We lock up prisoners for X years's, they turn out to be more skilled criminals!?!@#$#$%#@!$%# Now we will lock them up and make them write a book! The sentence will be in copy's soled. You are now sentenced to 1 000 000 C.S. The brilliant part is in the translating the years's into C.S. using the avarage sails/Year a head.-- postseti, Jul 10 2002 Baked. We did that in the UK. Geoffrey Archer. It's awful. A huge mistake. No, no, no.-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 - a book composed of one sentence will be difficult to read --- po, Jul 10 2002 I think you'll find a surprising number of prisoners are functionally illiterate.-- pottedstu, Jul 10 2002 pottedstu: That's certainly true for Lord Archer ...-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 As a certain 'baker once said, "If you have to tell people your idea is good, it isn't."-- [ sctld ], Jul 10 2002 oke its bad, but criminals will buy there way out of prison anyway, now they can ad to the culture, write the first "how i was fored to wrte" book. Try to get it published. If a lot of prisoners are functionally illiterate your book wil sell just fine, and they can turn there 1 year into 10 if they want to.-- postseti, Jul 10 2002 Can I point out a historical precedent which makes me think this is worse than just a bad idea ? To wit, the fact that one Adolf Hitler wrote his book "Mein Kampf" while in prison. People like that should not be encouraged. The statistics are in favour of producing more Adolf Hitlers than Nelson Mandelas.-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 well you can burn there notes if you don't like them?-- postseti, Jul 10 2002 Who gets the profits from the book sales?-- missfire, Jul 10 2002 How about locking up criminals and forcing them to read Jeffrey (J not G) Archer novels? That'd be a real deterrent. Other candidates for force-reading....? B-T-W 8/7, I seem to remember that John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress whilst in Bedford Prison.-- TwoSheds, Jul 10 2002 Oscar Wilde wrote 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' while in some prison or other.-- angel, Jul 10 2002 TwoSheds: Watch out - that comes under the category of "cruel and unusual punishment" - try to get into a cave before Waugs and UnaBubba vector in the air strike ....
I am passably well read, and I don't rate Pilgrim's Progress specially highly, compared to the works of his contemporary English authors. That is a purely personal view, however.
angel: Wormwood Scrubs ? Pentonville ? Old Kent Road ? The Strand ? Liverpool Street Station ? Monument for Bank ? Mornington Crescent ? Could be any one of them.
I believe a couple of classical authors also produced works of literary merit while in prison, although in their case it may have been more like house arrest. I remain to be convinced that this is a good idea, uless it helps teach literary skills to those who are otherwise illiterate.-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 The Marquis de Sade wrote the 120 Days of Sodom in jail. I would count this as an argument against, though I guess others might differ.-- pottedstu, Jul 10 2002 pottedstu: Are you sure it was actually jail ? I though he ended up in an insane asylum. But he may have been imprisoned at some point, I'm not sure. I will check his biography via the Web.
I think it would count as an Against. Your De Sade cancels out angel's Bunyan. What next - "imprisoned author literary Snap" ?-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 Hey, he's not *my* Bunyan.-- angel, Jul 10 2002 That will disapoint Bunyan, I'm sure he thought he was on the side of the 'angels'!-- pfperry, Jul 10 2002 angel: Don't worry. You can get special ointment for your Bunyan from Dr. Scholl. It might turn out to have angelgesic properties ....
I'll see your Bunyan, and raise you a Solzhenitsyn.-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 "Criminals will buy their way out of prison anyway."
Say what? Yeah, there's a disparity in conviction rates between those that can afford really good counsel and those who rely on public defenders, and there's the concept of bail, but I've never heard of money overturning a conviction.-- bookworm, Jul 10 2002 bookworm: I think the trick seems to be to commit crimes so big that they aren't really crimes any more. Hitting an old lady and taking her pension money is crime. Shredding documents and massive fradulent false accounting seems to be what passes for "good business practice". Bombing 20 million people and taking their country is geopolitics.
Ernest Saunders ? Remember him ?-- 8th of 7, Jul 10 2002 Wasn't he the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy?-- -alx, Jul 10 2002 Ah, yes. Ernest Saunders and his miraculous recovery from Alzheimers after his release from jail on grounds of ill-health, I believe. I've always thought Mr Saunders's unprecedented recuperative powers demand further investigation. Of course with such an unusual specimen, one would probably wish him to be alive and conscious in order to better observe his unique brain functions during the dissection. Think of the benefits to humanity.-- Guy Fox, Jul 10 2002 <I think you'll find a surprising number of prisoners are functionally illiterate.> So, it appears, are a number of Halfbakers.-- mrthingy, Jul 10 2002 Hm. I wonder what percentage of the HB are actually convicts.-- DrCurry, Jul 10 2002 and the nature of their crime. and how many of the HB actually escaped justice? (nearly said - us, whoops)-- po, Jul 10 2002 The peopel who didn't annotate, but normaly do?-- postseti, Jul 12 2002 You no longer need to be afraid of prison, stimulate criminals to go there to be happy, make it a walhala for not a hell to rot away in. Roten peopel stink, let them grow into enjoying life in a safe distant place. ok?-- postseti, Jul 19 2002 Yeah, I remember Ernest Saunders.. he was the only one of a bunch of crooks that didn't go to the right English public School & he was the only one found guilty. A warning to anyone in Europe who wants to mix it with the heavy mob in the City. BTW Alan Bond here in Oz had a total Alzheimer's recovery too.-- pfperry, Jul 20 2002 Imagion having fans vistit, friends can thel that there doing a great job for the first time in there life. It's not so bad going to prison this way they don't bother anyone for jears. Add to life or stay away.-- postseti, Jul 22 2002 'Mein Kampf' rings a bell. By the way, if your prisoner has issues to work out, writing them down in a book might not be a good idea. Why, do you ask? 'Killed inmate. Ate him,' might not sell well. By the way, this would be a bad thing if they described the murder in such detail it emotionally scars readers.-- Shadow777, Feb 28 2003 That's how Don Quixote and the New Testament came about. [+]-- quantum_flux, Dec 30 2007 // New Testament //
Thus bringing about any number of schisms, pogroms, crusades, civil wars, etc.
The case for the Persecution rests, M'Lud.-- 8th of 7, Dec 30 2007 Now if we made prisoners read each other's books, that would surely be the ultimate torture!-- quantum_flux, Jan 01 2008 //Don Quixote and the New Testament//
I don't think I've read that sequel, but now I'm curious.-- pertinax, Jan 01 2008 It's the latest from J K Rowling ....-- 8th of 7, Jan 01 2008 random, halfbakery