15 ms·

Turn Prisons into Colleges

200 points by brosirmandude 9y ago

trothamel 9y ago
It seems like giving criminals a free college education is the very definition of a perverse incentive.
- nicolashahn 9y ago
  So then maybe give everyone and inmates free college education.
- pstuart 9y ago
  We already have plenty of perverse incentives with prison, but on the supply side. Are you seriously suggesting that people would commit crimes to "get a free education"?
  - jpm_sd 9y ago
    In some cases, people do commit crimes to get free room and board, so it's not as far-fetched as you might think.
    - NuSkooler 9y ago
      People that do that have essentially be rejected from society already -- very often largely due to lack of education and opportunity.
  - tristanj 9y ago
    There are multiple cases where people commit crimes so they can get free prison medical care, so yes the incentives are out of wack.
    - bruceb 9y ago
      you can find edge cases for nearly anything. Is there any evidence more than a handful of people do this?
    - camgunz 9y ago
      The solution to this is to provide free health care outside of prison too. If someone needs something so desperately they're willing to give up their freedom to get it, the richest nation in history ought to be able to provide it for them.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - banned1 9y ago
    Are you suggesting that some people won’t?
  - exolymph 9y ago
    Some people will. Some people will do any damn thing. The real question is how many and will it be a significant enough portion to matter. My guess is no.
- tomswartz07 9y ago
  What if, hear me out, we make basic education free for everyone, including those in prison?
  - cat199 9y ago
    article makes 0 mention of this (not even one sentence); the only 'proposed delta' is prison education.. critique is fair in this context imho... which doesn't mean lowering the overall barrier to education is not a good idea and probably would reduce incarceration in the first place...
  - chapium 9y ago
    Its interesting to see this argument come up on HN. How would we control the costs? If tax paid education cannot keep up with the cost of schools should we put a ceiling on professor wages? I believe that would be a horrible idea since the best talent would begin seeking greener pastures. On the other hand, should we just keep increasing taxes instead? The evil of that is a It decreases in competition for universities to be efficient. The market answers both of these issues, whereas free education does not.
    - realbarack 9y ago
      Are professor wages really a substantial factor in increasing university costs? I don't know too much about the subject but I've always attributed it to (1.) the wide availability of student loans making it easy for college tuition to rise faster than is affordable and (2.) the crazy amount of expansion/construction/etc. that universities seem to be doing constantly.
      - monocasa 9y ago
        And (3.) total college administration wages increasing. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4738584 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4738584
  - banned1 9y ago
    Agree. How much more taxes do YOU pony up? Let’s say, $10k a year. Yes?
- david38 9y ago
  This is why a basic level of education that you can use to make a living should be free. It used to be. You used to be able to take shop in high school. A better way of putting it should be that prisons should educate people to the level of high school or county college, something that should have been available to them but wasn't because of whatever factors. This way they get no handout not available to others and at the same time get a second chance at a life away from crime.
  - zer00eyz 9y ago
    > You used to be able to take shop in high school. I don't think these sorts of jobs exist any more, or at least not in the quantity that they used to. I do think that job training (tangible, current skills) would be an appropriate replacement. My funny thought in writing this was that the only way it would happen is if we made Mike Rowe secretary of education.
- airstrike 9y ago
  You might be surprised to learn this, but incarceration isn't just about punishment. The idea is to rehabilitate inmates so that when they get out of prison they have skills they can employ onto something productive thus avoiding recidivism. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota-norway/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota...
  - chongli 9y ago
    You might be surprised to learn this, but incarceration isn't just about punishment. For some people it is. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "lock him up and throw away the key." For some people, all they care about is that society provides a mechanism to obviate their need to seek retribution personally.
- zbyte64 9y ago
  If someone wants to do one of those victim-less crimes to goto college then why not? A person rationally looking at incentives wouldn't go out of their way to aggravate their stay at prison college.
- kolpa 9y ago
  "middlebrow dismissal" : https://www.google.com/search?q="middlebrow+dismissal" https://www.google.com/search?q="middlebrow+dismissal"
bruceb 9y ago
At a previous job I had to turn people away that had felonies. Some of them just had drug related ones. Felt terrible about it. If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so. Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working. Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?
- kolpa 9y ago
  > Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again? The prison-industrial complex and their political pawns.
  - rukittenme 9y ago
    Do you have any evidence to support that nuanced and well-considered opinion?
    - mooneater 9y ago
      Not sure how anyone informed can question whether this is a thing, so I wonder kind of strange bar you may have for evidence. But this issue is well covered (see below for just a few examples), and I've never heard intelligent rebuttals. I would say at this point, the onus is on you to show why this is not how it works. - https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/criminal-justice-and-mass-incarceration https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/c... - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-privatization_b_1414467.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-priva... - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-pri...
      - lev99 9y ago
        I feel like you didn't adequately cover the "political pawns" phrase. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?utm_term=.7234d83ef992 https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
BrainInAJar 9y ago
This reads a lot like Pearson Education & such just want an in on the wildly profitable private prison industry
- GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
  If it cuts our cost by reducing recidivism, and reduces misery by reducing recidivism. then they are well entitles to the piece of the the budget pie they will earn.
- camgunz 9y ago
  This is a smart point; we should be careful to not just turn this into another corrupt slush fund. Education for prisoners should have the same standards as education for any other American, full stop.
- neutronicus 9y ago
  What's the only boondoggle bigger than Higher Education in the United States?
  - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
    I've not seen Pearson sniffing around the healthcare market.
    - manquer 9y ago
      Pearson does a lot of clinical assessments
creep 9y ago
> learning gives us a different understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and it provides us tools to become more empathetic This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time. But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example. But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.
- badpun 9y ago
  > How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.
  - Cyberdog 9y ago
    No ex-convict wants to return to prison. However, they've just been put in a position where all of their peers are also criminals, and getting a well-compensated job after release is incredibly difficult, especially if they do not already have specialized skills and education. So it's very easy to fall back into bad habits, especially if that's how they were paying the bills. Destigmatizing a criminal record when it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter) would help a lot, but the government doesn't seem too interested in helping out with that (though I hope the current low unemployment rates help in this regard). Prison education programs would also help. If the government is going to lock people in little boxes with other criminals, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, and seriously contend the point of it is to reduce recidivism, they need to be doing this sort of education at the very least.
sbussard 9y ago
It's symbolic of student loan debt
SamReidHughes 9y ago
"a study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showing that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison." Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  > Most people in prison are too stupid for college. [citation needed] on this incredibly inflammatory comment. Yes, people tend to end up in prison after a chain of bad decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent to the point of being incapable of learning things. Arguably, a successful drug dealer has far more real-world experience in economics than a college grad on the topic.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    I will point out that learning things and college are not the same thing. I feel that I know how to learn, but I am too 'stupid' to learn in a scholastic environment. It becomes a frustrating experience as you're left scrambling to learn using more effective methods in the off-hours and wasting your time the rest of the time. And I imagine frustration is already high among those in jail before you try to add more on them.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      Well, true; it's completely possible to get through college without picking up anything lasting. Class-time is a minority of the learning time. The basic idea is to gain a basic familiarization before class, then (during class) hopefully have the professor explain the same ideas in a different way and provide an opportunity to ask clarifying questions. Assignments should be structured to illustrate the concepts and encourage reaching a bit past what was taught. You shouldn't be doing the bulk of the learning in the classroom itself, IMO. Homework is for you. Tests are a final feedback of the result of the learning process. I guess my point is that learning in the "off-hours" is kind of the intention (and is part of the best-case scenario, as described above). 2 hours of lecture implies 4 hours (or more) of extra work, done outside of the classroom, on your own or with others. School should provide structure and guidance to learning (providing a schedule, and an appropriate order of concepts to learn). Learning itself is a separate process.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
This provides something for free to an inmate. The philosophy of those like Sheriff Arpaio and those politically aligned with him run counter to this. Where inmates are limited in water while living in tents outside in order to save money. Until we can extricate the culture of cruel and unusual punishment in the name of greed by those like Joe Arpaio, we'll not overcome the political hurdles of doing something nice for an inmate to reduce recidivism.
Cyberdog 9y ago
> Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students. In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.
- moosey 9y ago
  I do think there should be some English studies, but it should not be a primary focus. Reading books is a great way to help build empathy, and understanding how to read _well_ is a valuable tool in its own right.
  - Cyberdog 9y ago
    Okay, yes, to be clear, I don't disagree with you here. Certainly literature and especially grammar classes can be a part of this. But if the government is going to steal my money to pay for locking people in little boxes, but then allows them to get degrees in poetry and climatology instead of veterinary medicine or computer science, well, that's doubly insulting to me.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > get a job once the state lets them out of their cage Gross. The notion that colleges are supposed to be factories to create workers for jobs that probably won't exist by the time they graduate is bad enough; turning prisons into this is nothing short of a conflict of economic interest. Learning theoretical science, poetry, dance, music, etc. sounds very plausibly helpful for people who are incarcerated.
remir 9y ago
In my opinion, teaching meditation to inmates could change prisons in a significant way. You give them the tool that will allow them to cultivate inner peace, rewire their brain plus understand their own behavior by disengaging the "ego".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
xamuel 9y ago
Idea for a novel: Faced with a fierce job market, young academics scramble for prison jobs. To cut costs, they are roomed and boarded with the very prisoners they're there to teach...
- JoeDaDude 9y ago
  Add to that desperate young people looking to get ahead. They commit a crime in order to receive free education while incarcerated.
devy 9y ago
This reminds of the Shon Hopwood story from last year's CBS 60 Minutes.[1] [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-became-a-georgetown-law-professor/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-beca...
eviltandem 9y ago
For your crime you are sentenced to 3 phd's in the field of astrophysics with no chance of parole. May God have mercy on your soul.
- rajacombinator 9y ago
  Underrated comment ... education could very well be more punitive than the alternative!
- l9k 9y ago
  It would be fun to see some sentences given in terms of X qualifications instead of X time!
Sonnol53 9y ago
Education is really the key to more balanced equality. Giving "prisoners" more opportunities and options is a must.
jawns 9y ago
This whole piece reads like it's written by someone who has never set foot in an actual, general-population prison. The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access. In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track. Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living. So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism. Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.
- whataretensors 9y ago
  Prison was put in place as a catch all when we didn't understand all the ways humans could be broken. Now we have a better idea, but we don't use that information. Instead low iq career criminals are incarcerated with high iq crimes of passion like Hans Reiser. Then you add drug addicts and child molesters to the mix. Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. If he could have full access to a computer he would have likely continued to learn and build things. Instead we dump him with the rest of the dregs of society together into a broken system who's main role is retribution, which IMO is a human instinct we should fight against not codify. It seems a lot like the public school system in it's general lack of differentiation in regards to inputs(prisoners). In terms of a learning system, it's diverged.
  - foldr 9y ago
    > Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. Why not? He killed one already for no good reason. His high IQ just means he has less of an excuse. It doesn't make him a better person.
penglish1 9y ago
First, do no harm. But, sure, this seems like a good idea. But first, stop all the horrible stuff, currently hurting prisoners.
truculation 9y ago
The evolutionary reason prison exists is because it is cheaper to society and government than riot and vendetta. As society grows more peaceful perhaps the balance will tip in favour of no prisons and they'll be shut down by the powers that be.
jpao79 9y ago
Here are some interesting initiatives with interesting challenges: https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-programs/out-of-school-programs-case-studies/a/use-case-correctional-facilities https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-pro... "Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any. Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened." KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization: https://learningequality.org/about/ https://learningequality.org/about/ "In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi." https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ "Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
Maybe not colleges but schools. Someone I know went to prison. He was there for 5 plus years but learned absolutely nothing. Like it's been said, he came out worse than before. I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.
drewmol 9y ago
I'm a felon. Trafficking Marijuana. I considered the consequences, and knew it was very unlikely I would get sentenced to jail time, so for me the consequences played a role in the amount of marijuana I was willing to traffic(i.e. not enough to be likely jail time) What I vastly underestimated is the long term reduction in earning potential, and the level of instantly shut doors/disrespect that comes along with being a felon. Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it. Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring criminals. (the ones who got caught)
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  That is heart breaking. Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will be expunged eventually.
  - drewmol 9y ago
    Thanks, I do. However as time goes on, I'm less sure if I will, it's actually become a nice filter for excluding people I'd rather not work with/for.
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    > Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will be expunged eventually. I don't necessarily disagree with nixing arrests for personal amounts / use of Marijuana, even the "I sold my buddy a dime bag worth that one time," but once we get into serious commercial activity is it not valid to keep those particular convictions?
    - nate_meurer 9y ago
ggg9990 9y ago
In each state there is probably one prison worth of people who are capable of earning a college degree. They should be put in one place and encouraged to do so. The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be “stewed” in prison and then released upon you and me.
yters 9y ago
The point of punishment is not a Skinner box to use operant conditioning to bring about desired behavior. People are punished as a clear, unambiguous message that "you did wrong". This is the most humane option because it treats criminals as moral agents with free will who can change and choose what is good. These other "progressive" approaches treat a criminal like an irrational animal or child that must be conditioned. Consequently, the criminal learns their moral intuition is wrong, and to act irrationally and not accept responsibility for his or her own actions. A just penal code with appropriate punishment is the most humane and dignified way to treat criminals.
chibg10 9y ago
One concern I've always had when people discuss recidivism rates is that it's sort of impossible to find an effective control group, no? Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had. Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it. Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them." What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?
- canadaduane 9y ago
  We can compare prison systems across populations. Bastøy prison in Norway has a recidivism rate of just 16%. It seems that all things being equal (i.e. if you can assume that "personality" averages out of the statistical equation when comparing across human populations) then they are doing something very important and remarkable for their people there. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwegian-prison-works https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwe...
  - chibg10 9y ago
    I think it's interesting exploratory work, but you can't just assume that the "personality" of Norwegian prisoners is the same as American ones. There are vast environmental and cultural between the two populations that play a causal role in personalities; to assume that personality differences would "average out" is not a reasonable assumption. I don't mean to say that the Norwegian model can't or wouldn't work in the US, but it can't be considered any more than "exploratory" from a US policy perspective.

200 points by brosirmandude 9y ago

trothamel 9y ago

It seems like giving criminals a free college education is the very definition of a perverse incentive.

nicolashahn 9y ago
So then maybe give everyone and inmates free college education.
pstuart 9y ago
We already have plenty of perverse incentives with prison, but on the supply side. Are you seriously suggesting that people would commit crimes to "get a free education"?
- jpm_sd 9y ago
  In some cases, people do commit crimes to get free room and board, so it's not as far-fetched as you might think.
  - NuSkooler 9y ago
    People that do that have essentially be rejected from society already -- very often largely due to lack of education and opportunity.
- tristanj 9y ago
  There are multiple cases where people commit crimes so they can get free prison medical care, so yes the incentives are out of wack.
  - bruceb 9y ago
    you can find edge cases for nearly anything. Is there any evidence more than a handful of people do this?
  - camgunz 9y ago
    The solution to this is to provide free health care outside of prison too. If someone needs something so desperately they're willing to give up their freedom to get it, the richest nation in history ought to be able to provide it for them.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- banned1 9y ago
  Are you suggesting that some people won’t?
- exolymph 9y ago
  Some people will. Some people will do any damn thing. The real question is how many and will it be a significant enough portion to matter. My guess is no.
tomswartz07 9y ago
What if, hear me out, we make basic education free for everyone, including those in prison?
- cat199 9y ago
  article makes 0 mention of this (not even one sentence); the only 'proposed delta' is prison education.. critique is fair in this context imho... which doesn't mean lowering the overall barrier to education is not a good idea and probably would reduce incarceration in the first place...
- chapium 9y ago
  Its interesting to see this argument come up on HN. How would we control the costs? If tax paid education cannot keep up with the cost of schools should we put a ceiling on professor wages? I believe that would be a horrible idea since the best talent would begin seeking greener pastures. On the other hand, should we just keep increasing taxes instead? The evil of that is a It decreases in competition for universities to be efficient. The market answers both of these issues, whereas free education does not.
  - realbarack 9y ago
    Are professor wages really a substantial factor in increasing university costs? I don't know too much about the subject but I've always attributed it to (1.) the wide availability of student loans making it easy for college tuition to rise faster than is affordable and (2.) the crazy amount of expansion/construction/etc. that universities seem to be doing constantly.
    - monocasa 9y ago
      And (3.) total college administration wages increasing. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4738584 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4738584
- banned1 9y ago
  Agree. How much more taxes do YOU pony up? Let’s say, $10k a year. Yes?
david38 9y ago
This is why a basic level of education that you can use to make a living should be free. It used to be. You used to be able to take shop in high school. A better way of putting it should be that prisons should educate people to the level of high school or county college, something that should have been available to them but wasn't because of whatever factors. This way they get no handout not available to others and at the same time get a second chance at a life away from crime.
- zer00eyz 9y ago
  > You used to be able to take shop in high school. I don't think these sorts of jobs exist any more, or at least not in the quantity that they used to. I do think that job training (tangible, current skills) would be an appropriate replacement. My funny thought in writing this was that the only way it would happen is if we made Mike Rowe secretary of education.
airstrike 9y ago
You might be surprised to learn this, but incarceration isn't just about punishment. The idea is to rehabilitate inmates so that when they get out of prison they have skills they can employ onto something productive thus avoiding recidivism. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota-norway/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota...
- chongli 9y ago
  You might be surprised to learn this, but incarceration isn't just about punishment. For some people it is. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "lock him up and throw away the key." For some people, all they care about is that society provides a mechanism to obviate their need to seek retribution personally.
zbyte64 9y ago
If someone wants to do one of those victim-less crimes to goto college then why not? A person rationally looking at incentives wouldn't go out of their way to aggravate their stay at prison college.
kolpa 9y ago
"middlebrow dismissal" : https://www.google.com/search?q="middlebrow+dismissal" https://www.google.com/search?q="middlebrow+dismissal"

bruceb 9y ago

At a previous job I had to turn people away that had felonies. Some of them just had drug related ones. Felt terrible about it. If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so. Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working. Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?

kolpa 9y ago
> Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again? The prison-industrial complex and their political pawns.
- rukittenme 9y ago
  Do you have any evidence to support that nuanced and well-considered opinion?
  - mooneater 9y ago
    Not sure how anyone informed can question whether this is a thing, so I wonder kind of strange bar you may have for evidence. But this issue is well covered (see below for just a few examples), and I've never heard intelligent rebuttals. I would say at this point, the onus is on you to show why this is not how it works. - https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/criminal-justice-and-mass-incarceration https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/c... - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-privatization_b_1414467.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-priva... - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-pri...
    - lev99 9y ago
      I feel like you didn't adequately cover the "political pawns" phrase. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?utm_term=.7234d83ef992 https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...

BrainInAJar 9y ago

This reads a lot like Pearson Education & such just want an in on the wildly profitable private prison industry

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
If it cuts our cost by reducing recidivism, and reduces misery by reducing recidivism. then they are well entitles to the piece of the the budget pie they will earn.
camgunz 9y ago
This is a smart point; we should be careful to not just turn this into another corrupt slush fund. Education for prisoners should have the same standards as education for any other American, full stop.
neutronicus 9y ago
What's the only boondoggle bigger than Higher Education in the United States?
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
  I've not seen Pearson sniffing around the healthcare market.
  - manquer 9y ago
    Pearson does a lot of clinical assessments

creep 9y ago

> learning gives us a different understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and it provides us tools to become more empathetic This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time. But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example. But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.

badpun 9y ago
> How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  No ex-convict wants to return to prison. However, they've just been put in a position where all of their peers are also criminals, and getting a well-compensated job after release is incredibly difficult, especially if they do not already have specialized skills and education. So it's very easy to fall back into bad habits, especially if that's how they were paying the bills. Destigmatizing a criminal record when it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter) would help a lot, but the government doesn't seem too interested in helping out with that (though I hope the current low unemployment rates help in this regard). Prison education programs would also help. If the government is going to lock people in little boxes with other criminals, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, and seriously contend the point of it is to reduce recidivism, they need to be doing this sort of education at the very least.

sbussard 9y ago

It's symbolic of student loan debt

SamReidHughes 9y ago

"a study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showing that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison." Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.

Cyberdog 9y ago
> Most people in prison are too stupid for college. [citation needed] on this incredibly inflammatory comment. Yes, people tend to end up in prison after a chain of bad decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent to the point of being incapable of learning things. Arguably, a successful drug dealer has far more real-world experience in economics than a college grad on the topic.
- randomdata 9y ago
  I will point out that learning things and college are not the same thing. I feel that I know how to learn, but I am too 'stupid' to learn in a scholastic environment. It becomes a frustrating experience as you're left scrambling to learn using more effective methods in the off-hours and wasting your time the rest of the time. And I imagine frustration is already high among those in jail before you try to add more on them.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Well, true; it's completely possible to get through college without picking up anything lasting. Class-time is a minority of the learning time. The basic idea is to gain a basic familiarization before class, then (during class) hopefully have the professor explain the same ideas in a different way and provide an opportunity to ask clarifying questions. Assignments should be structured to illustrate the concepts and encourage reaching a bit past what was taught. You shouldn't be doing the bulk of the learning in the classroom itself, IMO. Homework is for you. Tests are a final feedback of the result of the learning process. I guess my point is that learning in the "off-hours" is kind of the intention (and is part of the best-case scenario, as described above). 2 hours of lecture implies 4 hours (or more) of extra work, done outside of the classroom, on your own or with others. School should provide structure and guidance to learning (providing a schedule, and an appropriate order of concepts to learn). Learning itself is a separate process.

kevin_b_er 9y ago

This provides something for free to an inmate. The philosophy of those like Sheriff Arpaio and those politically aligned with him run counter to this. Where inmates are limited in water while living in tents outside in order to save money. Until we can extricate the culture of cruel and unusual punishment in the name of greed by those like Joe Arpaio, we'll not overcome the political hurdles of doing something nice for an inmate to reduce recidivism.

Cyberdog 9y ago

> Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students. In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.

moosey 9y ago
I do think there should be some English studies, but it should not be a primary focus. Reading books is a great way to help build empathy, and understanding how to read _well_ is a valuable tool in its own right.
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  Okay, yes, to be clear, I don't disagree with you here. Certainly literature and especially grammar classes can be a part of this. But if the government is going to steal my money to pay for locking people in little boxes, but then allows them to get degrees in poetry and climatology instead of veterinary medicine or computer science, well, that's doubly insulting to me.
jMyles 9y ago
> get a job once the state lets them out of their cage Gross. The notion that colleges are supposed to be factories to create workers for jobs that probably won't exist by the time they graduate is bad enough; turning prisons into this is nothing short of a conflict of economic interest. Learning theoretical science, poetry, dance, music, etc. sounds very plausibly helpful for people who are incarcerated.

remir 9y ago

In my opinion, teaching meditation to inmates could change prisons in a significant way. You give them the tool that will allow them to cultivate inner peace, rewire their brain plus understand their own behavior by disengaging the "ego".

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

xamuel 9y ago

Idea for a novel: Faced with a fierce job market, young academics scramble for prison jobs. To cut costs, they are roomed and boarded with the very prisoners they're there to teach...

JoeDaDude 9y ago
Add to that desperate young people looking to get ahead. They commit a crime in order to receive free education while incarcerated.

devy 9y ago

This reminds of the Shon Hopwood story from last year's CBS 60 Minutes.[1] [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-became-a-georgetown-law-professor/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-beca...

eviltandem 9y ago

For your crime you are sentenced to 3 phd's in the field of astrophysics with no chance of parole. May God have mercy on your soul.

rajacombinator 9y ago
Underrated comment ... education could very well be more punitive than the alternative!
l9k 9y ago
It would be fun to see some sentences given in terms of X qualifications instead of X time!

Sonnol53 9y ago

Education is really the key to more balanced equality. Giving "prisoners" more opportunities and options is a must.

jawns 9y ago

This whole piece reads like it's written by someone who has never set foot in an actual, general-population prison. The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access. In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track. Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living. So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism. Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.

whataretensors 9y ago
Prison was put in place as a catch all when we didn't understand all the ways humans could be broken. Now we have a better idea, but we don't use that information. Instead low iq career criminals are incarcerated with high iq crimes of passion like Hans Reiser. Then you add drug addicts and child molesters to the mix. Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. If he could have full access to a computer he would have likely continued to learn and build things. Instead we dump him with the rest of the dregs of society together into a broken system who's main role is retribution, which IMO is a human instinct we should fight against not codify. It seems a lot like the public school system in it's general lack of differentiation in regards to inputs(prisoners). In terms of a learning system, it's diverged.
- foldr 9y ago
  > Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. Why not? He killed one already for no good reason. His high IQ just means he has less of an excuse. It doesn't make him a better person.

penglish1 9y ago

First, do no harm. But, sure, this seems like a good idea. But first, stop all the horrible stuff, currently hurting prisoners.

truculation 9y ago

The evolutionary reason prison exists is because it is cheaper to society and government than riot and vendetta. As society grows more peaceful perhaps the balance will tip in favour of no prisons and they'll be shut down by the powers that be.

jpao79 9y ago

Here are some interesting initiatives with interesting challenges: https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-programs/out-of-school-programs-case-studies/a/use-case-correctional-facilities https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-pro... "Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any. Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened." KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization: https://learningequality.org/about/ https://learningequality.org/about/ "In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi." https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ "Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

Maybe not colleges but schools. Someone I know went to prison. He was there for 5 plus years but learned absolutely nothing. Like it's been said, he came out worse than before. I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.

drewmol 9y ago

I'm a felon. Trafficking Marijuana. I considered the consequences, and knew it was very unlikely I would get sentenced to jail time, so for me the consequences played a role in the amount of marijuana I was willing to traffic(i.e. not enough to be likely jail time) What I vastly underestimated is the long term reduction in earning potential, and the level of instantly shut doors/disrespect that comes along with being a felon. Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it. Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring criminals. (the ones who got caught)

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
That is heart breaking. Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will be expunged eventually.
- drewmol 9y ago
  Thanks, I do. However as time goes on, I'm less sure if I will, it's actually become a nice filter for excluding people I'd rather not work with/for.
- mieseratte 9y ago
  > Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will be expunged eventually. I don't necessarily disagree with nixing arrests for personal amounts / use of Marijuana, even the "I sold my buddy a dime bag worth that one time," but once we get into serious commercial activity is it not valid to keep those particular convictions?
  - nate_meurer 9y ago

ggg9990 9y ago

In each state there is probably one prison worth of people who are capable of earning a college degree. They should be put in one place and encouraged to do so. The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be “stewed” in prison and then released upon you and me.

yters 9y ago

The point of punishment is not a Skinner box to use operant conditioning to bring about desired behavior. People are punished as a clear, unambiguous message that "you did wrong". This is the most humane option because it treats criminals as moral agents with free will who can change and choose what is good. These other "progressive" approaches treat a criminal like an irrational animal or child that must be conditioned. Consequently, the criminal learns their moral intuition is wrong, and to act irrationally and not accept responsibility for his or her own actions. A just penal code with appropriate punishment is the most humane and dignified way to treat criminals.

chibg10 9y ago

One concern I've always had when people discuss recidivism rates is that it's sort of impossible to find an effective control group, no? Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had. Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it. Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them." What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?

canadaduane 9y ago
We can compare prison systems across populations. Bastøy prison in Norway has a recidivism rate of just 16%. It seems that all things being equal (i.e. if you can assume that "personality" averages out of the statistical equation when comparing across human populations) then they are doing something very important and remarkable for their people there. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwegian-prison-works https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwe...
- chibg10 9y ago
  I think it's interesting exploratory work, but you can't just assume that the "personality" of Norwegian prisoners is the same as American ones. There are vast environmental and cultural between the two populations that play a causal role in personalities; to assume that personality differences would "average out" is not a reasonable assumption. I don't mean to say that the Norwegian model can't or wouldn't work in the US, but it can't be considered any more than "exploratory" from a US policy perspective.