new thread
This is regarding your opinion on coerced haircuts for convicted criminals in a prison (as opposed to jail).
It is my personal opinion that such a thing as forced haircuts in prison is an abomination. My reasoning is along the same lines I disagree with the death penalty...
If one single person is wrongfully executed, then America goes from some sort of twisted judge to a murderer...alas an ignorant one.
The same should apply to forced haircuts. How can we justify forced haircuts on an innocent man who was wrongfully convicted of a felony, forced to cut his work of 1+ years?
Granted, more often than not, people in prison are actually guilty. But make no mistake about it...someone out there has had this little operation wrongfully performed on them.
I agree with you so much that you should look at the messages on Mach-3 and LongHair HyperBoards by "A. Michelson" (that's me!) I have other info on Madoc that I can e-mail you.
Signed,
Alan "MAD @ MADOC" Michelson!
Alan,
Enough is enough. Stop harrassing me, stop posting about me. I have no interest in holding any further conversations with you. I have already told you this and have tried to ignore your continued attacks since then. You have been obsessing about me for too long and it has past the point of becoming annoying. Your behavior is uncalled for and wrong.
Your postings on the Mach 3 board were entirely inappropriate as they brought up points which only clouded the issue there and also served to attack me as well. At the least you left them more cofused and diminshed the points the rest of us were trying to make as well.
If you continue to harass me I will ask Victor and Billto take action to stop this.
Sincerely,
Madoc Pope
Enough already!!!
Madoc got the message, so I promise to stop harassing him!
Enough!
Well, then, read what Bill has to say about this, and have a Happy ThanksGiving.
And his message goes for you too, Madoc!
Paco,
Hello and good day. Thank you for asking me this and doing so in such an adult and rational way. I will try and answer you in the same manner. Let me start out by saying that I too am a Longhair. You can check my site's photos for the ample proof of this. I have also been a short hair and have even been a "no hair" at various times in my life. Before I started growing my hair out to its current length I shaved my head. I had long wanted to see what it looked and felt like. So I did it. My first two years of college were at a military school and the first year of that I was required to keep my hair so short that calling it "fuzz" would have been generous!
Over the years I kept my hair at generally the same length as allowed by social norms. Back East in the 80's that meant somewhat short. Once I landed here in San Diego in 1990 I got a crewcut because I needed a job and SD is conservative place. In the years that followed I tried to grow my hair out on more than one occasion but would always get laid off before it had gotten past that "in between" phase. As I needed to eat and pay my bills more than grow my hair out, I would cut it back shorter.
It has only been with my most recent job that I have felt I had the security to express myself fully by growing my hair out. Interestingly enough, the month before I was hired I had decided to bleach my crewcut out to blond and then, when that grew out at the roots, I shaved it all off. So, I started out at my current job with a completely shaved head. The contrast between then and now is wonderful. It has been a long time getting here but now I am very pleased to be among the ranks of Longhairs. Growing my hair out this long has been a dream of mine for many, many years and I am deeply happy to be able to realize it.
I tell you all of this to put my response to your questions in perspective. I have had experience on both sides of the hair length issue. I also tell you this to demonstrate that I am not some poser or wannabe! - MP
>This is regarding your opinion on coerced haircuts for convicted
>criminals in a prison (as opposed to jail).
>
>It is my personal opinion that such a thing as forced haircuts in
>prison is an abomination. My reasoning is along the same lines
>I disagree with the death penalty...
I too am opposed to the death penalty. Aside from thinking it completely wrong to kill people to show people that killing people is wrong, I also oppose the death penalty for several other reasons. One is that it requires absolute perfection in its determination and that is inherently impossible as it is administered by human beings who are inherently imperfect. Second is that it grants the state (i.e. the government in general) the power to kill its own citizens. As a citizen who is all too aware of the awesome power the state already has, I am deeply uncomfortable with giving it such power over our individual lives.
>If one single person is wrongfully executed, then America goes
>from some sort of twisted judge to a murderer...alas an ignorant one.
Agreed. There are several hundred Americans alive today only because they were exonerated, in some cases at almost the last possible moment, of their capital murder convictions. That alone should be enough to ban any further executions.
>The same should apply to forced haircuts. How can we justify forced
>haircuts on an innocent man who was wrongfully convicted of a felony,
>forced to cut his work of 1+ years?
Easily. Hair grows back. Life does not. Yes, it would be a deeply regrettable thing to force a man to cut his Longhair as part of his incarceration and then find out he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of. On the scale of things however, loss of his Longhair is far less damaging than the overall loss of his freedoms by being jailed. His hair will grow back, the loss of his life or the loss of the time he was jailed can not be replaced. That is an error which most states in this country do little to compensate. False convictions happen so rarely that they have drawn little attention from state governments and even less in compensation for the time stolen from the individuals so wrongly sentenced.
>Granted, more often than not, people in prison are actually guilty.
>But make no mistake about it...someone out there has had this little
>operation wrongfully performed on them.
I think we should all be deeply grateful about this. Our society is generally a just one and our law enforcement agencies generally execute their duties was a high degree of professionalism and mete out justice in an exceedingly accurate manner. Wrong convictions are extremely rare. Wrong capital crime convictions even more so.
That being the case, and given that we here sitting at home in front of our computer screens have little idea of what it is like to deal with actual inmates in an actual prison, then I am going to side with the prison authorities when they administer policies to insure the safety and security of themselves, the general public, and even the other inmates. Fairly and justly administered, such policies are within the rights of the prison authorities to administer.
Yes, having my hair length forcibly dictated by others would be a gross intrusion into my individual liberties and personal freedoms. If someone attempted to that to me out on the street or in the privacy of my own home it would be assault and it is they who would be jailed for it. Such a thing is nothing that we, as law abiding citizens, would tolerate for it is a violation of our freedoms and rights that we have earned by being law abiding citizens. By definition then, convicts do not enjoy the same rights and privileges and nor should they.
I am not saying that a prison inmate has no rights. Hardly. I am however, pointing that part of their punishment is the abridgement of some of those rights. On the scale of things, having their hair length dictated by others is far less of an abridgement of those rights than is the overall incarceration. If it ever came down to a choice between having their heads shaved and being able to walk freely through the land or keeping the locks but being imprisoned behind concrete walls and barbed wire fences guess which one these men would choose. Which would you choose?
So, I do not agree that forcible haircuts administered in a impartial manner by prison authorities is an unjust policy on their part. It enhances the security and safety of the prison staff, of the prisoners themselves, and of the general public. This makes it a perfectly justifiable and acceptable policy. The loss to the convicted individual may well be a deep one but it is temporary, of far less magnitude than his overall incarceration, and is yet another level of the lesson being forcibly imparted to him that he has failed in his attempt to be a law abiding citizen through his attacks on others and their property. Hopefully this will be a lesson well learned.
Madoc