5 ms·

Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? These two things seem opposite to me, to the point of almost being incompatible.

by cout 5y ago

nix23 5y ago
For rehabilitation and protecting the public, there is not really a punishment-thinking in w.-europe prison-systems (not counting the UK)
tremon 5y ago
That's a succinct way to sum up the US prison system. Why would the two be incompatible?
- sammorrowdrums 5y ago
  Well, punitive generally means make them suffer, which likely counteracts progress towards rehabilitation. If you can accept "comprehending and accepting your crimes and their consequences, and having a genuine desire to return to society as a member of it looking to make a positive contribution" as punishement then they are compatible. But you want to transition somebody psychologically from being in the out-group "criminals" to re-joining the in-group of law-abiding citizens, and most purely punitive measures actively make a person feel further pushed into the out-group. You want strong incentives and support towards positive re-integration. I always thought that repeat offences ought to be the most damning statistic for prisons, and their performance and budget should mostly be influenced by success on that metric. Profit from holding prisoners and their labour are basically negative incentives to improve the repeat offending rates.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I mean, that’s one hypothesis among many. An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent. I think it’s overly simplistic to say that punishment is about suffering—parents might punish a child for bad behavior, but the goal isn’t to make them suffer (and indeed being grounded is hardly “suffering”) but rather to teach them good behavior. So we can at least say that in some cases punishment is compatible with rehabilitation. Notably, there can be a kind of dignity in discipline, and I think there’s a subtle distinction between that kind of dignified correction and cruelty. I can imagine a prison system with a redemptive quality where prisoners feel they’ve labored to redeem themselves to society (this requires society to esteem them accordingly to some degree) and learned a valuable trade in the process. I think liberals (myself included) would do better to cast that vision for prison reform, rather than the current messaging which IMO comes across as hyperbolic (e.g., “literal slavery”) and naive (prison should be a comfortable place and the rest will work itself out).
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      "An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent." But countless studies have shown that it's not an effective deterrent.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        I'm not sure they've shown that prison is ineffective as a deterrent, but I've heard of studies which indicate that returns on increasingly punitive measures diminish. "Prison is a not an effective deterrent" means that no one factors it into their calculus about whether or not to commit a crime, and that seems very hard to believe. To be quite clear, I don't believe that prison's sole value is a deterrent. I think there's an element of justice (criminals should have to pay for their crimes), an element of deterrence (prison should make criminals think twice--this feels intertwined with 'justice' and yet distinct), an element of rehabilitation (to the extent that we can rehabilitate prisoners, we should), but mostly I think there is significant social value in protecting innocent people by keeping harmful people away from innocent people. Even if the deterrent effect is nil and even if you don't believe in justice (or for many of my fellow liberals, you reserve 'justice' for crimes that offend you, such as white collar crimes), I would still keep prisons around for the protection of the innocent. That said, I have an optimistic view on the potential for prisons.
- SkyBelow 5y ago
  Rehabilitation implies getting help from people who can rehabilitate. While there is charity and volunteering to some extent, the needs of rehabilitation throughout society (not just in prison) is so great that the amount of work people are willing to give for free is not enough. For the freely given work, it becomes a question of who deserves it. Giving it to a prisoner who is supposed to be punished instead of a law abiding individual stuck at a dead end job appears to be rewarding the individual with bad behavior. The same reasoning also applies when there isn't enough free labor for rehabilitation and money is spent buying more labor. If at any point the rehabilitation offered within prisons is better than that offered for free outside of prisons then it becomes a reward. Rewards are generally viewed as incompatible with punishment and seen as cancelling out, when they are of similar scales.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    Being rehabilitated in a place where you have no freedom is generally not a reward. Working on yourself is hard and often painful. By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean. But we know that not offering these programs practically guarantees continued suffering. Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. There most certainly is enough social programs to go around, but our elected officials in America want to bolster the ultra wealthy and the mega corps instead. This is an artificial scarcity mindset that tries to make us pull each other down.
    - SkyBelow 5y ago
      >By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean. Is your help getting clean only offered to substance abusers that assaulted another person? If so, you might see why someone who is addicted, wants but can't afford help, and who hasn't assaulted someone might not appreciate the help only going to those who have assaulted another. If the help is offered to everyone who needs it, then the logic wouldn't apply. >Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. Where did I suggest such? I pointed out that there isn't enough purely from volunteering, meaning you'll have to spend money. I specifically pointed out that money could be spend buying more. >and money is spent buying more labor. Right there. My argument is that the money spent on buying more help follows the same issue. Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.
kingsuper20 5y ago
>Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state. Correlation vs. causation and all that, but given the likely lack of results from either punishment or rehabilitation, perhaps that is what happened here. https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Crime_Trends.001.jpg https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Cr...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state." The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime. Combine this with society mandating severely curtailed opportunities to participate in non-criminal work and you get a perfect storm where prisons churn out more hardened criminals, which leads to more crime, which leads to more prisoners.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    >The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime. As are the streets. In this model of 'removal', I'd say that the main point of a prison is to take a more crime prone demographic (by that I mean age, gender, ethnicity, location, wealth...the whole ball of wax) off the street until they are older and less likely to do things that the straights don't like. In the long run, I would expect for universal surveillance (and the increased ability to parse data we are seeing) to be the main driving force in social control rather than mere warehousing.
- aeternum 5y ago
  Why can't we have a system that provides both removal and rehabilitation? If I were designing a prison system, it would be a mini-society. Only a minimal set of rules would be specified and enforced by those outside the prison. The rest would be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.
  - 5y ago

Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? These two things seem opposite to me, to the point of almost being incompatible.

by cout 5y ago

Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? These two things seem opposite to me, to the point of almost being incompatible.

nix23 5y ago

For rehabilitation and protecting the public, there is not really a punishment-thinking in w.-europe prison-systems (not counting the UK)

tremon 5y ago

That's a succinct way to sum up the US prison system. Why would the two be incompatible?

sammorrowdrums 5y ago
Well, punitive generally means make them suffer, which likely counteracts progress towards rehabilitation. If you can accept "comprehending and accepting your crimes and their consequences, and having a genuine desire to return to society as a member of it looking to make a positive contribution" as punishement then they are compatible. But you want to transition somebody psychologically from being in the out-group "criminals" to re-joining the in-group of law-abiding citizens, and most purely punitive measures actively make a person feel further pushed into the out-group. You want strong incentives and support towards positive re-integration. I always thought that repeat offences ought to be the most damning statistic for prisons, and their performance and budget should mostly be influenced by success on that metric. Profit from holding prisoners and their labour are basically negative incentives to improve the repeat offending rates.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I mean, that’s one hypothesis among many. An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent. I think it’s overly simplistic to say that punishment is about suffering—parents might punish a child for bad behavior, but the goal isn’t to make them suffer (and indeed being grounded is hardly “suffering”) but rather to teach them good behavior. So we can at least say that in some cases punishment is compatible with rehabilitation. Notably, there can be a kind of dignity in discipline, and I think there’s a subtle distinction between that kind of dignified correction and cruelty. I can imagine a prison system with a redemptive quality where prisoners feel they’ve labored to redeem themselves to society (this requires society to esteem them accordingly to some degree) and learned a valuable trade in the process. I think liberals (myself included) would do better to cast that vision for prison reform, rather than the current messaging which IMO comes across as hyperbolic (e.g., “literal slavery”) and naive (prison should be a comfortable place and the rest will work itself out).
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent." But countless studies have shown that it's not an effective deterrent.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I'm not sure they've shown that prison is ineffective as a deterrent, but I've heard of studies which indicate that returns on increasingly punitive measures diminish. "Prison is a not an effective deterrent" means that no one factors it into their calculus about whether or not to commit a crime, and that seems very hard to believe. To be quite clear, I don't believe that prison's sole value is a deterrent. I think there's an element of justice (criminals should have to pay for their crimes), an element of deterrence (prison should make criminals think twice--this feels intertwined with 'justice' and yet distinct), an element of rehabilitation (to the extent that we can rehabilitate prisoners, we should), but mostly I think there is significant social value in protecting innocent people by keeping harmful people away from innocent people. Even if the deterrent effect is nil and even if you don't believe in justice (or for many of my fellow liberals, you reserve 'justice' for crimes that offend you, such as white collar crimes), I would still keep prisons around for the protection of the innocent. That said, I have an optimistic view on the potential for prisons.
SkyBelow 5y ago
Rehabilitation implies getting help from people who can rehabilitate. While there is charity and volunteering to some extent, the needs of rehabilitation throughout society (not just in prison) is so great that the amount of work people are willing to give for free is not enough. For the freely given work, it becomes a question of who deserves it. Giving it to a prisoner who is supposed to be punished instead of a law abiding individual stuck at a dead end job appears to be rewarding the individual with bad behavior. The same reasoning also applies when there isn't enough free labor for rehabilitation and money is spent buying more labor. If at any point the rehabilitation offered within prisons is better than that offered for free outside of prisons then it becomes a reward. Rewards are generally viewed as incompatible with punishment and seen as cancelling out, when they are of similar scales.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  Being rehabilitated in a place where you have no freedom is generally not a reward. Working on yourself is hard and often painful. By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean. But we know that not offering these programs practically guarantees continued suffering. Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. There most certainly is enough social programs to go around, but our elected officials in America want to bolster the ultra wealthy and the mega corps instead. This is an artificial scarcity mindset that tries to make us pull each other down.
  - SkyBelow 5y ago
    >By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean. Is your help getting clean only offered to substance abusers that assaulted another person? If so, you might see why someone who is addicted, wants but can't afford help, and who hasn't assaulted someone might not appreciate the help only going to those who have assaulted another. If the help is offered to everyone who needs it, then the logic wouldn't apply. >Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. Where did I suggest such? I pointed out that there isn't enough purely from volunteering, meaning you'll have to spend money. I specifically pointed out that money could be spend buying more. >and money is spent buying more labor. Right there. My argument is that the money spent on buying more help follows the same issue. Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.

kingsuper20 5y ago

>Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation? A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state. Correlation vs. causation and all that, but given the likely lack of results from either punishment or rehabilitation, perhaps that is what happened here. https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Crime_Trends.001.jpg https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Cr...

pmoriarty 5y ago
"A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state." The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime. Combine this with society mandating severely curtailed opportunities to participate in non-criminal work and you get a perfect storm where prisons churn out more hardened criminals, which leads to more crime, which leads to more prisoners.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime. As are the streets. In this model of 'removal', I'd say that the main point of a prison is to take a more crime prone demographic (by that I mean age, gender, ethnicity, location, wealth...the whole ball of wax) off the street until they are older and less likely to do things that the straights don't like. In the long run, I would expect for universal surveillance (and the increased ability to parse data we are seeing) to be the main driving force in social control rather than mere warehousing.
aeternum 5y ago
Why can't we have a system that provides both removal and rehabilitation? If I were designing a prison system, it would be a mini-society. Only a minimal set of rules would be specified and enforced by those outside the prison. The rest would be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.
- 5y ago