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If we get serious about actual rehabilitation in prisons instead of punishment there’s never been a better time to be able to learn just about anything on your

If we get serious about actual rehabilitation in prisons instead of punishment there’s never been a better time to be able to learn just about anything on your own time. But we’d have to stop dehumanizing criminals. Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now. We can also be concerned about the incentives for prison labor - for profit prisons and all the many service providers that get paid a mint. Phone calls in many prisons are like $10. Labor gangs and the such. It’s just horrible how badly we treat people in the US for some middleman to make money.

coolestguy 1y ago
>Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now. Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated.
- tomrod 1y ago
  Les Mis is a great treatment of exactly this, even if fictional. It takes more than justice to reform the soul. It takes making room by society to forgive the repentant. We call this mercy, and it is the higher ideal.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    If it's too much for society to forgive someone who has done their time, the very least society could do is to stop actively fighting their rehabilitation. Whenever a read a story about someone who's been to prison and then ends up a solid, productive member of society, I can't help but think: "This person must have extraordinary grit and determination!" Because when a criminal gets out of prison, the entire system and the entire society is set up to try to oppose his rehabilitation and get him back into prison. Overcoming this active hostility must take a remarkable person.
    - BjoernKW 1y ago
      > "This person must have extraordinary grit and determination!" Because when a criminal gets out of prison, the entire system and the entire society is set up to try to oppose his rehabilitation and get him back into prison. Overcoming this active hostility must take a remarkable person. This is precisely the story of Les Misérables - that remarkable person being Jean Valjean.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated This is literally what rehabiliation entails. Convincing criminals that they have better options than crime. It doesn't work for everyone. There are absolutely bad people who will just violate social contracts, or who can't control their rage turning into violence. Those people need to be incapacitated. But for the vast majority of criminals, particularly non-violent criminals, crime is an economic cost-benefit exercise.
  - jakelazaroff 1y ago
    On top of that: the US has ~5% of the world's population but ~25% of the world's prisoners. So when we talk about "criminals", most of the people we're referring to are only incarcerated because they're subject to the US carceral system. If they lived in any other country, they'd considered upstanding citizens.
- djohnston 1y ago
  That's not entirely fair - there are all walks of life in those prisons. Some are undoubtedly beyond help, but the ones we can actually rehabilitate, or at least give meaningful work to, are not an opportunity worth overlooking.
- mwambua 1y ago
  I'm not justifying the crimes and I think people should pay for the consequences of their actions, but I don't think it's that simple. I think some people just haven't been exposed to the benefits of taking a path to life that doesn't involve crime. Some people also need to be convinced that there are viable alternatives to crime. And as someone else said, society needs to give them the chance to redeem themselves and pursue those alternate paths.
- none2585 1y ago
  This is an incredibly naive take and doesn't address what you quoted in your comment. We should not dehumanize anyone - criminal or otherwise.
- avs733 1y ago
  This is the result of the dehumanization effort. It highlights OPs point in attempting to refute it
themafia 1y ago
If you want rehabilitation then you should ensure that they're working for more than slave wages and that money is set aside to be available to them upon their release. Ensuring they can communicate with their families at no charge would be a huge plus as well.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Do we have high-quality studies on what facilitates rehabilitation?
  - Teever 1y ago
    I would imagine that the best data comes from places that have the highest rates of rehabilitation and lowest rates of re-offending. As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out.[0] https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-fd1fa0065946/files/r5h73pw95k https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-...
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out Agree, but do we have experiments trying Nordic models in America to see what aspects of their model work here (and which may not)?
      - crooked-v 1y ago
        No. Also, if you try, conservative voters will call you evil and/or sinful for being nice to people.
      - mitchbob 1y ago
        Here's one, in Pennsylvania: https://www.science.org/content/article/how-will-little-scandinavia-experiment-play-out-u-s-prisons https://www.science.org/content/article/how-will-little-scan... Sounds like Oregon started but hasn't gotten very far: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/08/425946/how-norway-helping-restore-humanity-inside-us-prisons https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/08/425946/how-norway-helping-...
gchamonlive 1y ago
> Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now. Here in Brazil criminals are extremely dehumanized as well and used as electoral fodder. Leave them to rot in amounts proportional to the anger of the population against criminality as it rises again in the country, or at least the perception of it. They are used to quickly let this social pressure out without actually solving anything and without making the population safer. It would be really nice if remote work could serve as a viable vector for rehabilitation. Everyone involved would benefit from it, we just have to beware of the wrong kinds of incentives, so that people don't get thrown in jail only to serve as cheap remote labor later.
terminalshort 1y ago
Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. They are a massive cost to the government. Incarceration is expensive (Google gives me a median of $65K per prisoner per year), and the percentage of prisoners that are able to earn more money through labor than the cost to lock them up is probably very low.
- superb_dev 1y ago
  It might cost the government $65k to imprison someone, but that money isn’t disappearing. It’s going into the pockets of all the private businesses running the prisons who take a hefty profit
  - jacobr1 1y ago
    There seems to be a presumption that private prisons are widespread. And while not rare, they are only 8% of prisons. There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. I only bring this up because it seems like the mental model most people have is that 50--90% of prisons are private - mainly because it gets discussed so much. But the problems with prisons by-and-large involve government administration, not for-profit companies running the amok (despite that also happening in a much smaller number of cases).
    - t-3 1y ago
      > There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. Yep. Everyone's heard about private prisons and their pet judges, but few know anything about Bob Barker or VitaPro. Their are deep and very murky waters here.
    - citizenpaul 1y ago
      >private prisons Are a red herring to distract from the real issue. The industrialist complex around prisons that do in fact profit from prisons. Like all gov contracts are also highly inefficient by design.
    - 1y ago
vovavili 1y ago
[flagged]
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  I'm not convinced you know any criminals
  - nobody9999 1y ago
    Of course they do. Criminals are everywhere. Anyone driving more than 30m/h over the speed limit is guilty of reckless driving. That's a criminal. Anyone using controlled substances (including cannabis) is a criminal. Anyone driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is a criminal. Anyone watching their kids while drunk/high -- a criminal. And dozens of other things folks do every single day. Makes them criminals. In fact, GP is almost certainly a criminal. Throw them in prison!
mullingitover 1y ago
There are also perverse electoral incentives to having a prison in your voting district. Generally the prisoners count toward your population numbers but they can’t vote. No pesky three fifths compromise.
- NooneAtAll3 1y ago
  how would non-voters affect voting results?
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    Not the results, but the weight given to the results. Places with a greater population tend to get more representatives in a state or federal legislature, all else being equal. This makes sense for minors (part of voter-households, to be voters later) and noncitizens (either in voter-households, or at least with freedom of travel) but it becomes a perverse-incentive when we start talking about people forced to be in a specific region by a government that put them there and won't let them leave.
  - whitexn--g28h 1y ago
    The less voters you have in your district the easier it is to gerrymander a guaranteed win.
  - mikestew 1y ago
    Voting districts: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039643346/redistricting-prison-gerrymandering-definition-census-congressional-legislative https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039643346/redistricting-pris...
  - teaearlgraycold 1y ago
    In the constitution it says: > Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons "Free persons" in this case meant those not enslaved for life, so it includes incarcerated people. Representation apportionment also includes illegal immigrants under this clause.
thephyber 1y ago
Yeah, I think the if at the beginning of your comment is doing some very heavy lifting. I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab. They seem viscerally invested in the concept of a prison as a place to store/segregate violent people, but have no interest in either helping those people learn to live safely in society or to have any advantages that the poorest non-prisoner gets. Before we can jump straight to pointing to successful prison labor programs, I think we need to figure out how to message to those voters that it matters how we treat prisoners.
- s5300 1y ago
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- TacticalCoder 1y ago
  [dead]
- taurath 1y ago
  > I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab I think they exist quite widely among the population. Old, white republicans want more people in jail. Young, non-white democrats think we jail too many people. 50% of the country thinks we jail too many s) https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45975-what-americans-think-about-prison-system-poll https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45975-what-americ...
tyingq 1y ago
What a criminal record does to your ability to get a job these days, as compared to the past is pretty harsh. Back in the 80's and prior, you could work at a smaller place that didn't have the capability to do background checks. Now, it's $20 or less and ANY employer can do it. You have to specifically find some place that has deliberately chosen to take the risk. Compare to Australia, where the employer doesn't see detail. They file the background check, but only get a "yes" or "no", based on that specific job and past offenses (if any).
- uncletscollie 1y ago
  If you read the article, you'll notice what a joke the corporate world is. They are hiring someone sitting in prison, they did the interview through video in prison. His address is a prison, but.... "He figured Thorpe might have trouble clearing the company's background check and he says he prepared himself for that. But since it only searches back seven years and since Thorpe has been in prison for more than a decade, "He is actually our cleanest background check," Costa says." "He doesn't have a parking ticket." What does a parking ticket, let alone a criminal conviction have to do with programming? Let's just go ahead and get to the exploitation, the corporate scum offered him minimum wage and are taking advantage of his situation.
colechristensen 1y ago
One of the overlooked purposes of imprisonment isn't revenge or rehabilitation, it's just letting the rest of us be away from that person for a while, removing them from society.
- mcmoor 1y ago
  Yeah the conclusion from here [1] is that the biggest reason a prison can reduce crime is not because of rehabilitation or deterrence (even in places that try to do either) but because of incapacitation. It holds people in their prime age of doing crime (15-30) and spits them back out when they're too old to do those anymore. The obvious conclusion is that exile will have the same effect, but we don't have place to exile people to anymore. 1. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-than-you https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...
  - trhway 1y ago
    Moon and Mars are coming soon.
kylebenzle 1y ago
[dead]

coolestguy 1y ago

>Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now. Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated.

tomrod 1y ago
Les Mis is a great treatment of exactly this, even if fictional. It takes more than justice to reform the soul. It takes making room by society to forgive the repentant. We call this mercy, and it is the higher ideal.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  If it's too much for society to forgive someone who has done their time, the very least society could do is to stop actively fighting their rehabilitation. Whenever a read a story about someone who's been to prison and then ends up a solid, productive member of society, I can't help but think: "This person must have extraordinary grit and determination!" Because when a criminal gets out of prison, the entire system and the entire society is set up to try to oppose his rehabilitation and get him back into prison. Overcoming this active hostility must take a remarkable person.
  - BjoernKW 1y ago
    > "This person must have extraordinary grit and determination!" Because when a criminal gets out of prison, the entire system and the entire society is set up to try to oppose his rehabilitation and get him back into prison. Overcoming this active hostility must take a remarkable person. This is precisely the story of Les Misérables - that remarkable person being Jean Valjean.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated This is literally what rehabiliation entails. Convincing criminals that they have better options than crime. It doesn't work for everyone. There are absolutely bad people who will just violate social contracts, or who can't control their rage turning into violence. Those people need to be incapacitated. But for the vast majority of criminals, particularly non-violent criminals, crime is an economic cost-benefit exercise.
- jakelazaroff 1y ago
  On top of that: the US has ~5% of the world's population but ~25% of the world's prisoners. So when we talk about "criminals", most of the people we're referring to are only incarcerated because they're subject to the US carceral system. If they lived in any other country, they'd considered upstanding citizens.
djohnston 1y ago
That's not entirely fair - there are all walks of life in those prisons. Some are undoubtedly beyond help, but the ones we can actually rehabilitate, or at least give meaningful work to, are not an opportunity worth overlooking.
mwambua 1y ago
I'm not justifying the crimes and I think people should pay for the consequences of their actions, but I don't think it's that simple. I think some people just haven't been exposed to the benefits of taking a path to life that doesn't involve crime. Some people also need to be convinced that there are viable alternatives to crime. And as someone else said, society needs to give them the chance to redeem themselves and pursue those alternate paths.
none2585 1y ago
This is an incredibly naive take and doesn't address what you quoted in your comment. We should not dehumanize anyone - criminal or otherwise.
avs733 1y ago
This is the result of the dehumanization effort. It highlights OPs point in attempting to refute it

themafia 1y ago

If you want rehabilitation then you should ensure that they're working for more than slave wages and that money is set aside to be available to them upon their release. Ensuring they can communicate with their families at no charge would be a huge plus as well.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
Do we have high-quality studies on what facilitates rehabilitation?
- Teever 1y ago
  I would imagine that the best data comes from places that have the highest rates of rehabilitation and lowest rates of re-offending. As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out.[0] https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-fd1fa0065946/files/r5h73pw95k https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-...
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out Agree, but do we have experiments trying Nordic models in America to see what aspects of their model work here (and which may not)?
    - crooked-v 1y ago
      No. Also, if you try, conservative voters will call you evil and/or sinful for being nice to people.
    - mitchbob 1y ago
      Here's one, in Pennsylvania: https://www.science.org/content/article/how-will-little-scandinavia-experiment-play-out-u-s-prisons https://www.science.org/content/article/how-will-little-scan... Sounds like Oregon started but hasn't gotten very far: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/08/425946/how-norway-helping-restore-humanity-inside-us-prisons https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/08/425946/how-norway-helping-...

gchamonlive 1y ago

> Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now. Here in Brazil criminals are extremely dehumanized as well and used as electoral fodder. Leave them to rot in amounts proportional to the anger of the population against criminality as it rises again in the country, or at least the perception of it. They are used to quickly let this social pressure out without actually solving anything and without making the population safer. It would be really nice if remote work could serve as a viable vector for rehabilitation. Everyone involved would benefit from it, we just have to beware of the wrong kinds of incentives, so that people don't get thrown in jail only to serve as cheap remote labor later.

terminalshort 1y ago

Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. They are a massive cost to the government. Incarceration is expensive (Google gives me a median of $65K per prisoner per year), and the percentage of prisoners that are able to earn more money through labor than the cost to lock them up is probably very low.

superb_dev 1y ago
It might cost the government $65k to imprison someone, but that money isn’t disappearing. It’s going into the pockets of all the private businesses running the prisons who take a hefty profit
- jacobr1 1y ago
  There seems to be a presumption that private prisons are widespread. And while not rare, they are only 8% of prisons. There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. I only bring this up because it seems like the mental model most people have is that 50--90% of prisons are private - mainly because it gets discussed so much. But the problems with prisons by-and-large involve government administration, not for-profit companies running the amok (despite that also happening in a much smaller number of cases).
  - t-3 1y ago
    > There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. Yep. Everyone's heard about private prisons and their pet judges, but few know anything about Bob Barker or VitaPro. Their are deep and very murky waters here.
  - citizenpaul 1y ago
    >private prisons Are a red herring to distract from the real issue. The industrialist complex around prisons that do in fact profit from prisons. Like all gov contracts are also highly inefficient by design.
  - 1y ago

vovavili 1y ago

[flagged]

ants_everywhere 1y ago
I'm not convinced you know any criminals
- nobody9999 1y ago
  Of course they do. Criminals are everywhere. Anyone driving more than 30m/h over the speed limit is guilty of reckless driving. That's a criminal. Anyone using controlled substances (including cannabis) is a criminal. Anyone driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is a criminal. Anyone watching their kids while drunk/high -- a criminal. And dozens of other things folks do every single day. Makes them criminals. In fact, GP is almost certainly a criminal. Throw them in prison!

mullingitover 1y ago

There are also perverse electoral incentives to having a prison in your voting district. Generally the prisoners count toward your population numbers but they can’t vote. No pesky three fifths compromise.

NooneAtAll3 1y ago
how would non-voters affect voting results?
- Terr_ 1y ago
  Not the results, but the weight given to the results. Places with a greater population tend to get more representatives in a state or federal legislature, all else being equal. This makes sense for minors (part of voter-households, to be voters later) and noncitizens (either in voter-households, or at least with freedom of travel) but it becomes a perverse-incentive when we start talking about people forced to be in a specific region by a government that put them there and won't let them leave.
- whitexn--g28h 1y ago
  The less voters you have in your district the easier it is to gerrymander a guaranteed win.
- mikestew 1y ago
  Voting districts: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039643346/redistricting-prison-gerrymandering-definition-census-congressional-legislative https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039643346/redistricting-pris...
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  In the constitution it says: > Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons "Free persons" in this case meant those not enslaved for life, so it includes incarcerated people. Representation apportionment also includes illegal immigrants under this clause.

thephyber 1y ago

Yeah, I think the if at the beginning of your comment is doing some very heavy lifting. I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab. They seem viscerally invested in the concept of a prison as a place to store/segregate violent people, but have no interest in either helping those people learn to live safely in society or to have any advantages that the poorest non-prisoner gets. Before we can jump straight to pointing to successful prison labor programs, I think we need to figure out how to message to those voters that it matters how we treat prisoners.

s5300 1y ago
[dead]
TacticalCoder 1y ago
[dead]
taurath 1y ago
> I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab I think they exist quite widely among the population. Old, white republicans want more people in jail. Young, non-white democrats think we jail too many people. 50% of the country thinks we jail too many s) https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45975-what-americans-think-about-prison-system-poll https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45975-what-americ...

tyingq 1y ago

What a criminal record does to your ability to get a job these days, as compared to the past is pretty harsh. Back in the 80's and prior, you could work at a smaller place that didn't have the capability to do background checks. Now, it's $20 or less and ANY employer can do it. You have to specifically find some place that has deliberately chosen to take the risk. Compare to Australia, where the employer doesn't see detail. They file the background check, but only get a "yes" or "no", based on that specific job and past offenses (if any).

uncletscollie 1y ago
If you read the article, you'll notice what a joke the corporate world is. They are hiring someone sitting in prison, they did the interview through video in prison. His address is a prison, but.... "He figured Thorpe might have trouble clearing the company's background check and he says he prepared himself for that. But since it only searches back seven years and since Thorpe has been in prison for more than a decade, "He is actually our cleanest background check," Costa says." "He doesn't have a parking ticket." What does a parking ticket, let alone a criminal conviction have to do with programming? Let's just go ahead and get to the exploitation, the corporate scum offered him minimum wage and are taking advantage of his situation.

colechristensen 1y ago

One of the overlooked purposes of imprisonment isn't revenge or rehabilitation, it's just letting the rest of us be away from that person for a while, removing them from society.

mcmoor 1y ago
Yeah the conclusion from here [1] is that the biggest reason a prison can reduce crime is not because of rehabilitation or deterrence (even in places that try to do either) but because of incapacitation. It holds people in their prime age of doing crime (15-30) and spits them back out when they're too old to do those anymore. The obvious conclusion is that exile will have the same effect, but we don't have place to exile people to anymore. 1. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-than-you https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...
- trhway 1y ago
  Moon and Mars are coming soon.

kylebenzle 1y ago

[dead]