In the News (SOT): “Fifty-five judges in Belgium chose to spend a special weekend: they voluntarily locked themselves in a prison in the Brussels region to see what life is like for a prisoner, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent van Quinkenborn said in a statement.

“‘Judges obviously know what it’s like to be inside a prison, but experiencing this experience offers them a unique opportunity, which can help them impose sentences with full awareness,’ the minister continued.

“They will follow the prisoners’ daily schedule, will not be allowed to use mobile phones, will follow the same diet and have the same responsibilities as the prisoners.”

Question: In principle, prisons in Europe are somewhat different. For example, in 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the country to pay five thousand euros to twenty-five prisoners who complained of violation of hygiene rules and lack of physical activity.

So, it is clear what kind of prisons these are. But how do you like the fact that prosecutors and judges went to prison, to see what conditions prisoners are in?

Answer: That’s great! I would let all of them through such institutions. People need to know what they are doing with prisoners, where they are being imprisoned, and whether prisoners have any opportunities to improve.

Question: How can this affect the correct sentencing? For example, the judge felt that it was terrible for him. What will be his next steps?

Answer: The next step will be to let them sit and figure out who felt what and who thinks what needs to be corrected. They have to make a prison so that people who have served a certain time in it, each of their terms in appropriate conditions and for appropriate offenses, would come out of there corrected. Otherwise, what is prison for?

Question: Why has everything changed so much in our lives: prisons have changed, judges have changed? Why did such a coup happen? You are now talking about the ideal…

Answer: No. I’m talking about what should be, but never was, because people don’t care. Previously, they just dragged a man to the block, chopped off his head and that’s it. And by doing so, they were ridding the world of him.

Comment: Or they were put in terrible conditions, in some pits or shackles, and so on. There was such evil and hatred all the time. Imprison him!

My Response: Yes, in order to eradicate them.

Question: What is it? Why is there no desire in a person to “fix” so that he goes through this process of correction?

Answer: What for? Do we need another person in society? It is better to isolate him, to send him somewhere.

Question: So, this nature acts in a person, to ruin, to putrefy?

Answer: Yes. Get rid of the unnecessary, as it seems to them, elements.

Question: What can be done to make something else triumph, so that some spark of love arises in a person?

Answer: No, our world is absolutely not striving for this. Therefore, why should we make some special, correct people out of prisoners? What does “the correct people” mean for our world?

Question: How can we turn the situation around?

Answer: Nowhere, in any country in the world today, are correctional institutions engaged in correcting people. At best, they are organized for some kind of work, and they work eight or ten hours a day. But this is good, it somehow still straightens them a little.

Question: But how should the world change in order for all this to change?

Answer: We need to change ourselves! We need to understand that we are prisoners in this world and must correct ourselves!

And we have to work on our correctional work that is internal, correcting ourselves. And then we can begin to correct the world around us.

Question: Which means, only as a result of correcting myself will I be able to look at the other correctly and direct him to correction, and not ruin him?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: It’s a long way to go.

My Response: I don’t think it’s long. It all depends on awareness.

Question: If there is awareness, can it happen quickly?

Answer: By itself, no. You just have to talk about it and explain a lot.

Question: But did these prosecutors and judges do the right thing by deciding to be imprisoned themselves?

Answer: Yes. In some ways, they will straighten up a little, within the framework of our world.

Question: So they can have some kind of minimal correction of their own?

Answer: Absolutely.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/22/22

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