Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? These two things seem opposite to me, to the point of almost being incompatible.
A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state.
Correlation vs. causation and all that, but given the likely lack of results from either punishment or rehabilitation, perhaps that is what happened here.
https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Cr...
The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime.
Combine this with society mandating severely curtailed opportunities to participate in non-criminal work and you get a perfect storm where prisons churn out more hardened criminals, which leads to more crime, which leads to more prisoners.
As are the streets.
In this model of 'removal', I'd say that the main point of a prison is to take a more crime prone demographic (by that I mean age, gender, ethnicity, location, wealth...the whole ball of wax) off the street until they are older and less likely to do things that the straights don't like.
In the long run, I would expect for universal surveillance (and the increased ability to parse data we are seeing) to be the main driving force in social control rather than mere warehousing.
If I were designing a prison system, it would be a mini-society. Only a minimal set of rules would be specified and enforced by those outside the prison. The rest would be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.
I don't think I'd recommend it for the U.S.
If you can accept "comprehending and accepting your crimes and their consequences, and having a genuine desire to return to society as a member of it looking to make a positive contribution" as punishement then they are compatible.
But you want to transition somebody psychologically from being in the out-group "criminals" to re-joining the in-group of law-abiding citizens, and most purely punitive measures actively make a person feel further pushed into the out-group.
You want strong incentives and support towards positive re-integration. I always thought that repeat offences ought to be the most damning statistic for prisons, and their performance and budget should mostly be influenced by success on that metric.
Profit from holding prisoners and their labour are basically negative incentives to improve the repeat offending rates.
I can imagine a prison system with a redemptive quality where prisoners feel they’ve labored to redeem themselves to society (this requires society to esteem them accordingly to some degree) and learned a valuable trade in the process.
I think liberals (myself included) would do better to cast that vision for prison reform, rather than the current messaging which IMO comes across as hyperbolic (e.g., “literal slavery”) and naive (prison should be a comfortable place and the rest will work itself out).
But countless studies have shown that it's not an effective deterrent.
To be quite clear, I don't believe that prison's sole value is a deterrent. I think there's an element of justice (criminals should have to pay for their crimes), an element of deterrence (prison should make criminals think twice--this feels intertwined with 'justice' and yet distinct), an element of rehabilitation (to the extent that we can rehabilitate prisoners, we should), but mostly I think there is significant social value in protecting innocent people by keeping harmful people away from innocent people.
Even if the deterrent effect is nil and even if you don't believe in justice (or for many of my fellow liberals, you reserve 'justice' for crimes that offend you, such as white collar crimes), I would still keep prisons around for the protection of the innocent. That said, I have an optimistic view on the potential for prisons.
For the freely given work, it becomes a question of who deserves it. Giving it to a prisoner who is supposed to be punished instead of a law abiding individual stuck at a dead end job appears to be rewarding the individual with bad behavior. The same reasoning also applies when there isn't enough free labor for rehabilitation and money is spent buying more labor.
If at any point the rehabilitation offered within prisons is better than that offered for free outside of prisons then it becomes a reward. Rewards are generally viewed as incompatible with punishment and seen as cancelling out, when they are of similar scales.
Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. There most certainly is enough social programs to go around, but our elected officials in America want to bolster the ultra wealthy and the mega corps instead. This is an artificial scarcity mindset that tries to make us pull each other down.
Is your help getting clean only offered to substance abusers that assaulted another person? If so, you might see why someone who is addicted, wants but can't afford help, and who hasn't assaulted someone might not appreciate the help only going to those who have assaulted another.
If the help is offered to everyone who needs it, then the logic wouldn't apply.
>Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie.
Where did I suggest such? I pointed out that there isn't enough purely from volunteering, meaning you'll have to spend money. I specifically pointed out that money could be spend buying more.
>and money is spent buying more labor.
Right there. My argument is that the money spent on buying more help follows the same issue. Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.
It seems to me that doing so is a great idea. Firstly, given that these folks have (presumably so, but many folks plead guilty to crimes they have not committed, which is a travesty, but beyond the scope of this comment) committed a crime is pretty clear proof that they are having issues integrating into society.
Secondly, except for those who commit violent crimes (a minority of inmates), most folks will be released at some point.
Once those folks are released, they are now responsible for taking care of themselves economically and living in society. If we continue doing what we do now, by not giving them tools and skills to reintegrate into society and stigmatizing them for life, we severely limit their ability to live as productive members of society.
This has a negative effect on society (in that these folks are being actively discriminated against and shut out from many decent jobs) and limits the productivity and economic output of these people in performing jobs compatible with society.
Those are huge negatives for all of us. We're reducing economic output, creating pariahs and increasing the possibility of recidivism, which costs society more when those folks re-offend and are then re-incarcerated.
As such, I posit that rehabilitation along with reducing/removing the stigma of a felony conviction would increase both economic output and societal well-being.
And IMHO those benefits far outweigh how much you (or anyone else) wants to stick it to those dirty criminals.
To clarify, I'm explaining why it would be unpopular. I'm not saying I personally agree with it. Please try to not conflate the argument with the person.
Many people aren't great at seeing long term or higher order effects. I'm explaining the immediate visibility problem, where someone is told that more help is provided for criminals than non-criminals. That the long term effects are worth it doesn't work well to convince people whose views are short term. We can see many government problems resulting from prioritizing short term reasoning.
Take the war on drugs. People see drugs, think "I should ban it so my kids won't be hooked on drugs." They don't think of the long term effects of a war on drug, and as a result we have our modern day war on drugs with all the harm it has brought us.
The real main difference is when people stop viewing prison as being for punishment, but that goes back to the original question of why is rehabilitation incompatible with punishment. If prison is seen as being for rehabilitation and containment for safety while rehabilitating then the comparison is different (though ideally the services offered shouldn't be better than those offered to people who follow the law).
As an example from around here (Denmark) if someone want to hire a person they do not by default know that this is a former inmate and they will only have access to this information if the job somehow is related to the crime committed in the past. You could ask the job applicant to bring a form from the police but if the sentence is unrelated to the job (or a set amount of years have gone past if it is a lesser crime) the form will be completely blank. Only related crimes will be shown.
All in all I believe that such a system is also punishment (few like to be locked up) but this rehalibation-first-system will punish everyone else less in the long run.