re: #183 ggt

As I understand it, we aren’t originally set-up for Rehabilitation.

The whole thing is a clusterfuck, IMHO. Every State has a different take on it and justice is not meted out evenly.

It is cheaper in the long-run to rehabilitate, but what about those that can’t be rehabilitated?

EDUCATION, CONTRACEPTION AND MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

are my only answers.

Actually, yes we were “originally” set up for rehab.

Skipping a lot of the side roads, the reason they’re called penitentiaries is because they were supposed to be places for those who committed crimes to repent their sins. The whole idea of long-term imprisonment was actually meant to be a humane change to standard practices of death, mutilation, and impoverishment.

The theory was that separating these people would protect society from their depravities while and until they’d learned to be productive and contributing citizens. At the same time the separation would allow introspection without temptation.

Unfortunately, there is also a large portion of society that wants vengeance. This portion frequently wants not just an eye for an eye, but a pound of flesh in interest. This gets disguised as a valid point: that often the criminal must be punished so as to recognize the crime is wrong.

I’ve mentioned this other times we’ve gotten into this same argument, I’ll mention it again.

According to what we know of how the mind works at this time, our whole criminal justice system is designed to increase, not decrease, crime over all.

We should have a sharp, significant, but SHORT punishment. We should follow that with rehab in a controlled environment that includes training for alternatives, followed by rehab in an uncontrolled environment (parole equivalent). We should have two levels of an extended separation policy (long-term imprisonment) only for those we cannot rehab, demonstrated by their repeated recidivism. the extreme is, basically, LWOP in prison. The other is - think half-way house based out of a prison.

It won’t happen, not here, but it’s what we should be aiming for based on what we know at this time.