Turn Prisons into Colleges
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access.
In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track.
Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living.
So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism.
Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.
Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. If he could have full access to a computer he would have likely continued to learn and build things. Instead we dump him with the rest of the dregs of society together into a broken system who's main role is retribution, which IMO is a human instinct we should fight against not codify.
It seems a lot like the public school system in it's general lack of differentiation in regards to inputs(prisoners). In terms of a learning system, it's diverged.
Why not? He killed one already for no good reason. His high IQ just means he has less of an excuse. It doesn't make him a better person.
That was not my point. My point was the system does not differentiate among people.
You seriously think that he wouldn't kill again if his next wife or lover "betrayed him" in his mind? If you feel that way, why don't we just give his children a pass to murder him because he took their mother from them?
>If he could have full access to a computer he would have likely continued to learn and build things. Instead we dump him with the rest of the dregs of society
He murdered his wife, a crime to which he freely plead guilty. He is the dregs of society.
You’re really one for the common man, huh?
In all seriousness though, whether or not Reisner would be a productive member of society if released, isn’t the right thing to do to focus first on identifying and freeing people on death row who are wrongfully convicted? And, if we are speaking of justice, nonviolent offenders in prison because of draconian drug laws? And then after that get around to violent offenders whose chance of recidivism is low?
He murdered his wife, hid the body, lied and denied it vigorously in court, was found guilty of premeditated (first degree) murder, and bargained it down to second degree murder charges by showing the police where he buried her body. I think a life sentence is reasonable for that.
The guy’s a delusional moron…
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Time_in_prison
“In July 2012, a jury awarded Reiser's children $60 million against their father for the death of Nina Reiser. Reiser acted as his own attorney during the trial and tried to argue that he killed his wife to protect their children.”
It’s unclear that a parole board will find him to be a very sympathetic character.
Peers matter. If you stick a dumb kid who screwed up in a prison full of hardened career criminals, you're likely going to get a career criminal. Surround him with other dumb kids trying to figure out how to recover from their mistakes and something different can happen. A separate prison college serves this purpose well too.
I'd be happy to be involved in such a project.
Maybe your point is valid for some state prisons, but in my experience it is not that true.
During my state incarceration in Alaska, the education directors had me develop and teach computer classes. There were waiting lists of inmates who wanted to take them. I taught basic computer knowledge (hardware and operating systems), Office program usage (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access), and VB.NET programming.
I tried to get the University of Alaska to allow me to take some courses by correspondence, but they were not interested. All I could do was get one of the math professors to send me a few dated textbooks.
In the federal prison system, there were Vocational Training classes that were always full. I took the V.T. Drafting course in one and then tutored it. That class taught 4 months of board drafting and then 6 months of AutoCAD. It had about 45 students enrolled all the time. Sadly, I discovered on release that drafting is no longer a profession due to the new modelling packages that enable engineers to lay out their drawings nearly instantly. However, I can still read blueprints, and can whip one up in a jiffy when a customer needs one for a shed they want to buy from me.
There were no options for college classes in the federal system without having some wealth to pay for them.
This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time.
But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example.
But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought
Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.
If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.
Destigmatizing a criminal record when it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter) would help a lot, but the government doesn't seem too interested in helping out with that (though I hope the current low unemployment rates help in this regard). Prison education programs would also help. If the government is going to lock people in little boxes with other criminals, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, and seriously contend the point of it is to reduce recidivism, they need to be doing this sort of education at the very least.
Some do. Perhaps the most famous example is Charles Manson who said he'd been in prison for so much of his life that it was his home.
Sorry I forget the source, but one longtime prisoner said that after release, it's like he was still in jail, because after being imprisoned, the real prison is in your mind.
Incarceration becomes a mindset.
With three strikes laws locking people up for life for relatively minor third offences, this should give us pause.
Putting these examples aside, there is a lot of evidence that punishment simply does not work.
For example many states have the death penalty for capital crimes, sometimes by the medievally brutal electric chair[1], and still people continue to commit murder.
[1] Like burning at the stake with all the modern conveniences.
There is a lot of research on punishment showing that it only works to increase the motivation to not get caught. It in no way influences the reasons behind criminal/illegal behavior. Otherwise no one would ever get a second parking or speeding ticket or a dui.
Having prisons be run as colleges is better for society than having prisons run as plantations.
In 2018, high quality online education is close to free. Coursera, edux, udemy are just some of the examples.
But I believe the argument is that the way prison/punishment is structured right now makes reintegration into society difficult, and as a result is ineffective.
Some of it goes against your instincts, but the results speak for themselves.
But the opposite is true for most re offending criminals. Their freedom from the cage thrusts them into another cage. There is no point in not committing crime, especially if you are part of a gang. The gang affords you power and a kind of familial bond to other people.
that is true for 0% of Americans in prison
> It has been thought that the purpose of punishment is to reform the criminal; that it is to deter the criminal and others from committing similar crimes; and that it is retribution. Few would now maintain that the first of these purposes was the only one. If it were, every prisoner should be released as soon as it appears clear that he will never repeat his offence, and if he is incurable he should not be punished at all. Of course it would be hard to reconcile the punishment of death with this doctrine.
> The main struggle lies between the other two. On the one side is the notion that there is a mystic bond between wrong and punishment; on the other, that the infliction of pain is only a means to an end. Hegel, one of the great expounders of the former view, puts it, in his quasi mathematical form, that, wrong being the negation of right, punishment is the negation of that negation, or retribution. Thus the punishment must be equal, in the sense of proportionate to the crime, because its only function is to destroy it. Others, without this logical apparatus, are content to rely upon a felt necessity that suffering should follow wrong-doing.
It goes on from here in great depth. Recidivism as a metric of the effectiveness of prison is not misguided, per se, but is not sufficient. The deterrent effect of imprisonment is hard to measure; the punishment aspect is impossible to measure.
I agree, on a purely subjective basis, that we have tilted way too far in the direction of retribution and deterrence, to the point where we have maxed effectiveness as a deterrent, and have more than satisfied the "blood lust" of the victims of the crime (that is, reducing vigilantism and private retribution to a non-factor).
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2449/2449-h/2449-h.htm#link2H...
But -- some percent of the population are predatory, or have the potential to become predatory. They have come to believe that the strong (them) have the right to take from the weak. They steal, rob, rape, murder because it benefits themselves to do so. And if you take away any prospect of bad consequences, more people will become predators.
I also think our current prison system is a pretty awful. But if you take it away, what would you do with criminals instead? What do you do with the 20 year old man who robs someone at gunpoint, or drags a woman into an alley and rapes her? I think there are alternatives out there, but IMO they must involve punishment (to deter others) and containment/supervision (to prevent the criminal from preying upon others again). My own preference for punishing something like armed robbery would be something like a sentence of 10 years of doing farm labor followed by a three year gradual reintegration into society.
This premise is false. People have gotten along without the present distorted system of mass incarceration, not having a system of punishment doesn't itself produce predators. Social norms are quite powerful by themselves. The present system needs to be wholesale re-evaluated for its fairness and effectiveness at producing people that don't reoffend.
At the moment it exists, structurally, to create a labor force that can be forced to work for free, effectively continuing the practice of slavery in this country. This systematized role disproportionately affects communities of color, unsurprisingly, in line with the historical victims of the practice.
>What do you do with the 20 year old man who robs someone at gunpoint, or drags a woman into an alley and rapes her?
Well, at the moment we let them out after 90 days if they're on the swim team at Stanford.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/...
while the incarceration system has limits when it comes to rehabilitation, this part of the post is extremely mistaken.
just because it was slavery and banishment aren't equivalent to incarceration doesn't mean there was no system of punishment - for as far as myth can track our oral history crime and punishment was always present in some form or another as a value and a condition for the existence of social groups larger than tribes
crime and punishment was codified as social values in laws, tradition and religion precisely because not having them caused more strife than having them, a point that is driven over and over again with the stigma the same myth gives to personal vendetta as opposed to systematic punishment.
We have, but the system that the article is critiquing is, in fact, the one we presently live under.
You can, in fact, punish people without prisons. You said it yourself, we've done it with other means in the past. The article addresses incarceration specifically.
The whole article intends to convince us that incarceration should not be punitive, but restorative.
You directly missed my point. The carceral threat is only one stick, and judging by recidivism data, not one that is working particularly well. Perhaps we should examine another set of sticks, or even maybe, perhaps consider another set of carrots. Dismantling the prison industrial complex will not itself create predators, which is the claim I responded to.
Basically, I like the Norwegian approach.
But then there was exile, where you may not warrant your own death or loss of freedom, but the society just doesn't want you around any more. This would apply to the robber barons of modern times, the scam artists and those that prey on the weak. But we simply don't have the ability to banish such people - there is no where to send them, you cannot just put them outside your borders and say never come back. Even without any intent for retribution prison is a necessary construct to isolate those too dangerous to participate in society from it, but some criminals aren't actually physically dangerous. They are only dangerous with power, authority, or an audience. You would traditionally just want to exile those kinds of criminals after taking their possessions to recompense their victims, but we have no real way to do that anymore. Even if you had somewhere to put many of these criminals, the world is too interconnected to stop them from committing more crimes against your citizens abroad. Its often hard to completely strip someone of their accrued power.
So either they walk free with paltry fines or maybe rarely destitution, or they end up in prison like Madoff when they are so grossly criminal you have to do something. The breadth of response to crime today is to take possessions, take freedom, or in barbaric countries like the US take life. The option to take citizenship or residency is no longer an option, which is a shame, because there are a lot of crimes that would be well suited for it.
And if you leave the consequences.... they become CEO's.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-...
I definitely try to be progressive about it, and for victimless crimes 100% rehabilitation and learning, but If a loved one or me was a victim, it would be difficult to watch them taking humanities courses.
what we would like to do with the 'guilty'? what would sit right? this is not the question we should be asking about a flawed system as we can never be sure who is guilty.
Instead take a look at someone innocent, your daughter, wife, your son; And ask what you would be willing to put them through if it was their turn to be the innocent people imprisoned? i'm sure the list would be short, the necessities, remove; freedom? ok. But access to education? entertainment? social interaction? protection? What would sit right with you knowing that your loved ones risked this existence every day?
This is the reason i hate the death penalty, forced labour, solitary, and all inhuman, cruel and dehumanizing things that our prisons employ.. These things don't protect us, they exist only due to vindictiveness; And they ignore the inevitability of mistakes.
For a vast, huge majority of victims of crime by far and way the most valuable thing to them is not retribution or vindication, it is their own attempt to regain safety. The knowledge their assailant is no longer able to hurt others is so much more substantial on average to victims than the knowledge their assailant is suffering or dead.
Retribution is a tart feeling. Its empty. It gives you a moment of animal hormone rush before you realize it isn't gaining anyone anything. Its just part of being angry.
Yes, of course if you were involved in a crime, or someone you loved, you would want retribution. We all would feel that way. Our brains are wired too strongly to react in that manner. Its a survival instinct, one of those deeply rooted behaviors you cannot undo like the gag or drowning reflexes. That is why it is so valuable that those of us not under its influence recognize it doesn't serve a practical purpose in civilized society. You retaliate to save your life from an immediate threat, and you use that instinctual bloodlust to insure the threat is neutralized. You don't channel it to use state institutions to harm people long term to appease your animal brain in the same way you don't guzzle cheese wiz all the time because your brain keeps telling you to eat so long as food is available. We have that instinct, both to eat endlessly and be sedentary and to seek retribution. Neither are rational, and both require discipline to restrain, not glorify.
Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it.
Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring criminals. (the ones who got caught)
I don't necessarily disagree with nixing arrests for personal amounts / use of Marijuana, even the "I sold my buddy a dime bag worth that one time," but once we get into serious commercial activity is it not valid to keep those particular convictions?
In general, I don't really give a shit about drugs or drug use. Perhaps the feeling is just years of Drug War indoctrination, but it feels wrong and I'm trying to grapple with "Why" by asking.
I agree completely. I think it very much depends on what law is disregarded. Violators of immigration law are clearly guilty of this. My observation regarding marijuana was that it's very much tolerated, and the serverity the penalties are way out of line with public opinion, which is why the sentencing guidelines are rarely followed. In my specific circumstance, I did not get off free, just didn't go to prison. Knowing what I know now, given the option I would have happily traded a year or two in prison for the option of record expungment.
You mean, the way you disregard the law when you speed in order to get somewhere sooner? Yes, I'm equating speeding with the use of marijuana. And I'd argue that speeding is actually way more dangerous.
I apologize if this comes off as harsh, but the sentiment you express has contributed to horrific abuse of the legal system for decades. Too many people feel generally like you do, willing to put up with wildly disproportionate punishments for no other reason than a law was broken, even if they don't really think the activities should be considered criminal.
Think about what you're saying: you don't really care much about the moral standing of the law, but you don't mind that folks prosecuted under it have their lives destroyed (sorry if I've distorted your position).
Remember, there's a lot of devil in the details of drug law. Florida, for example, assumes intent to distribute if you possess more than 20 grams of weed, allowing up to 5 years in prison and ten grand in fines. If the prosecutor finds a school, public housing, or even a fucking park within a thousand feet of your arrest, they can put you in prison for up to 15 years.
It's good that you're not a drug warrior type, and the american public as a whole is definitely coming to its senses regarding marijuana. But what kind of society puts up with destroying peoples lives for the sake of laws that they don't really feel strongly about?
>Even if you never get to that position I will. I've recently been sucessfully asserting my way into those decisions where I am now, so I'm close already.
I really appreciate the compliment, the respect is mutual.
It's taken time, effort and reflection to not be bitter about it. Bitteress is not helpful, plus: Everyone loves a comeback!
May God have mercy on your soul.
If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so.
Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working.
Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?
The prison-industrial complex and their political pawns.
- https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/c...
- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-priva...
- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-pri...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
According to the ACLU 7% of state prisoners and 18% of federal prisoners are in for-profit prisons[1]. Federal prisoners make up less than 20% of the total prisoners. So a minority of a minority are prisoners of the federal "prison-industrial complex".
I of course also hear the rebuttal that public prisons are supplied by private companies. Which is of course true. The government does not grow food or produce security cameras. Perhaps we'll accuse Georgia Pacific of being a beneficiary of the "collegiate-industrial complex" as well as the "prison-industrial complex" because they supply paper products.
I believe our prisons are broken. I believe our prisons are cruel and immoral. But I do not believe there is a vast conspiracy of private interests locking people away for the sake of profit. Nor do I believe that those interests influence our politicians in any meaningful way.
Ask yourself, is it likely that our politicians are completely beholden to an industry that makes up a fraction of a fraction of a percent of our economy? Or is it much more likely that our representatives believe private prisons could, should, or do work?
1. https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/privatization...
If and when they donate to candidates for harsher sentences, then yes, they are.
Most businesses and people that work for said businesses tend to vote in a matter that leads to their continued employment.
>Ask yourself, is it likely that our politicians are completely beholden to an industry that makes up a fraction of a fraction of a percent of our economy?
Absolutely. You're thinking of the wrong economy. The economy that matters the most to a politician is the one that gives the most donations during the election.
> "In 1994, it was a major force behind the passage of Proposition 184, California’s “Three Strikes” initiative. In the same election cycle, it spent a record amount on former Gov. Pete Wilson’s successful reelection campaign…"
Since 2011 it seems to have reduced its spending on elections. However, this article [2] says that in the 2016 election they upped their spending again, and suggests that they had been splitting "members’ contributions among a half-dozen or more PACS" to somewhat obscure their advocacy.
[1] http://capitolweekly.net/ccpoa-transition-powerful-low-profi...
[2] http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-wor...
These days, a background check is a $10 service on a website. A felony conviction is now pretty much economic ruin. The only loopholes left are working as your own business, like hairdressers that rent space at a salon or day labor for under-the-table cash.
The other narrative is that for $10 bucks I can protect myself, my family, and my business from terrible people.
Whether they are terrible or “misguided” is up to me to decide, as it is whether to employ them or not.
Again, not everybody in jail deserves humane treatment. There are animals in there. Maybe you have never been on the other end of crime, but there are humans who are animals.
There's a wide range of felonies that don't automatically make someone an animal.
Maybe this attitude is part of why they're in jail in the first place.
They said that it should be up to them, as to whether they hire that person after a background check eg reveals something.
There are very obvious cases where it makes a lot of sense to screen people based on background checks (eg a daycare or school). Further to that point, every business operator is different and has different beliefs. One operator might be ok with hiring a previously convicted rapist. The next business owner might be a woman who was raped in the past and has a very different view on that for good reason.
I'm guessing that you're capable of sensible, fair evaluation of a criminal record, and making an accordingly sensible hiring decision.
The problem is that most others are not. Most companies have a blanket ban on felons, even for things that should not be crimes. Remember that it used to be illegal to possess alcohol, or to marry someone outside your race, for example.
Thus, if you value the information that allows you to filter genuinely dangerous individuals from your life and business, then it seems that it would be in your interest for the system that provides such information be robust against injustice and abuse.
Wouldn’t you want to know the background of a person before hiring a nanny for your child?
Now change nanny to employee and child to business.
Stupid question. Yes.
> What if it is a low level position and the person stabs someone at the first disagreement?
Why do you assume that "felon = violent"?
> Why do I have to take that risk?
Every hire is a risk. Running a business is a risk in the first place. If you're risk-averse, you probably aren't running a business, anyhow. So, why do you take that risk? Presumably because you've concluded during the interview that they can perform the task that you're hiring for better than the other candidates. If they can't, then it's a moot point anyhow, isn't it?
I can assume whatever I want if I am doing the hiring right? After all, it’s my money which is being risked. Simply put, a business owner can hire whoever they want in practice.
Every hire is a risk, but hiring a felon is an increased risk. It is possible that it is an increased reward too, but with so many available candidates, why bother?
If we had a legal system that resulted in prisoners improving themselves during incarceration, it'd be much harder to justify that. But if a business has a choice between two candidate employees, one who's been in prison for a couple of years, and another who hasn't, then (all else being equal), which candidate do you think they're more likely to hire?
Taken another way, how would you improve prison to make prison time seem like less of a risk factor, or even as a positive thing?
This really would be a game changer for these individuals and the costs could be marginal given a Chromebook is <$150 and Khan Academy could provide bulk discounts.
Latest on Khan Academy: https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_n...
There seem to be trials of the offline Version of Khan Academy (KALite) at a correctional facility in Idaho and Los Angelos: https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-pro...
Has anyone published a whitelist of educational web sites? Wouldn't be a bad idea. Could make it a collaborative effort, too, by versioning it with GitHub and accepting online pull requests with public discussion.
https://ideas.ted.com/why-im-teaching-prisoners-to-code/ https://thelastmile.org
Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.
[citation needed] on this incredibly inflammatory comment. Yes, people tend to end up in prison after a chain of bad decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent to the point of being incapable of learning things.
Arguably, a successful drug dealer has far more real-world experience in economics than a college grad on the topic.
Class-time is a minority of the learning time. The basic idea is to gain a basic familiarization before class, then (during class) hopefully have the professor explain the same ideas in a different way and provide an opportunity to ask clarifying questions. Assignments should be structured to illustrate the concepts and encourage reaching a bit past what was taught. You shouldn't be doing the bulk of the learning in the classroom itself, IMO. Homework is for you. Tests are a final feedback of the result of the learning process.
I guess my point is that learning in the "off-hours" is kind of the intention (and is part of the best-case scenario, as described above). 2 hours of lecture implies 4 hours (or more) of extra work, done outside of the classroom, on your own or with others. School should provide structure and guidance to learning (providing a schedule, and an appropriate order of concepts to learn). Learning itself is a separate process.
I think this is the root problem. The structure never seemed right. It didn't assist with learning as it was never the appropriate topics at the appropriate time. Once you get away from college learning is so much easier as you are not dependent on the linear timeline set out by someone else. And because you're actually learning, which is one of the most pleasurable things going, you are excited to keep reaching for more. College fosters none of that.
I understand that learning on your own time is part of the package, but the problem, which I may not have effectively communicated, is that you are still left learning the 'wrong way' as you still have to stick with the course requirements while also trying to learn the 'right way' because that is the only way you are going to learn anything at all. As it is, two hours of lecture is two hours that could have been spent actually learning instead of wasting time.
If you are smart, I am sure that none of this is a problem and the structure of the courses are most likely to your benefit. But for someone who is stupid like me, it just doesn't work. Literally everyone can learn. Not everyone is smart.
> As it is, two hours of lecture is two hours that could have been spent actually learning instead of wasting time.
The most wasted lectures that I attended were the ones that I went to, but did something else instead of asking questions. There aren't many situations where you've got a roomful of people at your level or above (including an expert in the subject) that you can pose questions to.
> But for someone who is stupid like me, it just doesn't work.
Where did you get the idea that you're stupid? I don't see any evidence of that, and thinking of yourself that way is going to damage any of your efforts. Stupid people aren't generally the kinds that come onto HackerNews to have discussions about the nature of education.
While I understand the value of that in theory, in practice the questions are not available at the time the room is. This makes it mostly worthless. I understand people like you have minds that work in a different way, and that you are able to thrive in that environment. I don't want to minimize the benefit to someone like you, but you must also realize that not everyone is like you.
> Where did you get the idea that you're stupid?
Too stupid for college. I don't know if anyone is truly stupid in every way. Everyone has their speciality.
I would suggest that, given how hard education is pushed in the US that there is a reason that the attainment rate is still just ~30% for four or more year programs and ~40% for two or more year programs: Because most people simply are not capable of thriving in that environment.
I don't see that as a problem though. There are many ways to skin the cat. College doesn't need to be for everyone, and it is faulty logic to think that we should push it on everyone. Especially to those in jail who, statistically, are likely among the group that are not suited for it in the first place.
I do agree that we should do more to enable learning for those people. But, again, learning is not the same thing as college.
The lectures themselves weren't that useful to me, although learning to interpret the pattern of confusion was invaluable (like looking at a code diff, where it doesn't tell you what the problem is, just what the difference is). Often, even the textbooks weren't (another exercise in pattern matching, and comparing with other sources). I spent a lot of time learning the material in my own way, then learning the mapping between my understanding and the way that it was being taught in class.
The topics in class acted as a decent map of the "tech tree" involved in the pile of topics to study, and a possibly-appropriate order to learn them in.
Everyone thinks differently. Do you have a more efficient idea an "expert" to convey a large number of concepts to a large group of people? What's your preferred method of learning?
Learning from folks who did well in college means they may think everyone will do well if they repeat their experience. Which is a far cry from 'teacher'. Heck, its not even 'expert'.
I think "stupid" is the wrong word there; too many other connotations. And I think that the root issue would be something different: A learning style order/pace that's a bad match for the one common to classroom learning, if the specific professor teaches using just one or two methods to convey the information, etc.
I'm doing well professionally, but there was a certain mismatch between my learning style and the classroom teaching style. I made it work for me in the end, though.
The majority of people in general are too stupid for college, and criminals that get caught tend to lean towards the dumb end.
Missed the /s, I'm assuming.
Agreed, this is probably true for our current definition of "college"
> A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.
Holy shit, that's a galaxy brain take. I agree that college status signaling is out of control, but doing this would just move the signaling elsewhere. Also it would be a bit fascist IMO.
Anyway, upvoted for interestingness.
"Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any.
Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened."
KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization:
https://learningequality.org/about/
"In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi."
https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ "Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."
Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had.
Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it.
Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them."
What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?
I don't mean to say that the Norwegian model can't or wouldn't work in the US, but it can't be considered any more than "exploratory" from a US policy perspective.
I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.
The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be “stewed” in prison and then released upon you and me.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-beca...
But, sure, this seems like a good idea.
But first, stop all the horrible stuff, currently hurting prisoners.
In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.
Gross.
The notion that colleges are supposed to be factories to create workers for jobs that probably won't exist by the time they graduate is bad enough; turning prisons into this is nothing short of a conflict of economic interest.
Learning theoretical science, poetry, dance, music, etc. sounds very plausibly helpful for people who are incarcerated.
Are you seriously suggesting that people would commit crimes to "get a free education"?
which doesn't mean lowering the overall barrier to education is not a good idea and probably would reduce incarceration in the first place...
A slightly more amount of taxes than I currently pay? Sure; if it's for the betterment and reformation of the worse-off in our society, I'd gladly pay a bit more money.
A better way of putting it should be that prisons should educate people to the level of high school or county college, something that should have been available to them but wasn't because of whatever factors. This way they get no handout not available to others and at the same time get a second chance at a life away from crime.
I don't think these sorts of jobs exist any more, or at least not in the quantity that they used to. I do think that job training (tangible, current skills) would be an appropriate replacement.
My funny thought in writing this was that the only way it would happen is if we made Mike Rowe secretary of education.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota...
For some people it is. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "lock him up and throw away the key." For some people, all they care about is that society provides a mechanism to obviate their need to seek retribution personally.