Ok, that’s not a very good link, thisis a better one for the same stats.
There is no acceptable intention there, and being “troubled” is no excuse, so I guess I’m part of the ranks of “throw away the key”.
Nationmaster 
Tell me, is there anything about that link you would consider… unintuitive? Does it seem to fit with what you know about countries and the world in general? Is there anything in that link that you think wouldn’t pass through a bullshit filter?
There is evidence that smaller prisons do a better job in rehabilitation, there have been many reviews and reports on prisons, the latest one reiterates pretty much what all the previous ones state, dressing their findings up in new clothes, the only difference is that its yet another set of politicians trying to put their spin on it.
The current white paper can be found here
This is pretty much the summary of the much more detailed document I have, unfortunately I cannot find it online - I also doubt you’d want to read al 68 pages (although I have to do this - given that I will be part of the consultation process in a small way)
You can look at the latest summary of evidence on what actually does work
If you wish to scrutinise all 58 pages, however I have read so many reports dating back years and years - they generally come around to very similar conclusions.
Community sentencing tends to work better, the most likely to reoffend are those on shortest sentences, and the younger you are the more likely you will keep offending.
That might seem to speak of locking offenders up for longer periods, but the overarching evidence is that not locking most of them up is the most effective way of all for most offenders. The reason is that the shortest periods of imprisonment are generally applied to the younger offenders, and once institutionalised, they learn more about offending and learn the prison attitude.
Keeping them out of prisons keeps them out of the peer group that operates within prisons.
Here is something very much simplified, it mentions the main reasons or problems that surround offending,
http://prisonlinks.co.uk/the-7-pathways-to-reduce-reoffending/
As for looking back at previous reports, I remember wading through this report and checking out the cited evidence within it, and yet it still remains true
If you do go through that particular report, you’ll notice a different government, building a report upon the bones of other research with reports that all pretty much say the same things, you can go back 30-40 years and see exactly the same themes, education, mental health, drug dependency, social exclusion.
You need to ask why, if we have know these things for so long and had so many expert reports, why is it that we never actually address the things that we know are the main triggers for crime - its largely because politicians use crime as a campaign issue, with promises of change, the public buy the same old stuff again and again.
You, really, yes I do mean you! You have no real interest in reducing offending other than looking for simplistic platitudes from self interested political figures who are only trying to obtain your vote - you actually have no real knowledge or real concern over what goes on inside prisons - all you want to see is that someone suffers for your pain, and someone is locked up. As to what goes on within the prison fence - you are not interested.
The crime you have and the reoffending you have is your choice, you vote for idiots who put up a manifesto of reduced spending, cuts to services that the most marginalised edges of society depend upon, so that your taxes are not wasted - and then you moan about crime and rates of recidivism,
Believe it or not, we in the UK prisons have endured budgetary cuts of over 30% over the last few years, I have seen at least 25% of my colleagues leave and not be replaced, I have seen pay structure cuts so that new staff are paid over 1/3 less.
Lets get this right, you can spend as little as you wish by voting for on criminal justice if you want, but please do not wring your hands in desperation or sadness if reoffending goes up, your vote helped cause the problems we have,
Personally I think that the price of these cuts is not much of a bargain compared to the cost of the rise in reoffending, this is currently put at £15 billion per year, its really a fools economic exercise to cut prison budgets by £1 billion per year, only to see reoffending create costs that are several times that amount.
Justice is very expensive, but the alternative is far more costly
Here is what some prison reformers think of the current situation
http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/PressPolicy/News/vw/1/ItemID/378
This is my workplace, I have seen the number of prisoners under my direct control go up, I have see the number of staff go down, I have seen violence go up, drug taking go up, I have seen sentence length go up and I have seen the time I have to manage the workplace go down - because contact time with prisoners has been increased under the ideology of the current flavour of government.
I used to teach useful skills to prisoners, however those classes were cut, which means that when prisoners learn about construction or catering skills, they cannot get a job because they do not have the construction site safety training, or the food handling qualifications that are required before they even walk into the employers business.
I have also noted that as prison size has increased, prisoners are less easily controlled making the work of anyone involved in rehabilitation all that more difficult.
This is not a post from a distant interested party, this is what I do, this is what I experience, I have read many of the reports, indeed I have contributed to a number of them with numbers and citations.
You want reduced crime, then you are going to have to pay for it, it is that simple.
Part of the rehabilitation process may be helping them get a legitimate job. Part of it is society being willing to let them have legitimate jobs. My Idiot Cousin didn’t need the first, but he’s been happily taking advantage of the second since he finished his stint in prison. And as for “knowing it was wrong”, not really; he knew distributing happy pills was banned but hadn’t realized it was wrong until he met some people who’d been hooked on drugs for years (that is, until he went to prison). Idiot Cousin will never have a superfabulous job but given the shitty childhood and education he had (verbal, sexual and physical abuse; middle-school dropout), “shift manager at a gas station” with a fully paid-off house and a fully paid-off car isn’t bad at all.
The barman at one of my favorite restaurants did time. I’ve been served by supermarket cashiers who did time. I don’t know why any of them did and it’s no business of mine, but it actually makes me happy to see people who at some point fucked up that big working decent jobs. I know a guy who used to sell drugs but unlike my Idiot Cousin he didn’t get caught: his come-to-Jesus took place when one of his friends OD’d on what he’d brought; the former “druggist” took backbreaking day jobs for some time, until he’d built enough of a reputation as having cleaned up that he started getting hired to do what he trained for, electrical work. Now he’s got an electrical company with two partners. That is what rehab is about.
Those are great definitions of rehabilitation, and great “success” stories too. I don’t know if prison can help with that at all, but there do need to be programs for people in these positions after release, at least for those who did not commit violent crimes or fraud. (I don’t think businesses will be happy about employing fraudsters…)
I can picture someone not knowing the magic mushrooms or happy pills they were selling were illegal, or for some pills even harmful or addictive*, and getting set straight. It’s quite different with violent crime, however. I’m not sure how such a convict could be rehabilitated. (Nobody doesn’t realize assault and battery is wrong, unless they have a really serious mental problem.)
*Magic mushrooms aren’t addictive, so I couldn’t care less if someone sells them to adults. I would treat it like alcohol. Don’t drive high, don’t show up at work high, but if you don’t want to use them at home go ahead.
What level of violent crime, and what age? Another cousin works with troubled teens in what used to be called a reformatory. His students often come from the kind of homes where yelling is just the prelude to hitting; they have no idea how to react to a teacher whose response to a snarled “I’m not planting no pansies” is “ok then, so don’t plant pansies. The rest of us, take two pansies and a set of tools each and let’s go plant pansies.” Eventually they figure out that planting pansies is more entertaining than staring at the asses of a bunch of teenagers planting pansies.
Those kids can do better. But they need teachers and they need baby pansies in little flower pots, and a garden in which to plant the little flowers.
I think one reason Americans are tough on crime, and oppose rehabilitation, is because rehabilitation comes across to them as a “you get one freebie crime” deal. It comes across to some people’s ears as, *“We won’t punish you this time, if we can somehow ensure that you don’t commit this crime again in the future.” *Like you can somehow get away with one robbery, if you forego all future robberies, or one theft, if you forego future thefts.
It’s like as if a football player commits a foul, but rather than being flagged and penalized for it, the referee gives him a talk and says, “Now I don’t want to see you commit pass interference again, you hear me? Understood? Good.”
I’m not saying this is how rehabilitation programs are necessarily run, but that this is how some people *perceive *it - they perceive it as a slap on the wrist, or as a crime not being properly addressed.
tbh, I couldn’t take US crime reporting data seriously.
47million people living in poverty and the crime is lower, right …
This isn’t really helping me. The kid in question was a kid, was not yelled at, and did not attack the teacher or otherwise do anything violent. They wouldn’t go to jail or get expelled. I think I see the beginning of the communication, but the example wouldn’t result in the kid’s life being ruined.
Could it be that those are the ones who actually commit more crimes???
If by “the kid in question” you mean the ones who don’t want to plant whatever they’re planting on that day or whatever else the day’s task is, those kids are in jail. Well, juvie. By the reckoning of the “rehabilitation is not possible” people, their life is already over, might as well turn them into soylent green already. Having their heads exploded by my cousin then lets other teachers grab the pieces and try to rebuild a functional human being.
Velocity, both casdave and I are talking about rehabilitation not as an alternative to prison, but within prison contexts.
I know a lot of Americans have this pre-Talionic, scarlet letter mindset… I can’t for the life of me understand why, but then, I rejected the God of Punishment a long time ago. Some people seem to think that he exists but only for others, as they themselves are always perfectly righteous (and when they break a rule it’s ok, as they are they and they can do no wrong; it’s other people who do). Why are there people who still believe that “one eye for one eye” isn’t enough, it should be “one eye, one kidney, testicle and a half and one lung for one eye”? We can’t answer why they are more common in the US until we know why they are in the first place.
I think one of the major differences in US Prisons, when compared to UK or European Prisons is that in America, the Prisons are penitentiaries. The regime is brutal, de-humanising and designed to break inmates down. It’s one thing to take a man’s freedom away, and incarcerate him into a controlled environment, but unless the environment offers a humane, respectful regime, all that happens is you release a more dangerous breed of criminal.
It’s no good trying to address crime by locking transgressors up in an environment where violence, and fear of violence is the dominating factor. When convicts are released after spending any significant period in such a place, the fear of being locked up again just makes criminals more likely to escalate into more violent patterns of crime, not less likely to continue committing crimes after release. For one thing, a prisoner who went in with no gang related ties, is going to come out with at least some level of gang connections. If not actively affiliated, he will have been running with hardened gang-bangers inside, who’ll think nothing of using their connections to coerce paroled ex-cons into further gang related criminality after release.
The primary purpose of any prison system is to reduce crime levels, and this objective is completely nullified if the end product of it’s process is to produce a better, more proficient and more violent criminal. And the harder the sentencing policy of the Judiciary towards re-offenders becomes, the more brutal and potentially violent prisoners are upon release.
So rather than addressing it’s primary objective of crime reduction, having a penal system that actually exacerbates crime rates as a result of it’s process, isn’t making America a safer place for the average citizen. The current system seems to concentrate on the punishment of offenders at the cost of public safety, spending, and integrity of it duty of care, which really begs a total re-examination of what function "Punishment"should actually serve in society. Sentences of life, with no possibility of parole are not just harsh, they subvert the whole purpose and definition of punishment, which is primarily to address an offender’s aberrational behavior patterns, with a view to teach the offender new, more socially acceptable ways of behaving.
Without offering this, most imperative opportunity to reform, the whole dynamic ceases to be one of punishment, and becomes something else entirely. And no matter what heinous crime an offender has committed, to intentionally cause the remainder of his life to be one long act of suffering, pain, and deprivation with no incentive to try and become a better person, or make any effort to address his anti social issues whatsoever, just as much of a crime against not only the individual, but against society in general, as any crime that currently inspires such draconian and inhuman treatment of another sentient human.
To pay another man to ensure that the sentence of the Court is carried out, as stipulated by the Judge also de-humanises the Jailor, who has to go home every night and live among a humanity that becomes less and less valuable with every shift he completes is no task to set another person to carry out. To watch incarcerated men with no hope of reform lose their humanity en masse, bit by bit, day by day will leave indelible stains on the souls of even the most saintly of men, and no amount of monetary recompense is enough incentive to ensure your fellow man loses his hope, his dignity, and his humanity day by day. To enforce that magnitude of inhumanity upon another man cannot, in all honesty ,be given to good men to ensure, and the only other option is that other bad men be given the responsibility.
So the penal system just becomes a mindless machine that grinds away the souls of everyone connected to it. That includes every single American citizen who stands by in the knowledge that so many lives are being systematically ruined beyond redemption, on their behalf, paid for by their taxes, sanctioned by their elected representatives with such a magnitude of failing to deliver any positive effect whatsoever upon crime levels or public safety, should be a National shame that sets everything America imagines about itself being an enlightened and freedom embracing Nation back to a worse level of squalid repression than that which their ancestors fled Westwards from centuries ago. Raise the fucking bar, for the sake of every scrap of decency you want to feel regarding your Natonal identity. Make it better. Make yourselves functional. Or you will implode and die like every other tyrannical Empire in history. No-one wants that to happen. You each have some duty to be better than that…