as it is a problem for peoples health and there is an increase in theft, but I think those issues have solutions that can be easily resolved and don’t necessarily call for a halt in the halt of plastic bags. 

Tamara was very informative in her facts about contamination from dirty reusable bags, but I believe people have the common sense to see a spill and clean it up.  Like everything else, people need to be conscious about germs and contamination.  We all know that washing our hands reduces our chances of illness, and that using good hygiene when cooking reduces our chances of food borne illnesses.  It shouldn’t be difficult to keep our reusable bags clean.  Also, it is not just food we are carrying.  All shopping is done with these bags, so that issue would not even arise unless it is food.  In that, I felt the post was not thorough. 

Secondly, the problem for businesses the author claims is more theft.  Businesses must rise to this occasion.  For the sake of striving for a better future, businesses could easily implement better loss prevention policies to alleviate this problem.  They should not rely on plastic bags to eliminate their theft. 

Overall, I thought this post was good, well organized and to the point.