Motion：This House Would Only Use Prison for Violent Offenders

监狱应仅适用于暴力犯罪

关键词：only, violent offenders, prison.

Gov Case（正方）:

1. Status Quo:

In China (or USA, the Netherlands, and many others.), violent offenders and non-violent offenders are incarcerated indiscriminately and prisons are overcrowded (resources are stretched, food shortage, labor shortage,etc)and causing problems.

2. Problem:

Prison is failing its main purpose of protection and rehabilitation due to the overcrowding.

3. Stance:

To reserve the use of detention in prison as a sentence for violent offenders only so as to better protect the people outside and inside the prison, and to better rehabilitate.

4. Stance:

1)      The purpose/function of prison as it relates to the aims of the justice system.The nature of violent crime, and how prison is effective for violent offenders but not for other criminal types.Why violent crime is unique and should be treated differently. How incarcerating indiscriminately is causing problems.

2)      Why these problems cannot be effectively solved within the prison, e.g. through prison management.

3)      How prison is failing its purpose due to those problems? Why reserving the use of prison only for violent offenders can solve the problems and restore the function of prison. And why there are better, more effective punishments for non-violent offenders.

5. Arguments: (to be further developed)

1)    The purpose/function of prison as it relates to the aims of the justice system. These being: protection, deterrent, punishment, and rehabilitation. Deterrent, punishment, and rehabilitation are serving the wider aim of justice, i.e. restoring the order and protecting people and the society as a whole.

2)    The nature of violent crime: it poses the biggest or the most fundamental threat to society, in that violence or the threat of it directly attacks people’s feeling of physical security, harming the basic order of the society. Incarceration of violent offenders can protect the people outside the prison.

3)    Locking up the non-violent offenders together with the violent offenders constitutes one of the major reasons for non-violent offenders re-offending at a more serious level. Non-violent offenders can be better rehabilitated outside the prison.

4)    Better rehabilitation and protection cannot be achieved through prison management, in that better management requires more from the limited resources. Even if prison management can help deal with the problems…(it should result in a tradeoff between this new policy and better prison management)

宏辞论道，纵横天下

思辨精英：china_debate