We (Americans at large) send criminals to prison for punishment, not rehab. It's why we care so little about their treatment while in prison. Why we make rape jokes about prisoners. Why we rarely get angry about prisoners dying in prisons.
And that's when they aren't sources of revenue for private companies.
Yes, I'm to angry about this state of affairs to even begin to think it can be changed.
These people want retribution, not justice. It's scary and I don't want to live with the same people in society who think it's okay to think like this.
Mostly, we send them to prison so they are out of the streets and aren't committing more crimes. Their fate doesn't matter to us beyond that; out of sight, out of mind.
Title 18 U.S. Code § 3582 - Imposition of a sentence of imprisonment
(a)Factors To Be Considered in Imposing a Term of Imprisonment.— The court, in determining whether to impose a term of imprisonment, and, if a term of imprisonment is to be imposed, in determining the length of the term, shall consider the factors set forth in section 3553(a) to the extent that they are applicable, recognizing that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation.
This doesn't suggest anything about urgency to get a hamburger, just to not expect any.
From the link:
> This year California became the second state in the nation, and the largest to date, to mandate free calls in state prisons.
It's news that directly contradicts you, not research.
I think this is a HN headline auto-edit that impairs understanding, sadly: "California’s free prison calls are repairing estranged relationships and aiding rehabilitation" - removing "California's" and changing "are repairing" to "boost" significantly changes what it means.
Another reason for this one is that departments in charge of prisons try to keep prison deaths quiet[0] and refuse to perform autopsies for months[1]
[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/deaths-at-rikers-cit...
> The City reported on Thursday that the New York City Department of Correction will no longer notify the media when a person dies while incarcerated, ending a consistent process that has been in effect for two years. “That was a practice, not a policy,” Frank Dwyer, the department’s new spokesman, told the outlet.
*slaves
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-...
Here are a few of the other exceptions:
https://onlabor.org/when-is-forced-labor-consistent-with-the...
Sorry about what happened to you. Terrible.
So if making a profit is the purpose it is illegal?
I have no dog in this fight, but I don't like how this is being treated as something academically sound, rather than an article that is basically a collection of vox pops.
Prisons are already an idealistic institution, in the interest of being more humane. The alternative before was capital punishment, work camps, or slavery (including in war). That's not to say prisons are ok in their current state, or can't be improvement. I just don't think rehab was historically the primary intent.
This is one of the best researched books on the subject, IMO:
https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-History-Prison-Practice-Punish...
These largely aren’t people who were committing minor crimes like selling weed, they are people who have repeatedly proven themselves to be dangerous, violent and antisocial.