4 ms·

"Rehabilitation" is in many cases a misnomer. There's a difference between Rehabilitating someone who developed a problem and Habilitating someone who was never

"Rehabilitation" is in many cases a misnomer. There's a difference between Rehabilitating someone who developed a problem and Habilitating someone who was never taught to think with a moral compass. People in the US could be convinced to get behind major prison reform if the reformers weren't so insistent on representing every felon as Jean Valjean.

at_a_remove 4y ago
I was watching an interesting video of a young woman who had just gotten a DUI. She didn't understand why it was a "thing" because she hadn't hit anyone. She managed to argue herself into two months in the county jail because she didn't understand and did not want to understand. She also tried, briefly, to make a case that she was too attractive for prison. Upon questioning, it was fairly clear that she would go on to reoffend. I saw another video of five teens who liked throwing heavy rocks over a busy overpass. They had done this more than once. Of course, they ended up killing someone, after which text messages were exchanged with much LOL and LFMOA and HAHAHA. Apparently, they had pre-planned some kind of defense where everyone would agree that the eldest of the bunch was the only one throwing the rocks, as well. The four youngest got a year of probation. The eldest got three and a quarter years in prison. He's out and the rest are long clear of their probation. I am unsure what could be done to rehabilitate these individuals rather than merely coercing lip service from them.
- throwway120385 4y ago
  I am equally unsure. But I believe we have a responsibility to try to help the weakest members of our society become better people, and if that means locking them up for a while and trying to teach them a moral compass that's what we should try even if it's doomed to failure. It can't be any worse than what we're currently doing.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Psychopathic individuals mainly use therapy as post-graduate training in how to simulate human emotion. Just ask some shrinks. They don't learn a moral compass; they learn how to pretend they have one. Of course, not all inmates are psychopathic, but 15-25% manifest those traits, according to https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy.
    - strken 4y ago
      How meaningful is it to manifest psychopathic trait to a clinically significant degree? If you look at them, they include impulsivity, risk taking, and violence. Of course prisoners will be impulsive, take risks, and/or be violent! That's how a lot of them end up in prison! There is something of a jump from there to the pop science understanding of psychopathy. It's not clear that everyone who displays some of those traits is going to display all the others, that a pattern of risky violence means someone is automatically beyond help, that the stats on psychopaths aren't including lots of people with other underlying problems that fully explain their behaviour, or that anyone else who goes to a therapist is doing anything radically different from simulating normal human behaviour.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        > the pop science understanding of psychopathy the reference I gave is not pop science. Your debunking and pooh-pooh'ing is unpersuasive. This is a professional association publishing that, and they do have shrinks in prison. "About 1.2% of U.S. adult men and 0.3% to 0.7% of U.S. adult women are considered to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. Those numbers rise exponentially in prison, where 15% to 25% of inmates show these characteristics (Burton, B., & Saleh, F. M., Psychiatric Times, Vol. 37, No. 10, 2020). "
        strken 4y ago
        I'm not debunking anything, I'm asking how meaningful manifesting traits to a "clinically significant" level actually is. If I shoot my neighbour's dog in broad daylight then show no remorse it's probably manifesting psychopathic traits to a clinically significant degree, but it doesn't mean it would be totally worthless to send me to a psychiatrist. It may not even mean that I meet the threshold to be diagnosed as an actual psychopath, under whatever contorted DSM-V diagnosis it currently sits. Your reference has no bearing on the answer to that question and in fact notes that 30% of the population display some traits of psychopathy, which is the entire point here. If you squint hard enough, you can label 30% of the population as psychopaths; if you're also convinced it's useless to send them to therapy, you can use the label to deny them mental health care and stick them in prison. I'm worried that a broad and underspecified definition of psychopathy combines with an overstated inability to treat them, in a way that is morally bankrupt and tantamount to just giving up.
  - quacked 4y ago
    "Two social workers walk past a man lying beaten and bloody on the ground, moaning for help. One turns to the other and says 'My God, whoever did this needs our help.'" The weakest in society are those who are taken advantage of by the morally bankrupt, not the morally bankrupt themselves. However, I agree that what we are currently doing is worse than almost every alternative.
- noirscape 4y ago
  General (not targeted) guidance counseling once they're out of prison probably would help here. Just help to get them back on their feet for the woman. Regular checkups, seeing how she's doing, giving the indication someone cares about her. This can do a lot to help someone understand what they did wrong and can help them understand that being a part of society means thinking about others as well. (Chiefly, don't do this in a way that's denigrating to her as a person.) Involve CPS with all the teenagers. The woman probably had other things in her life that caused her to end up with that remorseless of a personality - granted I suspect a part of this might also just be the American general tendency to take rights as "fuck you got mine", instead of "we have to share this place together", which might be hard to deal with (assuming this is US). The teenagers probably had inattentive parents or a bad school life, which turned them to doing shit that is pretty much harassing people that eventually would get someone killed. It sounds almost certain like there's secondary circumstances involved - petty theft is usually scared out (since teenagers tend to do it because of the "taboo", the fact that most kids don't see real consequences of their actions until then and finally that it's seen as the least egregious crime that isn't like... a speeding violation or a parking ticket), but if that defense is as you say, it sounds more deliberate and more deeply rooted. Crimes are sometimes a symptom of other things, not the cause.
  - quacked 4y ago
    You are clearly well-meaning, but your suggestions indicate a lack of familiarity with the mindset and behaviors of people that become chronically involved with the criminal justice system. You are not going to teach a mindless drunk driver by indicating to them, via a state-employed official, that "someone cares about them". You're not going to convince a teenager that hurting people is wrong by having them speak to a social worker with a caseload. Children learn their moral systems from years of active and passive indoctrination into their parents' and peers' culture. If you want to reorient someone's moral compass by instilling values that no one ever taught them, and are not present in the culture in which they live outside of prison, you're going to need something a hell of a lot more potent than regular appointments with a therapist. > Crimes are sometimes a symptom of other things, not the cause. Chronic criminality is the result of moral systems that are calibrated and reinforced by violent and uncivilized cultures. This goes doubly for "rich" criminals, who display their immoral behavior through war and the stock market. Reforming a petty criminal or a serial abuser is as difficult as reforming a corporate executive taking kickbacks. They don't see a problem with it.
rqtwteye 4y ago
"People in the US could be convinced to get behind major prison reform if the reformers weren't so insistent on representing every felon as Jean Valjean." It's pretty crazy to blame the current situation on reformers. In reality it's the war on drugs and "tough on crime". I know a lot of normally reasonable people who think prisoners deserve to be raped in prison and don't deserve health care.
- Paul-Craft 4y ago
  Right. It's well known that Nixon started the "War on Drugs" as a way to target hippies and black people. And "tough on crime" has just led to people spending more time in prison in spite of falling crime rates: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2020/oct/1/new-study-shows-tough-crime-generation-spent-more-time-prison-despite-falling-crime-rate/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2020/oct/1/new-study-sh...
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Gotta keep those private prisons full. We need more cheap and free labor!
- quacked 4y ago
  I did not say that the current situation was created by the reformers, merely that the existing US prison reform movements lack the support they need to move the needle because they are controlled by people who are far too broadly optimistic and sympathetic to prisoners. I view prison reform as the most important--not among the most important, the most important--step in beginning to change modern US society for the better. I know many prison activists and was raised in a culture of people who volunteered in prisons and in legal efforts to reform prisons and assist prisoners. They are too sympathetic and the way they frame their cause reduces the amount of support they receive from the general public.

at_a_remove 4y ago

I was watching an interesting video of a young woman who had just gotten a DUI. She didn't understand why it was a "thing" because she hadn't hit anyone. She managed to argue herself into two months in the county jail because she didn't understand and did not want to understand. She also tried, briefly, to make a case that she was too attractive for prison. Upon questioning, it was fairly clear that she would go on to reoffend. I saw another video of five teens who liked throwing heavy rocks over a busy overpass. They had done this more than once. Of course, they ended up killing someone, after which text messages were exchanged with much LOL and LFMOA and HAHAHA. Apparently, they had pre-planned some kind of defense where everyone would agree that the eldest of the bunch was the only one throwing the rocks, as well. The four youngest got a year of probation. The eldest got three and a quarter years in prison. He's out and the rest are long clear of their probation. I am unsure what could be done to rehabilitate these individuals rather than merely coercing lip service from them.

throwway120385 4y ago
I am equally unsure. But I believe we have a responsibility to try to help the weakest members of our society become better people, and if that means locking them up for a while and trying to teach them a moral compass that's what we should try even if it's doomed to failure. It can't be any worse than what we're currently doing.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Psychopathic individuals mainly use therapy as post-graduate training in how to simulate human emotion. Just ask some shrinks. They don't learn a moral compass; they learn how to pretend they have one. Of course, not all inmates are psychopathic, but 15-25% manifest those traits, according to https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy.
  - strken 4y ago
    How meaningful is it to manifest psychopathic trait to a clinically significant degree? If you look at them, they include impulsivity, risk taking, and violence. Of course prisoners will be impulsive, take risks, and/or be violent! That's how a lot of them end up in prison! There is something of a jump from there to the pop science understanding of psychopathy. It's not clear that everyone who displays some of those traits is going to display all the others, that a pattern of risky violence means someone is automatically beyond help, that the stats on psychopaths aren't including lots of people with other underlying problems that fully explain their behaviour, or that anyone else who goes to a therapist is doing anything radically different from simulating normal human behaviour.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      > the pop science understanding of psychopathy the reference I gave is not pop science. Your debunking and pooh-pooh'ing is unpersuasive. This is a professional association publishing that, and they do have shrinks in prison. "About 1.2% of U.S. adult men and 0.3% to 0.7% of U.S. adult women are considered to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. Those numbers rise exponentially in prison, where 15% to 25% of inmates show these characteristics (Burton, B., & Saleh, F. M., Psychiatric Times, Vol. 37, No. 10, 2020). "
      - strken 4y ago
        I'm not debunking anything, I'm asking how meaningful manifesting traits to a "clinically significant" level actually is. If I shoot my neighbour's dog in broad daylight then show no remorse it's probably manifesting psychopathic traits to a clinically significant degree, but it doesn't mean it would be totally worthless to send me to a psychiatrist. It may not even mean that I meet the threshold to be diagnosed as an actual psychopath, under whatever contorted DSM-V diagnosis it currently sits. Your reference has no bearing on the answer to that question and in fact notes that 30% of the population display some traits of psychopathy, which is the entire point here. If you squint hard enough, you can label 30% of the population as psychopaths; if you're also convinced it's useless to send them to therapy, you can use the label to deny them mental health care and stick them in prison. I'm worried that a broad and underspecified definition of psychopathy combines with an overstated inability to treat them, in a way that is morally bankrupt and tantamount to just giving up.
- quacked 4y ago
  "Two social workers walk past a man lying beaten and bloody on the ground, moaning for help. One turns to the other and says 'My God, whoever did this needs our help.'" The weakest in society are those who are taken advantage of by the morally bankrupt, not the morally bankrupt themselves. However, I agree that what we are currently doing is worse than almost every alternative.
noirscape 4y ago
General (not targeted) guidance counseling once they're out of prison probably would help here. Just help to get them back on their feet for the woman. Regular checkups, seeing how she's doing, giving the indication someone cares about her. This can do a lot to help someone understand what they did wrong and can help them understand that being a part of society means thinking about others as well. (Chiefly, don't do this in a way that's denigrating to her as a person.) Involve CPS with all the teenagers. The woman probably had other things in her life that caused her to end up with that remorseless of a personality - granted I suspect a part of this might also just be the American general tendency to take rights as "fuck you got mine", instead of "we have to share this place together", which might be hard to deal with (assuming this is US). The teenagers probably had inattentive parents or a bad school life, which turned them to doing shit that is pretty much harassing people that eventually would get someone killed. It sounds almost certain like there's secondary circumstances involved - petty theft is usually scared out (since teenagers tend to do it because of the "taboo", the fact that most kids don't see real consequences of their actions until then and finally that it's seen as the least egregious crime that isn't like... a speeding violation or a parking ticket), but if that defense is as you say, it sounds more deliberate and more deeply rooted. Crimes are sometimes a symptom of other things, not the cause.
- quacked 4y ago
  You are clearly well-meaning, but your suggestions indicate a lack of familiarity with the mindset and behaviors of people that become chronically involved with the criminal justice system. You are not going to teach a mindless drunk driver by indicating to them, via a state-employed official, that "someone cares about them". You're not going to convince a teenager that hurting people is wrong by having them speak to a social worker with a caseload. Children learn their moral systems from years of active and passive indoctrination into their parents' and peers' culture. If you want to reorient someone's moral compass by instilling values that no one ever taught them, and are not present in the culture in which they live outside of prison, you're going to need something a hell of a lot more potent than regular appointments with a therapist. > Crimes are sometimes a symptom of other things, not the cause. Chronic criminality is the result of moral systems that are calibrated and reinforced by violent and uncivilized cultures. This goes doubly for "rich" criminals, who display their immoral behavior through war and the stock market. Reforming a petty criminal or a serial abuser is as difficult as reforming a corporate executive taking kickbacks. They don't see a problem with it.

rqtwteye 4y ago

"People in the US could be convinced to get behind major prison reform if the reformers weren't so insistent on representing every felon as Jean Valjean." It's pretty crazy to blame the current situation on reformers. In reality it's the war on drugs and "tough on crime". I know a lot of normally reasonable people who think prisoners deserve to be raped in prison and don't deserve health care.

Paul-Craft 4y ago
Right. It's well known that Nixon started the "War on Drugs" as a way to target hippies and black people. And "tough on crime" has just led to people spending more time in prison in spite of falling crime rates: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2020/oct/1/new-study-shows-tough-crime-generation-spent-more-time-prison-despite-falling-crime-rate/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2020/oct/1/new-study-sh...
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Gotta keep those private prisons full. We need more cheap and free labor!
quacked 4y ago
I did not say that the current situation was created by the reformers, merely that the existing US prison reform movements lack the support they need to move the needle because they are controlled by people who are far too broadly optimistic and sympathetic to prisoners. I view prison reform as the most important--not among the most important, the most important--step in beginning to change modern US society for the better. I know many prison activists and was raised in a culture of people who volunteered in prisons and in legal efforts to reform prisons and assist prisoners. They are too sympathetic and the way they frame their cause reduces the amount of support they receive from the general public.