> How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage?
If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.
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.
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.
Some of it goes against your instincts, but the results speak for themselves.
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.
that is true for 0% of Americans in prison