6 ms·

Clearly wherever this is (US?) prisons are not about rehabilitation and inclusion back into society. Weren't there any classes? Books? Library? Computer rooms?

• FpUser 6y ago
  >"IMHO it may just increase recidivism" Keeping people in prisons might be just what the US prison industrial complex wants.
  • Ccecil 6y ago
    Not sure why you got downvoted here. Private prisons are very much a thing in the US and in my state. Not to mention the Federal prison Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries Revenue $531,453,000 (2019) "Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job.[4][12] Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts" And that is just one of them...on the federal level...not state.
    • FpUser 6y ago
      >"Not sure why you got downvoted here" Some patriots probably got offended.
      • meowster 6y ago
        Please don't unnecessarily bring politics into the discussion. (It wasn't me, I don't have enough karma to downvote.)
        • TimothyBJacobs 6y ago
          Do you think prison reform is not a political topic?
        • FpUser 6y ago
          This is just too rich. I am not the one who brought politics here. This would be more properly directed to the people who start political topics. And there are plenty of these topics on HN. Looking at this disproportional reaction it feels like we have stakeholders here.
          • meowster 6y ago
            > I am not the one who brought politics here. You're a better person than that. tu quoque fallacy
            • FpUser 6y ago
              Why pick me then? Go few levels up. I do not consider tu quoque being fallacy either. "Do as I say, not as I do" I think describes the situation much better.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• Ccecil 6y ago
  It varies by state, region and facility. Don't forget that there are privately owned prisons in the US. Some programs do not allow you access to certain materials and when they do very likely may be old/outdated. And of course...it just adds to their money if people reoffend.
• soneil 6y ago
  I'm less convinced it's a failure of the system, but more an expectation of the system. Just look at the replies on the twitter post. They amount to "shouldn't have done the crime then". Get raped/attacked in prison? Whoops, shouldn't have done the crime then. Released unprepared and institutionalized after 3 decades in prison? Whoops, shouldn't have done the crime then. I strongly suspect there's a lot less interest in rehabilitation than we like to think. Being let down by a profit-driven incarceration system is only one facet of this.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    > Get raped/attacked in prison? Whoops, shouldn't have done the crime then. It's more than this - tough-on-crime rhetoric is largely explicitly built around interracial (black on white) homosexual rape and abuse fantasies.
  • kyooyk 6y ago
    There’s a lack of addressing mental health issues inside. There’s a lack of people thinking about what some people have dealt with since children and why they ended up inside. People wonder why there is recidivism or why people end up in jail. A lot of it has to do with the lack of opportunity and mentorship in peoples lives starting with childhood...and then especially after turbulent times, never introducing itself ever to these individuals. It’s not like people want to end up like this. For many of these individuals they’ve never had the support and opportunities many of us don’t realize we’re so lucky to have.
• tim44 6y ago
  Budgets are stretched thin as it is. They have only three ways to spend the taxpayers' money for prisons: More walls, more bars, more guards. My uncle wrote the state senate two times a week for years requesting funds, they couldn't ignore him forever. But getting out, he couldn't believe how fast things move on the outside, like the world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.