I have talked about this before. It is one of those areas where I am far more Liberal than most of my peers in this area, or most areas.
If we use Recivitism rates as a guide. Our Current Justice system is failing miserably. Now the Conservatives are right when they say that Liberals are doubling down on failure when pushing an agenda that is already demonstrably false. The same is exactly as true when discussing the Criminal Justice System. Conservatives only want tougher prisons, longer sentences, and more brutal conditions.
The problem that the Conservatives fail to appreciate is that most of these criminals are thriving in these brutal conditions. An old saying is that cream rises to the top. The same is true in Prison, the best rise to the top, and if you want a brutal and barbaric system, that brutal and barbaric system, will have the most brutal and barbaric rise to the top. The more brutal and barbaric you are, the higher you place, and the less you are harassed and brutalized by others.
But there is more to consider. Eventually people are getting out of Prison. So we have ample evidence of the results of this. They have survived years in a brutal and barbaric system, and now they are free. The learned behavior is brutality. Criminality. So all you have done with the barbaric, and brutal prisons, is create a University of Higher Learning. The course structure is prison fighting, making weapons, Rape and Sodomy, and corruption of the guards to get the contraband you want, like drugs. A Convict emerging from these Universities of Extreme Criminal Behavior have their Masters Degree in brutality. Then we, as a society, are shocked that this behavior we essentially forced upon the individual, is carried out into the streets.
Instead of looking at the results and saying that this is obviously not working. We decide that we need to go even more. Essentially saying that criminals are sub human. Well we put them in situations where the strongest sub human thrives, and are surprised that they become as sub human as possible to survive?
We do not look around to see what we are doing wrong. Instead we demand that we double down, on a failed program, creating even more severe and brutal prisons. Because nothing breeds success like a long chain of failures.
We do not look beyond our limited situation to find examples of success. When Henry Ford created the first assembly line, everyone who wanted to make cars or any other complex machine, copied him. Ford helped make factories that turned out dozens of airplanes a day during the war. It was a successful program, that worked.
Yet, what happened to those companies that did not switch to the assembly line? With a few notable exceptions, they all fell out of the market unable to compete. Sure a few luxury car companies remained, but for the most part, it was adapt or die. The same thing happened in the 1970’s, when Japanese cars started to enter the American Market. They could produce cheaper cars, good quality, reliable, and a lot of them. The British Car Companies remained with the manpower intensive assembly lines, and all essentially failed. The American companies saw this, and adapted. Once again, it was adapt or die, and the failed companies spoke volumes about the desire to double down on a failing program or technique.
We do this Darwinian process with everything in life. Except prisons and criminal justice.
As has been mentioned before, the Norwegian Prisons have a much lower Recivitism rate. I am not saying that it will eliminate repeat offenders. But if taking some prisoners, and putting them into an alternative system, we can reduce the rate at which we see repeat offenders, isn’t it worth it?
There is no one size fits all. Neither clothing, or answers to issues. As has been our experience, the truth is that one size fits none. The Brutal prisons are a cakewalk for people from high crime areas like the slums of some cities, or the economically depressed rural areas. There is no incentive to behave once they get out of Prison. It is no worse than the world they return to when they get out.
There is another consideration. Rights of the released convicts. Most people treat people who have gotten out of prison like lepers. As if at any moment they’ll go on a crime spree robbing and raping and murdering their way across three states before they end up dead in a shootout with Police. So opportunities for employment are limited, and usually menial, with minimal earning potential. In other words, they can not rejoin society easily, and the climb up the ladder of success is nearly impossible.
So why are we surprised that they return to crime? WE train them for it in prison. We insure that there are limited choices for them outside of prison making Crime far more attractive as a vocation.
Changing the way we manage and handle and educate the prisoners is one part of the equation. The next part, is changing the way we think, learning how to forgive if not forget.
