Hello:
The difference is thus: If you're a guard, in one scenario, your role is to HOUSE, FEED, and PROTECT your charges.. In the other, your role is to make it as MISERABLE as you can..
excon
"As punishment" and/or "for punishment" do not make any point here.
It means the same thing.
If you are trying to make a case for rotten prison guards, that is not the clear way to pose the question.
We go to jail as punishment AND for punishment. EXACTLY.
Prison guards are a whole separate problem. Many of them need to be in prison themselves. Most of them are miserable bullies, upset at their own lives and taking it out on society's victims. It is hard to fathom any reason why anyone would volunteer to be in this environment as a career choice. 
By "Miserable", do you mean taking away Cable TV and closing the weight room ???
Hello t:
Can you show me in ANY criminal law where the punishment is something OTHER than time and/or money. If they said time, money, and MISERY, I could understand your position.. But, they don't.
excon
Hello again, C:
If you're a believer that our prisons are country clubs, then I'll never convince you they aren't.
excon
A guard should not in anyway be "Punishing" a prisoner. Their role is to enforce the rules of the "House".
Being incarcerated and losing your freedom & liberties IS the punishment.
The elephant in the room however is that the prison system in the US is a money making venture for the judicial system.
Agreed, Jak. There are a couple of other elephants in the room, though. Corporations profiting from prison labor and the increasing number of for-profit prisons.
https://www.popularresistance.org/identifying-businesses-that-profit-from-prison-labor/
Again... for profit. Why are your tax $ being used to house a person who possessed a joint?
The US penal system is out of control. We need to reform the entire system.
Let me ask you..do you think that if the US prisons were privatized, you would be paying less Taxes?
Exactly
In Michigan such things are paid for by the Prisoner Benefit Fund. The PBF if funded through a surcharge on purchases made by prisoners. Their money comes mostly from family/friends, though some do have jobs where they are paid between one and a few dollars per day.
http://markmaynard.com/2011/05/what-its-really-like-in-michigans-prisons/
It also depends if you think they go to prison to rehabilitate or to punish. I like to believe people can change and prison should be a step to change and improvement and not a way to make you a even more miserable human.
Both. They're punished for their crimes and jail is their punishment.
I don't think it's a piece of cake for guards or inmates actually.
From my understanding ex, the guards feel like they're in prison too and it ain't much fun for them either. I don't think it's the guards that make it miserable but rather the other inmates beating you up, stabbing you, or having their way with you that would be the miserableness.
Hello dog:
So, you don't think the guards could STOP that stuff if they wanted to??
excon
It happenes all the time...
Yes, prisoners are paid, how much depends on where they are incarcerated. Private prisons generally pay the least, and as of the writing of the linked article below (2008), that was as little as 17 cents per hour. That was the rate paid for some jobs in the mid-90s in Michigan's state-run prisons. The prisons, whether public or private, also benefit by outsourcing their prisoners, and judging by the fact that private prisons pay much less, they profit much more.
Don't misunderstand me, I am a proponent of prisoners being able to work. The problem I have with private companies profiting from prison labor, while so many are un/underemployed in this country is two-fold. First, it amounts to taxpayers subsidizing privately-owned corporate profits. Secondly, prisons, private prisons in particular, benefit from artificially high prison populations. That is accomplished in two ways, by keeping people in prison longer (cancelling good time, bad reports to the parole board), and by lobbying for more laws, harsher sentencing, and mandatory minimums. I linked a story on the prison lobbying industry above.
I am generally in favor of privatizing much of what our government does, I oppose the privatization of prisons, however. Prisons should not be a profit-making venture. Private prisons contract for a set occupancy rate for a set time period. This, too, creates an artificially high prison population.
With less than 5% of the world population, we incarcerate somewhere between 20 and 25% of the prisoners worldwide, more than any other country at 2.2+ million. This is despite the fact that overall crime as well as violent crime is down over the past several decades, both in raw numbers and per capita. (I have posted those numbers and links on several posts, but if you want, I will post them here, too.)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-stat...
http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-to...
