Little Nemo is right, as to some jurisdictions. He is wrong as to other jurisdictions. It’s very much place-to-place, and often crime-to-crime.
In many places, rehabilitation is very limited, especially if you committed a violent crime or you don’t have a substance abuse disorder. You might be lucky to get some GRE books.
Are there also programs to benefit non-convicts who manage to not commit crimes as well? No matter the intent, the impression it may give to people trying to start businesses that have never committed crimes is that they’re being put at a competitive disadvantage, and are in effect being punished for not going to prison first. We shouldn’t be paying ex-cons to not commit more crimes.
Even if it can be shown to be effective?
If this is instead about the money, what if it can be shown that it is more expensive to keep them in that to help them out?
If this isn’t about either, then what is the real objection?
As a taxpayer and a crime victim, I would rather pay less taxes and have less crime. If that means programs that spend money on people returning from prison, I’m fine with that.
Just off the top of my head, I’d say there are many “causes” for people to offend, and the prospects for rehabilitation depend on identifying that cause. If a person steals food because he is hungry, all you have to do to rehabilitate is feed hin. But if it is because he is a sociopath, you have an incurable pathology, and the person will behave selfishly for the rest of his life without remorse.
Many criminals are just opportunists, who see crime opportunity as a low hanging fruit, but would not spend much time planning a criminal lifestyle. Often, for such criminals, just being caught once and enduring the criminal justice system is all it takes to ensure behavior adjustment.
The criminal justice system has a pretty spotty record, in terms of addressing causes of criminality and sorting out offenders according to the most appropriate method of rehabilitation. Do the crime, do the time. Next case?
The problem is your program will have an effect that goes beyond the ex-cons who are in it. If you start giving money to ex-cons to start up their own businesses that you aren’t giving to people who didn’t commit crimes, you’re incentivizing crime. And like anything that’s incentivized, crime is going to increase in response.
There’s also the reality that money is only one of the things needed to start a business. People starting up their own business need both the skills for the product they’re selling and for running a business. And as any business owner will tell you, you need to put a lot of personal effort into getting your business going and making it a success. Even putting the money aside, operating your own business is probably ten times as difficult as being an employee at somebody else’s business.
So if you’re encouraging ex-cons to start up their own businesses rather than looking for jobs, you’re setting up a lot of them for failure. Many of them who might have made a living as an employee are going to go broke as a business owner.
I’m always open to better solutions.
What have you got?
That’s probably going to depend a lot on the specifics of the law. NY City’s law is not generally referred to as “ban the box”. Because it does much more than ban the box. It also prohibits employers from conducting background checks until they have made a conditional offer of employment. My guess is that this will probably be more successful than laws that simply ban the question on the application but allow it to be brought up in an interview - but there is also a wrinkle. I recall reading somewhere ( don’t have a cite) that “ban the box” has decreased the hiring rates of black and Hispanic males - and it’s entirely possible that “ban the box” could help those with convictions even while it’s detrimental to the larger group.
If I had a great solution, I’d have tried it. My experience has been that it’s really difficult to rehabilitate somebody. It takes a lot of time and money to even make a good effort. And it won’t work unless the person has at least some interest in being rehabilitated.
Prison rehabilitation is worth some effort but, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be the primary focus. It’s the most difficult place to stop crime.
So I think we should offer opportunities and assistance to those prisoners who want to be rehabilitated. But our main efforts towards preventing future crime and future imprisonment should be focused towards addressing the conditions in society that lead to crime and imprisonment. A million dollars spent in schools and community centers will have more effect than ten million dollars spent in prisons.
When my son began working as a corrections officer in a Florida prison, I read Ted Conover’s book Newjack. (He was a reporter who got a job in a prison so he could write about the experience) One thing he discussed was the length of time and expense necessary to build a new prison. We spend money to house future criminals while those criminals are still kids in school. Maybe spending that money on educating them would be a better approach.
(BTW, thanks to @Elvis1ives for the book recommend. My son has completed his probationary period with flying colors. He also has been trained/certified in the use of various weapons and gotten raise in pay. He is also now certified in “extraction”. He likes his job. )
Why not? That’s why we pay everyone else.
Most criminal are criminals because they have severe personality disorders of every kind you can imagine. Education will certainly help them, training skills will also help but that won’t cure the under lying problems. They tend to respond to socially unacceptable behavior. Reprogramming is not so easy.
In the vast majority of cases that is a window dressing requirement. Background checks cost money, and most employers are not going to spend that money until they have A) tendered a conditional offer; and B) that offer has been accepted.
As a hiring manager I have been in the position of extending an offer and then having to change plans a week later when the person could not pass the background check. It would have been nice to know that up front, but the company is not going to spend the money any sooner in the process.
Most? I would be very surprised if this were true. This doesn’t take into consideration factors like, economy, poverty, education, opportunity ,passion, desperation, mistakes in judgement, mistakes in prosecution, civil disobedience, oppression. . .
Rehabilitation, may not be effective in some of these cases, but to just write off most of the prison population as irredeemable is not productive.
mc
I haven’t been getting my checks for not committing crimes.
The problem with this idea is, as I mentioned above, the incentive it creates. If you start paying people who’ve committed one crime to not commit a second crime, you’re incentivizing them to not commit those second crimes. But you’re also incentivizing everyone else to commit a first crime so they can get in on the program.
I think he meant that your weekly paycheck helps you to not commit crimes.
This, to me, is a ridiculous notion. It’s reminiscent of the arguments against welfare; that we were incentivizing people to remain poor. And the evidence shows that, despite what Paul Ryan and his buddies may say, it is just not true.
We pay people who are injured for their medical expenses, this does not incentivize people to get injured.
Certainly, there will be those who try to scam the system; there will be in any system. I don’t know if programs that give monetary assistance to ex-cons to try to reduce recidivism will work, but it’s worth not dismissing the idea out of hand because you think someone might be tempted to game the program.
mc
I didn’t suggest writing them off. I believe in the opportunity to rehabilitate. I certainly would not consider giving them money to start a business. I believe in giving incentives like if you behave a certain way in prison you will qualify for various programs. It is not one of those programs you can simply throw money at.
The point about welfare is that you’ll still be pretty poor after receiving it. So nobody’s going to give up a middle class lifestyle to go on welfare and live a life of poverty. And nobody wants to be injured or sick which prevents health care from being incentivizing.
But if a program genuinely improves your life, why wouldn’t you take it? You’d be a fool not to and most people aren’t fools.
If you make being an ex-con a more attractive situation than not being an ex-con, plenty of people are going to want to be ex-cons.
I don’t want to go to jail, do you?
mc
What is your opinion of the idea that lead poisoning was a major cause of crime, and that taking lead out of gasoline led to a drop in violent crime? Lead poisoning lowers IQ, makes it harder to manage emotions, reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, etc.
The cultural issues that lead to crime seem hard to fix though. Child abuse and child neglect; a culture that embraces crime as a way to obtain women, money and status; poverty and lack of job opportunities, environmental pollution; etc.