Man refuses to leave jail; cited for trespassing and sent back to prison | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News

Man refuses to leave jail; cited for trespassing and sent back to prison | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News:

I want to comment on this and talk about a concept that doesn't makes much sense to me with regards to punishment.

According to this article, a man was arrested after being cited for trespassing because he refused to leave jail.  Let's think about this idea, the man doesn't want to leave jail, so he stays, and he is arrested and sent to jail.  That's the jist.

Jail, in our society, in most societies, is supposed to be negative.  Jail is supposed to be a punishment for everyone.  The reality is, though, that jail may be the only roof over someone's head.  One of our most important needs according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs is shelter/warmth.

I don't know anything about this man, but he clearly did not see jail as a punishment.  He saw it as a positive reinforcement.

I have made the comment in the past, but I really want to say this: Not all students think the same way, not all students have the same things that are punishing to them (that make their behavior stop) or positively reinforcing to them (that make their behavior happen more).

Now we will move into the educational aspect of this topic.  I saw, during my student teaching placement, the behavior of students being suspended for skipping school.  Let's think about this, student skips school for the reason that they probably don't want to go to school.  The school, as a "punishment" to the student suspends that student.  What occurs when you suspend a student?  The student doesn't have to go to school.  So, by skipping school, we are giving them more days to skip school (aka suspension).

Is this behavior on our part of suspending students who skip school really punishing the behavior?  Or are we reinforcing the behavior of skipping by suspending a student?

Here is what I propose, let's figure out a proper consequence, one that promotes a good behavior that does the same function.  Instead of suspending students for skipping, let's give them a Friday off for good behavior if they come to school for two weeks in a row.

I feel like that may be met with consternated "No, that's not right.  That's not fair to other students."  I agree that it isn't fair to other students with the typical definition of fair, which is equal to the definition of equal.  Our society has given the name fair a definition of, roughly, "All students get the same thing."  Fairness, in reality, is equity, every student and person gets what they need, not what everyone else gets.

One of my professors from college, when anyone would bring up that it didn't seem fair would bring up an excellent point.  "I wear glasses, is that unfair?  Because you don't wear glasses."  To which the college student would usually respond, "Well, no, because you need them."  "Exactly, fairness is about need, not about equality."