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Your criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The US prison system is not intended to rehabilitate anyone, and does not do so. Usually, criminals a

Your criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The US prison system is not intended to rehabilitate anyone, and does not do so. Usually, criminals are even worse when they are released due to the time they've spent with other hardened criminals, being abused, forming criminal connections, and learning how to do crime more effectively. As a result, it's perfectly rational to track those people and be wary of them. The restitution angle is at least an argument, but treating the system as transactional in the sense that you break the balance by committing a crime then pay it back through slave work in jail is perhaps one of the few ways to make the system even more dysfunctional than it already is.

BeetleB 8y ago
>Your criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The US prison system is not intended to rehabilitate anyone, Depends on your definition of rehabilitate. From the Bureau of Prisons web site: >We protect public safety by ensuring that federal offenders serve their sentences of imprisonment in facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and provide reentry programming to ensure their successful return to the community >As a result, it's perfectly rational to track those people and be wary of them. If you agree with the premise that jails are making criminals even worse, the more rational answer would be not to send them there to begin with, right? After all, if you put people in jail and release them, you are making society worse off. It would be more rational to keep them in prison forever. I think the most rational approach, though, is to fix the prison system and provide proper rehabilitation. Accepting that we incarcerate people, and release them in a way that makes the public unsafe, is a poor option. >but treating the system as transactional in the sense that you break the balance by committing a crime then pay it back through slave work in jail is perhaps one of the few ways to make the system even more dysfunctional than it already is. This is a strawman - no one here is suggesting slave work, or even any work, in jail as a measure of rehabilitation.

BeetleB 8y ago

>Your criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The US prison system is not intended to rehabilitate anyone, Depends on your definition of rehabilitate. From the Bureau of Prisons web site: >We protect public safety by ensuring that federal offenders serve their sentences of imprisonment in facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and provide reentry programming to ensure their successful return to the community >As a result, it's perfectly rational to track those people and be wary of them. If you agree with the premise that jails are making criminals even worse, the more rational answer would be not to send them there to begin with, right? After all, if you put people in jail and release them, you are making society worse off. It would be more rational to keep them in prison forever. I think the most rational approach, though, is to fix the prison system and provide proper rehabilitation. Accepting that we incarcerate people, and release them in a way that makes the public unsafe, is a poor option. >but treating the system as transactional in the sense that you break the balance by committing a crime then pay it back through slave work in jail is perhaps one of the few ways to make the system even more dysfunctional than it already is. This is a strawman - no one here is suggesting slave work, or even any work, in jail as a measure of rehabilitation.