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by Cyberdog
3018 days ago
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No ex-convict wants to return to prison. However, they've just been put in a position where all of their peers are also criminals, and getting a well-compensated job after release is incredibly difficult, especially if they do not already have specialized skills and education. So it's very easy to fall back into bad habits, especially if that's how they were paying the bills. Destigmatizing a criminal record when it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter) would help a lot, but the government doesn't seem too interested in helping out with that (though I hope the current low unemployment rates help in this regard). Prison education programs would also help. If the government is going to lock people in little boxes with other criminals, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, and seriously contend the point of it is to reduce recidivism, they need to be doing this sort of education at the very least. |
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Some do. Perhaps the most famous example is Charles Manson who said he'd been in prison for so much of his life that it was his home.
Sorry I forget the source, but one longtime prisoner said that after release, it's like he was still in jail, because after being imprisoned, the real prison is in your mind.
Incarceration becomes a mindset.
With three strikes laws locking people up for life for relatively minor third offences, this should give us pause.
Putting these examples aside, there is a lot of evidence that punishment simply does not work.
For example many states have the death penalty for capital crimes, sometimes by the medievally brutal electric chair[1], and still people continue to commit murder.
[1] Like burning at the stake with all the modern conveniences.