CMV: It's gross to demand a higher security classification for prisoners as punishment. Especially for the press.

The prison system has many purposes, and one of the more controversial purposes is revenge. Many people incorrectly (and problematically) believe that prison just doesn't do enough revenge, and that we should rely on inmate-on-inmate violence to achieve adequate levels of revenge on prisoners. Inmate on inmate violence should never be an intentional part of a sentence, nor should deprivation of basic exercise. If for some reason that were an appropriate punishment, it should have to be explicitly part of a sentence, which it is not. Yet many people seem to believe that prisons with jogging tracks, lower security needs, and less violent inmates are somehow inadequate punishment for prisoners they dislike and derisively call those "Club Fed". In particular, I was grossed out to hear NPR this morning running a story that heavily implied a particular prisoner deserved a higher security classification not because she posed any sort of threat of escape or harm to others, but simply because the flaws in our prison system which are more evident in higher security prisons might be something she might "deserve", including the potential of violence from other inmates.

Anyway, this is messed up. If someone deserves to be beaten or executed for their crimes, that should be part of the sentence handed down. If not, then we should never be rooting for other inmates to arbitrarily give unpopular prisoners a thrashing or murder we didn't sentence them to. And especially the media ought to know better.