[qingcharles]

You're not thinking big enough. Why do we even need so many people in prison?

The staff in prisons are never motivated to run any kind of real rehabilitation programs, and worthwhile ones are incredibly rare. They get the press when you see a prisoner learning AutoCAD or something, but there are so few slots for something like that, while everyone else does bullshit classes where they ask you what you should do when you find a wallet in the street and then make you color some pages with crayons (really).

[eszed]

> The staff in prisons are never motivated to run any kind of real rehabilitation programs

We used to. I have an ancestor who worked for the prison system in Southern California, ~1920s - 1950s. I don't know what they called his role, but for most of his career he was in charge of the re-integration wing, a set of low-security barracks that prisoners moved to for the last six months of their sentences. During that time they did job interviews (maybe even had work release?), lined up housing, received what sounds like "life coaching", and otherwise prepared for their release. Visiting rules were much relaxed.

I never met the man, but have been told by my relatives who knew him that he was intensely proud of his work, and protective of the men for whom he cared. He was regularly stopped on the street to be thanked by former inmates; he was godfather to some of their children. I am proud to have been named for him.

I've become interested in reading about the Progressive Era of American history. We've lost a lot of what was built (physically and socially) ~100 years ago. I'd like to get it back.

(Personal note: Qingcharles, I really appreciate your comments on this site. Thank you for being here.)

[qingcharles]

The sad thing is, that sort of excellent rehabilitation does exist in other countries, it's just now an endangered species in the USA.

The only "rehabilitation services" I received in prison was the day before my release they asked if I wanted to sign up for Medicaid lol.

After prison you'll often be shipped to a halfway house, and this was an even bigger eye-opener because I got to spend a couple of months in very close quarters to newly-released parolees to see what happens next. (I was only there a very short time because I was about 8 or 9 years past the end of my sentence when they finally did the paperwork to release me and so they cut my parole very short)

I think 90% of the people I was with at the halfway house with were returned to prison within three months. Many of them were put on a track that locks them up for two years until they can apply for parole again.

Of the ten percent left, I would say nine percent were homeless and with warrants out that the police didn't have the time to execute on. So my anecdotal data is that about 1% stayed out for a year. Of that 1% I know two of the guys I was with as they live nearby and are now indentured slaves. They work 7 days a week for zero money, just for a roof over their heads, and if they try to take a breather at all their boss picks up his cell phone and starts to call their parole agent to have them returned to prison.

I wonder what was different in the 20s? There were definitely drugs, but I don't know what the addiction rate was back then? Was there only opium? Drug addiction is by far the greatest reason for recidivism in my experience. Community and family support might have been stronger? Sentences were likely a lot shorter too, so less likely to lose touch with your support network. Probably a criminal record mattered less. Manual labor was more prevalent. The only place I saw parolees getting jobs was at the local abattoir.

> (Personal note: Qingcharles, I really appreciate your comments on this site. Thank you for being here.)

Haha, thank you. I don't know how much help I am. I'm just a loser who got to see the criminal justice system from the inside :)

[eszed]

> I wonder what was different in the 20s?

I genuinely don't know. I have a history degree, but have mostly read European early-modern, not American or 20th c. history. I think you're right about manual / un-trained labor jobs being more prevalent / available. The 20s were a decade of full employment, too, so that had to have had an effect. To your list I'll add a few speculative ideas:

1) Housing was easier to come by. Not nice housing, mind you, but there were boarding houses and "SRO" accommodation, at achievable prices, more available than there are today. There were also (this goes to your social support suggestion) nation-wide organizations, like the YMCA and the Salvation Army, who were committed to sheltering people living on the margins of society. They were more successful, and more economical, than localized "homeless shelters" seem to be today. Many people start using substances because they're on the street, and I'd guess that many of them wouldn't if they were in more comfortable circumstances. You'd know more about this than I: what do you think?

2) Along the same lines: drugs, as we have them now certainly weren't the same thing - no fentanyl, no crack; marginal weed, opium, cocaine; all of them relatively more expensive than they are today. People can, however, just as surely ruin their lives just with alcohol. Maybe the fact that booze was illegal during the 20s made it enough harder to get fucked up that that had a marginal effect?

3) The surveillance state wasn't a thing. If you didn't choose to disclose it there was no way for a prospective employer to know that you were a felon and disqualify you for a job on that basis. Heck, if you wanted to change your name and move somewhere else to start an entirely new life there were many fewer obstacles to that than there are today.

4) Mental hospitals. For all of their much-publicized abuses, they kept obviously unstable people off the streets and out of the penal system. I don't know what to think about them overall, but there's nothing like that anymore.

But, we should be wary of overstating our case. The US in the 1920s was a much poorer country, and in general its penal system was harsher than it is today. We shouldn't be eager bring back chain gangs, or early 20th c. execution rates. They did, however, have an enthusiastic constituency for reform, and at least local successes, like the system with which my relative was involved. I don't see either today, when even "Progressives" seem to propose only modest, marginal reforms.

[rootusrootus]

> Why do we even need so many people in prison?

A question I keep thinking about. My position at this point is that prison should be considerably less used than it is today. I am certain we can devise non-prison punishments for most crimes. I would like to see prison reserved strictly for people who need to be separated from society.

Even if we do use prison as punishment, I don't know that there is all that much difference in most cases between a few months and a few years. I'd guess it takes less than a day to decide this is the worst thing to happen to you, and it quickly reaches a point where it can't really get a lot more convincing. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems kinda meaningless to differentiate between 1 year, 10 years, 25 years.

We cannot really expect to send someone away for a few years and have them just slip back into society and continue to be successful. Not with all the non-judicial punishments we inflict on convicts. That is another thing I keep thinking we need to figure out a better answer for. A criminal record is a huge hinderance to gainful employment, maybe we should be a lot more circumspect about who is allowed to see it, or require it for employment or housing.

[qingcharles]

Agree with all that.

Prison removes people from society. That should be the only time it is needed -- when someone can't be reintegrated. And then in that case, we need to try to understand why we've made that decision. Is it a mental problem? If so, they're not to blame and should be housed at a non-punitive facility that can (maybe) make them well enough to be free.

Also agree that we need to rethink criminal records in a major way, although the Internet is the arbiter of your background now. It doesn't matter if we sealed something up legally when it is already out there. "It's like trying to take the piss out of a swimming pool."

[infotainment]

> Prison removes people from society. That should be the only time it is needed -- when someone can't be reintegrated.

I'd argue that once we've hit that point, why bother with keeping the person alive at all? If they truly cannot be reintegrated into society, there is a simpler solution than indefinitely locking them into a facility.

[rootusrootus]

That is pretty cold, but I understand the sentiment. I do not think I would go so far as to make capital punishment quick and easy, but I have sometimes wondered if it would not be humane to offer people who are in prison for life-without-parole an option to check out early. Here, have a big overdose of heroin, night night. (along those lines, I wonder why we try so hard to contrive chemical cocktails to execute people -- is it because we need some way to make potassium chloride painless, so we can say we executed them? Why not just a huge overdose of fentanyl or heroin. Almost certainly painless, reliable, and inexpensive.)

For some people simply being alive is worthwhile even in prison, but other people commit suicide rather than face a lifetime of that.

A lot of room for debate on that one.

[qingcharles]

I speak to some people with life-without-parole cases from time-to-time. I think the one thing that keeps all of them alive is that they all have an optimistic viewpoint that their case or sentence will be overturned.

One guy I knew very, very well. I say this about almost all the murderers I spent time with though: they were by-and-large some of the nicest people I've met. I rarely met a murderer I didn't like. This particular guy was convicted of a double murder at 19. It is likely if he can find the right lawyer that he'll get the sentence reduced to something where he'll one day see the outside world again.

[_DeadFred_]

FYI McDonalds uses the Federal slave labor corporation (aka UNICOR https://www.unicor.gov/ ) to do the CAD work for McDonalds remodels. Now it makes more sense why McDonald's all feel miserable now.