Any thoughts on a series of better ways to rehabilitate people and get productive members of society instead of marginalized?
People aren’t born criminals. We make them as a society (for the most part). The problems with this of course come down to paying now for a better tomorrow and being able to accurately identify these individuals. Other than that it’s like the problem in health care - we’re trying to treat symptoms that needed to be avoided yesterday.
This wouldn't work so well for the large proportion of prisoners who only committed victimless crimes.
On second thoughts, maybe it would work even better for those prisoners.
All it takes is one asshole being put into a rehabilitation program[1], or one sufficiently high-profile crime committed by someone in a program/on parole, for half the country to sour about prison reform.
It's easier to send the bad people to the gulag, and forget about them. Treating crime in a constructive way is expensive, and doesn't work 100% of the time, so why bother?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tori_Stafford#Afterm...
Of course, you have to get past the political demand that there should be marginalised people, and the institutions determined to make some regardless of whether or not they "deserve" it.
for someone to just 'sit' and think about their thoughts for 10 days straight without talking, is HELL for a criminal. they are forced to confront reality, or at least their subjective version of it.