Hang on - these are people who've paid their own money to purchase something, which has been taken away from them because it's been determined that the purpose for which they're using it is inappropriate. Note that; inappropriate, NOT illegal, since watching porn is not illegal in itself. Now the prison has a perfect right to enforce the ban on their watching porn, but confiscating their PS2, which they legally acquired and paid for, without giving them the value of that purchase would be manifestly unjust. It would be possible to enforce a porn ban through regular cell inspections and confiscation of pornographic material (along with loss of privileges for those found in possession of it). The prison has elected to go beyond what is strictly necessary by confiscating the consoles permanently - not even for the duration of the sentence, but permanently. Consequently, they should pay the cost attendant upon that decision.
Oh, and the price that you can get a PS2 “on the internet” for is wholly irrelevant; that's not what they paid for them. If someone trashed your stereo that you paid £500 for, would you think it was fair if they said “well, I'm only going to give you £150, cause I saw one on eBay for that”? You'd want the value of your purchase back.
you forget Nicho, prisoners are second class citizens, and should go to jail for ever because justice is really about revenge and knee jerk reactions. Prisons are paradise camps, etc etc
:-b
i'm sorry but i'm sure people were supposed to be sent to prison as punishment for crimes commited?! Why the hell should they have access to a playstation in the first place. Beggers belief to be honest.
That's the point; prisoners are sent to prison as their punishment, not to be punished. Their punishment is their deprivation of liberty. Within the prison system, rewards and their withdrawal are a useful tool - behave yourself, keep your nose clean, you can earn privileges; act up, and we'll take them away. In this case, one of the privileges was access to a PS2, and that access could be quite reasonably withdrawn for misconduct - but the prisoners (or more likely their families) still had to purchase the equipment in question.
Depriving someone of access to something that they own is a lot different from taking ownership of it from them (the latter being what the prison has done). The prison could have carried out cell searches for porn (they already do this for drugs, weapons and other banned items, so it'd just be adding another item to the list), or they could have confiscated the consoles for the duration of the sentence and given them back upon release with their other personal effects. What they've done is to effectively take ownership from the prisoner of something that they've bought (or their families have bought), because that's the way they've chosen to enforce the “no porn” rule. Under those circumstances, refunding the purchase price seems equitable to me.
Another point is that the money will probably be refunded to the purchaser, who in this case is likely to be the prisoner's family. The prisoner won't get the money, their family will, and that also seems fair to me.
