4 ms·

> At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well. WHAT! > Rehabilitation sounds societally useful, but the failures have been overwhelming. Justice?

> At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well. WHAT! > Rehabilitation sounds societally useful, but the failures have been overwhelming. Justice? Deterrence? WHAT! Mind sharing some sources? IMHO you have it completely backwards. I can point to plenty of European countries (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) that focus on rehabilitation, not punishment. Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US and their prisons don't look like 3rd world shitholes. They blow the US out of the water on every metric. If anything has failed (and spectacularly so), it's the idea that focusing your prison system on punishment works. I can't fathom what gave you a different idea.

YinglingLight 8y ago
>I can point to plenty of European countries (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) False equivalency and ignorance of demographic truths.
throwawaymath 8y ago
I think you misinterpreted their point. They don't mean rehabilitation as an ideal doesn't work. They mean rehabilitation as the goal of modern American incarceration has failed. People don't get rehabilitated. They become institutional criminals.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > They mean rehabilitation as the goal of modern American incarcetation has failed. It has not failed, because it is not, and has never been, in any meaningful sense, the goal of any of the American criminal justice systems. Specifically, none of them have been in any substantive way been designed around any evidence of what does or does not work in terms of rehabilitation. The US criminal justice systems focus on retribution and demonstration of moral outrage, not rehabilitation.
- Fjolsvith 8y ago
  > People don't get rehabilitated. They become institutional criminals. This is a blanket statement and not realistic. I've been through the system and knew a lot of guys who abhorred becoming institutional criminals. Please cite sources to support your claim.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I was just talking about what happens in the aggregate.
gridlockd 8y ago
> Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US... Not really true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Totally comparable to the US, Norway being an exception (as usual). > They blow the US out of the water on every metric. The US is a very large and diverse country and it's not structurally comparable to Germany, Netherlands and much less Norway (with 22% of GDP being oil exports). That would be cherry-picking. To draw any conclusions on the effectiveness of incarceration would require more careful analysis. > I can't fathom what gave you a different idea. Crime statistics and crime aren't the same thing. The point of prison sentences is no just punishment, it's deterrence. If you rarely convict anybody, your prisoner's rate is low, but the criminals are out on the street knowing they have nothing to fear. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16/why-germany-allows-certain-sex-offenders-to-go-unpunished/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5adc4927be61 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16... http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533-3.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin... https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradise-germany-a-great-place-for-money-laundering/23583058.html?ticket=ST-4326841-Sjd9atj1Pjni1cRz7Xct-ap5 https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradis...
- chmod775 8y ago
  > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Let's fact-check some of their numbers. Spoiler Alert: Their cited sources have completely different numbers. EDIT: I removed some examples that are probably correct according to their definition of recidivism (they only looked at prisoners -> offenders). Table 2. Germany 35% (them) vs 23% (source) They may have linked the wrong source here, since the source they provided is specific to people with psychotic disorders. So let's assume this is their source (the one they linked for Germany in Table 1): https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehrung_strafrechtliche_Sanktionen_Kurzbroschuere.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=8 https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehr... According to them the re-imprisonment rate is 35%, though the source says it's 23% (page 9, first paragraph). The re-imprisonment rate for juvenile offenders is 35% though and mentioned in the same paragraph. It's likely they just confused that.

YinglingLight 8y ago

>I can point to plenty of European countries (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) False equivalency and ignorance of demographic truths.

throwawaymath 8y ago

I think you misinterpreted their point. They don't mean rehabilitation as an ideal doesn't work. They mean rehabilitation as the goal of modern American incarceration has failed. People don't get rehabilitated. They become institutional criminals.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> They mean rehabilitation as the goal of modern American incarcetation has failed. It has not failed, because it is not, and has never been, in any meaningful sense, the goal of any of the American criminal justice systems. Specifically, none of them have been in any substantive way been designed around any evidence of what does or does not work in terms of rehabilitation. The US criminal justice systems focus on retribution and demonstration of moral outrage, not rehabilitation.
Fjolsvith 8y ago
> People don't get rehabilitated. They become institutional criminals. This is a blanket statement and not realistic. I've been through the system and knew a lot of guys who abhorred becoming institutional criminals. Please cite sources to support your claim.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I was just talking about what happens in the aggregate.

gridlockd 8y ago

> Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US... Not really true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Totally comparable to the US, Norway being an exception (as usual). > They blow the US out of the water on every metric. The US is a very large and diverse country and it's not structurally comparable to Germany, Netherlands and much less Norway (with 22% of GDP being oil exports). That would be cherry-picking. To draw any conclusions on the effectiveness of incarceration would require more careful analysis. > I can't fathom what gave you a different idea. Crime statistics and crime aren't the same thing. The point of prison sentences is no just punishment, it's deterrence. If you rarely convict anybody, your prisoner's rate is low, but the criminals are out on the street knowing they have nothing to fear. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16/why-germany-allows-certain-sex-offenders-to-go-unpunished/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5adc4927be61 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16... http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533-3.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin... https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradise-germany-a-great-place-for-money-laundering/23583058.html?ticket=ST-4326841-Sjd9atj1Pjni1cRz7Xct-ap5 https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradis...

chmod775 8y ago
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Let's fact-check some of their numbers. Spoiler Alert: Their cited sources have completely different numbers. EDIT: I removed some examples that are probably correct according to their definition of recidivism (they only looked at prisoners -> offenders). Table 2. Germany 35% (them) vs 23% (source) They may have linked the wrong source here, since the source they provided is specific to people with psychotic disorders. So let's assume this is their source (the one they linked for Germany in Table 1): https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehrung_strafrechtliche_Sanktionen_Kurzbroschuere.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=8 https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehr... According to them the re-imprisonment rate is 35%, though the source says it's 23% (page 9, first paragraph). The re-imprisonment rate for juvenile offenders is 35% though and mentioned in the same paragraph. It's likely they just confused that.