Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

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The object is for the prison guards to have a way control dangerous or non-compliant prisoners. The prison staff do not have a stake in what happens outside of the prison.

It seems like many or most Americans believe that the proper mandate of justice system should only include punishment because:

1) rehabilitation is immoral because it would tend to reward and promote wrong doing

2) prisoners are morally inferior and therefore rehabilitation will be ineffective

3) moral and orderly persons needn't fear the justice system because they won't break the law and therefore

4) arguments for reform must be rooted in concern for the welfare of morally inferior persons, because reform can have no other utility

I have heard these things from many people I know, and apparently most of us voted for the system we have. Also, I think we really enjoy punishing people, even if it's abstract, it's very satisfying to imagine dominating and tormenting people we don't like, and along with appeals to fear, this is an excellent way to appeal politically to citizens in order to forward one's interests.

I really can't imagine that we will stop doing this as long as only a minority of people are concerned about being imprisoned themselves.

Some other perspectives on "rehabilitation": it's easy to associate that word with treatments like Anders Breivik's, which to many (most?) Americans seems insane and they feel he should just be shot. A variant of 2 is that "rehabilitation" in a prison setting makes no sense not because of moral failings but because the methods just make it more likely the prisoner is institutionalized instead. This is the case with many mentally ill people who are stable, on medication, etc., but in efforts beyond that to "rehabilitate" by e.g. giving them housing near the facilities or part-time (less than 10 hours a week) work (with 30% of all income they take unless you can move out) they end up locking them in with dependence. Another variant of 2, people for the most part are either "habilitated" already or not before prison and after prison. Many types of crimes that result in prison sentences aren't really indicative of a person in need of "rehabilitation", just a person that made a mistake (like submitting too much to vices like greed). The time in prison acts as a deterrent to help bolster weak wills, but if those who end up there anyway change at all it will only be from forced introspection as their normal life falls away for a while. They don't need much prison time or "rehabilitation", just incentive not to do what they did again. And on the other side, there's the feeling that people like Breivik could never be "rehabilitated" and in fact weren't "habilitated" to begin with. Better to shoot those people, or, failing that, at least make their lifetime in prison unenjoyable.

I think you can get people to agree to other mandates of the justice system beyond pure punishment as deterrent if your other mandate is more specific, detailed, and limited than "rehabilitation". For instance, lowering remission rates, or keeping employment rates pre and post prison similar...

A blurb I recall: Upwards of 90% of people on death row have such severe head injuries that you can find evidence of it with an x-ray if there are no medical records.

For some people, "rehabilitation" that does not involve serious medical intervention not currently possible is just not going to solve the problem. No amount of disincentives or will power or whatever is going to help someone behave better if they are literally brain damaged.

> The object is for the prison guards to have a way control dangerous or non-compliant prisoners.

Do you really believe that only those types of prisoners end up in solitary confinement?

...or that confining people in solitary makes them less dangerous?

Even on the premise that it is acceptable as a last resort for violent inmates, the way it's currently used fails to meet that bar.

I totally agree.

No, of course not. I said that was the purpose intended by the guards. It costs them little to use solitary confinement liberally, so they do. If someone is inconvenient or troublesome, or just pisses them off, away they go.

I also think that it's well evidenced that solitary makes people go completely insane, and that the guard doesn't care very much what happens to them if they ever get out of prison.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say here is that I think what we're doing is harmful, but there seems to be little incentive for empowered parties to change it.

If you believe that only morally compromised people end up in prison, then you might believe this too.

Belief in a Just World creates an unjust one.

Dangerous prisoners can be physically isolated from others with bars, but they can be left to talk to others through the bars rather than cutting them off socially.

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