4 ms·

It most definitely isn't a priority: If it were, the US would look at other countries with lower recidivism rates and spend a bit more on things like mental hea

It most definitely isn't a priority: If it were, the US would look at other countries with lower recidivism rates and spend a bit more on things like mental health care, halfway houses, job placement, and so on.

ska 7y ago
I'm hedging a bit because I don't have a good sense of how things are country wide, but there are some clear cases where it is not.
zoonosis 7y ago
While I agree that the US prison system has many issues, recidivism rates can't really be compared between countries because of differences in time frames and rearrest vs re-conviction. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/
- robocat 7y ago
  The issue is not about comparing recidivism rates. It is whether the US is looking at the results achieved by other countries and whether the US is trying to emulate successful strategies. As a sweeping generalisation, I see that the US says "that doesn't apply to us", always finding some weird excuse. Your invalid response is kind of an example.
  - wahern 7y ago
    How do you "[look] at the results achieved by other countries" if those results aren't reported? It's a fairly common sentiment that the U.S. penal system is heavily skewed toward retribution than reformation.[1] But identifying a problem on the one hand, and quantifying and addressing it on the other, are two entirely separate tasks. The latter is typically much more difficult.[2] [1] Justice Anton Scalia admitted as much in court, "Well, I thought that modern penology has abandoned that rehabilitation thing, and they--they no longer call prisons reformatories or--or whatever, and punishment is the--is the criterion now. Deserved punishment for crime." Oral argument, Miller v. Alabama, 2012. [2] Thus the quip, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." A reformulation of a Charles Dudley Warner quote, who, interestingly, also seems to have been an advocate for prison reform in his time, among many other civic and political reforms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner and https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+done%22#v=snippet&q=%22little%20done%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+....

ska 7y ago

I'm hedging a bit because I don't have a good sense of how things are country wide, but there are some clear cases where it is not.

zoonosis 7y ago

While I agree that the US prison system has many issues, recidivism rates can't really be compared between countries because of differences in time frames and rearrest vs re-conviction. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/

robocat 7y ago
The issue is not about comparing recidivism rates. It is whether the US is looking at the results achieved by other countries and whether the US is trying to emulate successful strategies. As a sweeping generalisation, I see that the US says "that doesn't apply to us", always finding some weird excuse. Your invalid response is kind of an example.
- wahern 7y ago
  How do you "[look] at the results achieved by other countries" if those results aren't reported? It's a fairly common sentiment that the U.S. penal system is heavily skewed toward retribution than reformation.[1] But identifying a problem on the one hand, and quantifying and addressing it on the other, are two entirely separate tasks. The latter is typically much more difficult.[2] [1] Justice Anton Scalia admitted as much in court, "Well, I thought that modern penology has abandoned that rehabilitation thing, and they--they no longer call prisons reformatories or--or whatever, and punishment is the--is the criterion now. Deserved punishment for crime." Oral argument, Miller v. Alabama, 2012. [2] Thus the quip, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." A reformulation of a Charles Dudley Warner quote, who, interestingly, also seems to have been an advocate for prison reform in his time, among many other civic and political reforms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner and https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+done%22#v=snippet&q=%22little%20done%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+....