8 ms·

Because incarceration is penitentiary, which means criminals are made to pay for their crimes - not to be rehabilitated. There other countries where incarcerati

Because incarceration is penitentiary, which means criminals are made to pay for their crimes - not to be rehabilitated. There other countries where incarceration works, for example Norway [1] - primary because they focus in rehabilitation. Incarceration is not the problem, the typical opinion of the purpose of incarceration is (justice through revenge). Incarceration is 100% effective for what America wants it to achieve: penance. [1]: https://m.phys.org/news/2016-08-norwegian-prisons-criminal.html https://m.phys.org/news/2016-08-norwegian-prisons-criminal.h...

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Incarceration is 100% effective for what America wants it to achieve: penance. “Punishment”, perhaps. It's far less than 100% effective for penance, which is voluntary, self-imposed, and done as an outward sign of genuine acceptance of responsibility and desire to make amends.
- zamalek 8y ago
  Wrong choice of words, you're right.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    "Expiation" might be the word you're looking for.
    - gnode 8y ago
      I would say that "expiation" is not a suitable word. Incarceration neither compensates those who are wronged, nor does it atone / redeem -- the incarcerated person is still typically regarded a criminal / felon upon release.
- ilovetux 8y ago
  This, a thousand times! Our criminal justice system is in fact based on penance, but forced penance is a flawed concept. In order to get a lighter sentence (or later parole) perpetrators are expected to show penance for what they did, but they are coached in what to say so it is usually a lie which causes a rift between society and the offender which is almost irreparable. This follows a line of "counter-culture" mentality, an us-vs-them mind-set which is divisive and self-reinforcing. The same problem comes with the war on drugs, if someone experiments with drugs at a young age and consequentially finds that they like drugs then they are forced into a counter-culture where escape is difficult at best. Edit: removed some superfluous words for readability.
atlantic 8y ago
Correct. The primary purpose of incarceration is retributive justice, not rehabilitation; and although the punishment will often lead the perpetrator to see the error of his ways, that is not the goal. In that sense, a prison sentence is always effective.
nostalgeek 8y ago
> There other countries where incarceration works, for example Norway [1] The Nordic model works in Norway because of Norway's society and culture. It wouldn't work in US, or South Africa or El Salvador because of what level of violence is deemed acceptable in those countries. You can try to transpose the Nordic model in US all you want it is not going to work because these are different societies bound by different civil contracts and cultures. Plenty of societies and countries have a prison system that doesn't focus on rehabilitation,at all, yet the level of violence is still inferior to US by a long shot.
- realusername 8y ago
  > It wouldn't work in US, or South Africa or El Salvador because of what level of violence is deemed acceptable in those countries. The US prison system and the harsh police also contribute to violence, people are more violent because you are violent with them, it works as a feedback loop.
  - nostalgeek 8y ago
    > The US prison system and the harsh police also contribute to violence, people are more violent because you are violent with them, it works as a feedback loop. chicken and egg problem. I don't think US society was ever "not violent". It isn't more violent today than it was in the 80's at least.
    - arcticbull 8y ago
      Great, so let's call it a day then, no need to try. This is fine.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I'm not sure this hypothesis holds up. For instance consider places like Singapore. It is relentlessly brutal against criminals. Even relatively petty crime like vandalism is subject to corporal punishment - caning. Yet there is no feedback loop - the country has practically no crime, and I think this is in large part thanks to the people and culture of the area. Or consider Japan. They have a 99% conviction rate, and a big part of that is because it's an open secret that police will torture confessions out of people they arrest. But once again a different people with a different culture and we see an incredibly low crime rate. For this matter we can perhaps even look at the US! Violent crime rates have been plummeting since the early 90s even though that has been paired with a sharp increase in the public perception of police violence. If there was a feedback loop then we would expect it to have been going sharply in the other direction!
EliRivers 8y ago
Because incarceration is penitentiary, which means criminals are made to pay for their crimes - not to be rehabilitated. It's a pretty stupid form of payment, I should say. They lose time and opportunity and so on, so they definitely paid something. The state paid a fortune for their incarceration, so the state is also out of pocket. The criminals are paying for their crimes, but they're not paying society. They're not paying the victim. Society actually pays as well! This is so ridiculous. The criminal AND the state are paying for the crimes.
- zamalek 8y ago
  Exactly. There are obviously situations that call for incarceration because there are individuals who have to be kept away from society (diagnosed psychopaths). However, simple incarceration is a dreadful solution so far as raw justice goes. If the criminal were instead rehabilitated, they would have to live the remainder of their life under the weight of their own guilt. Revenge is the quick or easy way out, for everyone.
peterwwillis 8y ago
Penitentiary means a place to become penitent, which means to repent for your sins. It was not meant to simply have people pay for their crimes (retribution) but instead to reform the offender by making them see the error of their ways and getting them to ask for forgiveness. Prison reform movements began to push for both deterrence and rehabilitation over simple punishment in the 17th century. This started with British houses of correction, where people were taught how to make a living for themselves rather than beg or steal. The Penitentiary Act introduced solitary confinement, religious instruction, a labor regime, proposed two state penitentiaries, and abandoned gaolers' fees. (These were never built, though) At the same time, capital punishment for minor crimes no longer seemed palatable, so simply being detained also became part of the punishment itself. In America in the 19th century, states began to implement plans for prisons to be places of reform and penitence, such as the New York system, and the Pennsylvania system, which placed offenders into solitary cells with nothing other than religious literature, and forced them to be completely silent to reflect on their wrongs. Eastern State Penitentiary is one of those, and still stands in Philadelphia as a tourist attraction. It's a building that in some ways even feels like a church or cloister. Current American prisons are not designed for penance or penitence.
nabla9 8y ago
At least in Finland (Nordic country) almost all people in prisons have reduced impulse control in one way or another. Severe alcohol dependency or drug addiction, personality disorders, often combined, attention deficit disorders or other neurological abnormalities. People get into trouble with law mainly because they have reduced judgment. Idea that longer sentence makes them think twice simply can't work with them. It might work for white collar crime, but that's not usually what is suggested.
unit91 8y ago
This may have been true in the past, but times are changing, at least in Texas. In fact, I teach a class every week to 33 prisoners, inside the prison itself. Rehabilitation is absolutely the goal.
- zamalek 8y ago
  That's amazing. Have you seen any positive results yet?
  - unit91 8y ago
    Hard to say at this point. We talk a lot about controlling anger, conquering addictive tendencies, etc. but the real test is when they get out. Drugs are everything. I'd say 90% of these guys are in prison because they were addicted to drugs of various kinds, and it wrecked their lives as they grew desperate to support their habit. Master the drugs, you master the crime.
    - tasty_freeze 8y ago
      How much of the drug taking was due to some other ill that isn't being addressed? Eg, were they draw to drugs because of high unemployment, poverty, loss of hope?
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  Are the "for profit" prisons posting losses each quarter yet?

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Incarceration is 100% effective for what America wants it to achieve: penance. “Punishment”, perhaps. It's far less than 100% effective for penance, which is voluntary, self-imposed, and done as an outward sign of genuine acceptance of responsibility and desire to make amends.

zamalek 8y ago
Wrong choice of words, you're right.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  "Expiation" might be the word you're looking for.
  - gnode 8y ago
    I would say that "expiation" is not a suitable word. Incarceration neither compensates those who are wronged, nor does it atone / redeem -- the incarcerated person is still typically regarded a criminal / felon upon release.
ilovetux 8y ago
This, a thousand times! Our criminal justice system is in fact based on penance, but forced penance is a flawed concept. In order to get a lighter sentence (or later parole) perpetrators are expected to show penance for what they did, but they are coached in what to say so it is usually a lie which causes a rift between society and the offender which is almost irreparable. This follows a line of "counter-culture" mentality, an us-vs-them mind-set which is divisive and self-reinforcing. The same problem comes with the war on drugs, if someone experiments with drugs at a young age and consequentially finds that they like drugs then they are forced into a counter-culture where escape is difficult at best. Edit: removed some superfluous words for readability.

atlantic 8y ago

Correct. The primary purpose of incarceration is retributive justice, not rehabilitation; and although the punishment will often lead the perpetrator to see the error of his ways, that is not the goal. In that sense, a prison sentence is always effective.

nostalgeek 8y ago

> There other countries where incarceration works, for example Norway [1] The Nordic model works in Norway because of Norway's society and culture. It wouldn't work in US, or South Africa or El Salvador because of what level of violence is deemed acceptable in those countries. You can try to transpose the Nordic model in US all you want it is not going to work because these are different societies bound by different civil contracts and cultures. Plenty of societies and countries have a prison system that doesn't focus on rehabilitation,at all, yet the level of violence is still inferior to US by a long shot.

realusername 8y ago
> It wouldn't work in US, or South Africa or El Salvador because of what level of violence is deemed acceptable in those countries. The US prison system and the harsh police also contribute to violence, people are more violent because you are violent with them, it works as a feedback loop.
- nostalgeek 8y ago
  > The US prison system and the harsh police also contribute to violence, people are more violent because you are violent with them, it works as a feedback loop. chicken and egg problem. I don't think US society was ever "not violent". It isn't more violent today than it was in the 80's at least.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    Great, so let's call it a day then, no need to try. This is fine.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I'm not sure this hypothesis holds up. For instance consider places like Singapore. It is relentlessly brutal against criminals. Even relatively petty crime like vandalism is subject to corporal punishment - caning. Yet there is no feedback loop - the country has practically no crime, and I think this is in large part thanks to the people and culture of the area. Or consider Japan. They have a 99% conviction rate, and a big part of that is because it's an open secret that police will torture confessions out of people they arrest. But once again a different people with a different culture and we see an incredibly low crime rate. For this matter we can perhaps even look at the US! Violent crime rates have been plummeting since the early 90s even though that has been paired with a sharp increase in the public perception of police violence. If there was a feedback loop then we would expect it to have been going sharply in the other direction!

EliRivers 8y ago

Because incarceration is penitentiary, which means criminals are made to pay for their crimes - not to be rehabilitated. It's a pretty stupid form of payment, I should say. They lose time and opportunity and so on, so they definitely paid something. The state paid a fortune for their incarceration, so the state is also out of pocket. The criminals are paying for their crimes, but they're not paying society. They're not paying the victim. Society actually pays as well! This is so ridiculous. The criminal AND the state are paying for the crimes.

zamalek 8y ago
Exactly. There are obviously situations that call for incarceration because there are individuals who have to be kept away from society (diagnosed psychopaths). However, simple incarceration is a dreadful solution so far as raw justice goes. If the criminal were instead rehabilitated, they would have to live the remainder of their life under the weight of their own guilt. Revenge is the quick or easy way out, for everyone.

peterwwillis 8y ago

Penitentiary means a place to become penitent, which means to repent for your sins. It was not meant to simply have people pay for their crimes (retribution) but instead to reform the offender by making them see the error of their ways and getting them to ask for forgiveness. Prison reform movements began to push for both deterrence and rehabilitation over simple punishment in the 17th century. This started with British houses of correction, where people were taught how to make a living for themselves rather than beg or steal. The Penitentiary Act introduced solitary confinement, religious instruction, a labor regime, proposed two state penitentiaries, and abandoned gaolers' fees. (These were never built, though) At the same time, capital punishment for minor crimes no longer seemed palatable, so simply being detained also became part of the punishment itself. In America in the 19th century, states began to implement plans for prisons to be places of reform and penitence, such as the New York system, and the Pennsylvania system, which placed offenders into solitary cells with nothing other than religious literature, and forced them to be completely silent to reflect on their wrongs. Eastern State Penitentiary is one of those, and still stands in Philadelphia as a tourist attraction. It's a building that in some ways even feels like a church or cloister. Current American prisons are not designed for penance or penitence.

nabla9 8y ago

At least in Finland (Nordic country) almost all people in prisons have reduced impulse control in one way or another. Severe alcohol dependency or drug addiction, personality disorders, often combined, attention deficit disorders or other neurological abnormalities. People get into trouble with law mainly because they have reduced judgment. Idea that longer sentence makes them think twice simply can't work with them. It might work for white collar crime, but that's not usually what is suggested.

unit91 8y ago

This may have been true in the past, but times are changing, at least in Texas. In fact, I teach a class every week to 33 prisoners, inside the prison itself. Rehabilitation is absolutely the goal.

zamalek 8y ago
That's amazing. Have you seen any positive results yet?
- unit91 8y ago
  Hard to say at this point. We talk a lot about controlling anger, conquering addictive tendencies, etc. but the real test is when they get out. Drugs are everything. I'd say 90% of these guys are in prison because they were addicted to drugs of various kinds, and it wrecked their lives as they grew desperate to support their habit. Master the drugs, you master the crime.
  - tasty_freeze 8y ago
    How much of the drug taking was due to some other ill that isn't being addressed? Eg, were they draw to drugs because of high unemployment, poverty, loss of hope?
mrguyorama 8y ago
Are the "for profit" prisons posting losses each quarter yet?