"It isn't that simple" is an utterly vacuous assertion that, while trivially true, is not even wrong. Of course life is more complicated, something on the order of 10^30 atoms were involved!
Is JonFish85 incorrect that the person in question could have chosen to abide by the terms of his parole?
In this case saying "it isn't that simple" means that we live in a completely different world, and experience completely different aspirations and incentives than the person in the article. You and I might think it simple to abide by the terms of parole if we were ever arrested. However, in reality, the people discussed in the article, black people trapped in poverty, do get drawn towards crime and do find it hard to stick to their parole. If you think that means they are deficient as people, then that is more than a little self serving. You might as well puff yourself up and tell yourself they are poor because they deserve to be poor, not because they were born into it.
The simple truth is, if there is no incentive for a people to participate in mainstream society then it doesn't matter how hard you harry them, they won't participate. If jail seems like an inevitability, and meaningful work an impossibility, then the decision to inconvenience yourself in order to stick to the terms of your parole is not easy.
If you want to modify a person's behaviour through punishment, then bad behaviour has to be punished fairly and then forgiven, followed by a chance to earn rewards through good behaviour. The situation described in the article is one of nothing but punishment, with inevitable results.
The same is true of all sorts of other people with different experiences, aspirations and incentives - for example, child molesters, serial killers and radical islamic proponents ofhonor killings and FGM (don't google it if you don't know the acronym, you don't want to know).
Asserting that people can't make choices about their life is, in legal terms, asserting their incompetence. Generally speaking, we institutionalize the incompetent. We don't allow them to run around harming themselves and others, sign contracts, and the like.
You might as well puff yourself up and tell yourself they are poor because they deserve to be poor, not because they were born into it.
Lets make this issue slightly less morality-based (striking the word "deserve") and more empirical. What evidence (if any) would convince you that poor people become and stay poor primarily as a result of their own choices?
then bad behaviour has to be punished fairly and then forgiven, followed by a chance to earn rewards through good behaviour.
The man in question was rewarded for good behavior, with parole. Taco Bell further rewarded him for good behavior with money. His bad behavior was punished, and at his next parole hearing further good behavior may be rewarded again. Does he also deserve cash prizes or trophies for not committing crimes?
Is this a good use of our tax money? Guy got out of prison and has a job, let's ride him with the parole system and put him back through the grinder for a year, see if he's a little harder and more bitter when he gets out, maybe gets into dealing drugs or armed robbery instead of that honest job BS.
We have a big problem in this country with the most prisoners in the world and a pretty bad recidivism rate. We should be looking for opportunities to move those numbers in the right direction, not the wrong direction, and anyone can get behind that for entirely selfish reasons. Would you rather be paying to lock this guy up or having him pay taxes out of his paycheck?
As for what the best policy on this matter is, I have no clue. That's a quantitative problem: is P(commits crime | violated parole) x cost of crime + value of deterrence > cost of incarceration? I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but I doubt anyone else here does either.
You're missing some upside variables in your calculation, future tax revenue from paychecks and participation in the economy contributing to GDP. And what about future crimes from some kid who got locked up for typical teenage idiocy in a neighborhood with a high arrest quota and comes out of prison with few job options and a thorough criminal education? Locking someone up costs a lot more than the bill for jail time.
Look, I like to look at things as simply and logically as the next developer.
But the entire point of the OP (and sociology in general) is that while personal responsibility is of paramount importance (the guy in question finally got his stuff together and is now on the right side of the law), often there are forces outside of your control, or situations that you can end up despite your best intentions that make things harder than normal.
Look, I doubt I'm going to convince you otherwise, but I used to think the same way you did. Then I ended up on the wrong side of life for a particularly long time. Once you've lived like that, it all starts to make sense. I was lucky, I pulled myself out of it. Others weren't, or couldn't.
We also rehabilitate them. Jailing someone for minor infraction does not qualify.
That context is not something we can control, but we as a society do have some impact on it through our public policy choices.
As for the parole violation, I don't think we can evaluate it as "bad behavior" without knowing what restriction he was under and why he was under it. Did it really serve some valid purpose, or was it somewhat arbitrary?
Maybe it's simple if all a parolee has to do is to make sure he spends every single night in the halfway home. That might not make a lot of sense, but if that was the _only_ rule he had to follow, it might be simple.
My guess is there are many rules to follow, and a lot of them don't make sense to the individual parolee. A rule like having to spend every single night at the halfway home is there for a reason, but the reason (probably) is not to prevent parolees from seeing their girlfriends. So it's easy for someone to think that they aren't doing anything wrong when spending the night at their girlfriend's, even if they might be aware that they are -- technically -- breaking a rule. They might also (naïvely) expect to be met with some kind of reasonably response to said rule violation.
People have difficulty with rules that don't make sense to them. It's very easy to think: "This can't possibly apply to me in this situation".
Finally, one more thought: I know this is borderline Godwin, but this reminds me of rape and blaming the victim. Like in, it was her own fault for wearing a short dress. This is a case of someone who was the victim of an injustice. Does it really make a lot of sense to talk about what he, the victim, might have done differently?
When a convicted criminal demonstrates an inability to follow rules they don't agree with, that's an indicator that they might commit additional crimes. For example, "this law against rape can't possibly apply to me in this situation where she was asking for it".
Parole is intended only for criminals with a low probability of committing additional crimes. The burden is on the convicted criminal to demonstrate that they are unlikely to commit new crimes.
Look, if he was convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, I agree he is a victim. But he's a victim of drug laws, not the parole system. The parole system is doing the right thing here.
Since you are so keep on empirical evidence, perhaps you can supply us with the academic articles and/or papers that prove your hypothesis.
I'm a bit curious, though - out of everyone using priors and reasoning to discuss this story, I'm the only one you've demanded academic articles from. Why is that?
Maybe he was stopped and questioned by police, and couldn't get transportation back to the parole house in time. Maybe he was doing a drug deal our saving a burning bus full of children.
Parole officers aren't required to make exceptions for these things.
Reality its complex, which is why some networking algos have which is why h and failure modes.
He can choose to try, or choose to do his best, but he can't choose to amide by the terms any more than you can choose to catch the bus.
Maybe he was breaking the law, maybe he was helping children, maybe he was the victim of a crime like the other fellow who had his face smashed in and had reasons not to go to the hospital.