[thegaulofthem]

So how do we meaningfully sort groups out?

I’ve been to juvenile prison, loads of these teenagers were out and out proud of their being in. They would happily manipulate and game anything to their advantage, and as a result the guards are forced to be intolerant assholes for the most part. If they aren’t, they’ll be taken for suckers.

So how do you sort of the otherwise good kid who gets into a fight or thought weed wasn’t a big deal from the future career criminals of America?

[solatic]

Honestly? Start by hiring more therapists and social workers for the prison system, so that the ones in the prison system actually have a manageable caseload and truly focus on what individual prisoners need. You'd need to borrow from the "magnet school" model - a specialized school within a wider school - to have a single wing within a larger prison devoted to a specific kind of rehabilitation, transferring in prisoners who need that kind of rehab, then expanding. That requires free space to set that up properly, so, some additional construction / other depopulation measures to get that space available. The people who run those programs need leeway to offer things that may not be available in most prisons and take away privileges that may be taken for granted. It's not such a radical idea - it's basically what separates the different levels of security prison (Camp Fed down the spectrum to supermax), just, in additional ways as well.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I think you missed the point where El Salvador prohibited all visits because it enabled criminality.

I'm not dismissing this outright, but in terms of priorities, giving counseling to criminals to "distinguish" between the hardened criminals and everyone else seems ripe for abuse, and not exactly a top priority when there are things like cop unioins, crowded jail spaces, and unfunded learning/job opportunities for inmates