Given that I have worked with thousands of prisoners, across a couple of decades, including prisons that have no security fence (these are the ultra low level security prisons) - I have only ever met one prisoner who wanted to return once released, and never met one prisoner who wanted to stay after the sentence was served.
I can say with reasonable certainty that the prospect of a prisoner who thinks of prison as cushy is a vanishingly small probability.
As for the one prisoner who committed a further offence in order to return - well he had been released some time earlier with no accommodation, this was in autumn - fall to you lot - and the weather was cold damps and bleak, which is typical for the time of year. This former prisoner was living on the streets and was hungry cold and desperate, with no prospect of things getting any better. Result is that he committed a certain offense that I shall not describe because it is so distinctive that it would identify him.
He was given a further prison sentence, at a cost to the public of £44k per year. What he should have been given on his initial release was somewhere to live which would have cost perhaps £3 to 4k per year, and of course what will happen when he is released to the same conditions?
So you really believe that we can make prison worse that living on the streets homeless as a disincentive? If so then I suggest that you visit your local homeless charity and do some voluntary work there - you will meet lots of former offenders, and you will find that some of them live in abject conditions, yet would not consider a return to prison as a positive outcome.
I appreciate that for the vast majority of Dopers, and of the public there is a lack of knowledge about rehabilitation - but when the information is put before them, the public simply choose to believe their own prejudiced opinions. They tend to ignore those who know the facts and have been there and done that. Personally I find this attitude to be extremely ignorant and lazy. It takes effort to know and understand anything to any level but it seems that criminal justice is one of those subjects that is rather like the comparing an arsehole with an opinion - because everybody seems to have one - only a few of us actually have to shovel the shit though.
Great post. FYI, in the States we use both “autumn” and “fall,” interchangeably.
As to the spending £44k to keep someone in prison versus spending the £4k to house them upon release to prevent recidivism… sadly, it’s the same here. With homelessness in general; rather than spend $10k/year to provide housing for the homeless, by our inaction in that arena we end up spending $30k/year/person providing ambulances, hospital care, police salaries, jail costs, etc to address all the problems that tend to arise from not having a home. It’s sickening knowing that we spend 3X as much in order to not help the homeless. But it’s a topic that no politician in the U.S. will touch with a 10 foot pole.
It’s because we are a country that allocates resources based on a subjective idea of what people deserve. Homeless people don’t deserve free housing; they *should *work for it. Whether they can or will never enters into the equation. Drug addicts are criminals and therefore deserve jail, not treatment that other non-addicts have to pay for. Society deserves to feel safe, therefore we should be throwing lots of money and resources at keeping those animals who don’t deserve to intermix with society behind bars where they belong. It’s a real petty, backwards mentality, but it’s what drives social policy. You know, we pretty much get what we pay for and don’t care if it makes society objectively better.
Well, we save the oil income in a Sovereign Wealth Fund. The welfare system is funded off the general economy, I don’t think it is very different from the systems in Sweden or Denmark.