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Even if all the statistics are put in front of us, interpreting them might require understanding the distribution of the types of crime they were imprisoned for or other factors local to that city, county, or state.
Perhaps after the first year there are other factors that the graduates struggle with that push them towards prison again? Could be as simple as losing hope. I'd expect it to be bad influences in their daily lives or becoming homeless after failing without a safety net.
What we really need to do is look at these sorts of problems from a “does this solve the problem or not?” Then actually commit to running a few different programs side-by side for long enough to get real results… but that’s not really what anybody is proposing.
My personal belief and intuition is that the carceral system is broken, unjust, and deeply flawed - but I am not in the position to propose alternatives. It’s quite possible that I’m wrong and ignorant of the reality of the topic. That said, there are people who study this sort of thing professionally.
We should connect those folks with the stats and mathy folks and get out of their way to engineer a better world, not just see what gets spelled out when we throw spaghetti against the wall.
matter of perspective, friend. short consequences for the guilty party may mean long consequences for the innocent.
moreover - and i don't think you meant it this way, but - "punishment" is a different word than "rehabilitation". the confusion between the two is a symptom of the bigger confusion over what law, order, justice, etc mean at a social level... and now we are back at the "ideologue" level, where statistically meaningful datapoints may indicate any number of different things. in other words, ideas have consequences. i don't trust anyone who isn't at the "ideologue" level in these sorts of conversations.
This sucks if you’re a victim - I fully acknowledge that. But I want to prevent the next 4 victims, not punish 1 offender. Am I right? I think I might be on the right track, but I don’t know. I think we need to do some real science to find out, and that’s time consuming and expensive.
To be honest, racial equity movements, poverty reduction, and unleaded gasoline has probably done more to prevent crime than any punitive tools of the state. But I’m not qualified to really assert that… so even for me it’s “feels all the way down.”
There were only a couple of toplevel comments when you wrote this and none of them can be accurately described this way. Plus you can just reply to them rather than grumping at the whole thread that has barely even developed.