Posted by Dave on 07/16/07 at 09:42:06 am
Categories: Crime and Justice

Ezra quotes Julian Sanchez saying this:

It's frequently noted that a perverse consequence of our prison system is that we end up placing petty criminals in an intensive training program for serious crime. But more than that, we reinforce their identity as criminals.

I have long talked about the major problems with the criminal justice system, saying that it is often criminal IN-justice because of its many failings, especially for the poor and the minorities who are forced to deal with the system. But the system is not just a problem in terms of inequality based on race/wealth. It is also a broken system that does more to create crime than to prevent crime. Prison often leads to more accounts of (and more serious acts of) crime from those who were initially low risk.

Get that?

Prison turns low/medium risk criminals into high risk criminals by the time they have served their sentence. Put simply, it hardens criminals. Of course, people have been saying this for years (see Michel Foucault).

Why is this? Because the prison system in the U.S. (and most other places) is one of punishment, or retribution. The system completely ignores any sense of rehabilitation.

Yet people are unwilling to reconsider the prison system. People are unwilling to reconsider the idea that a rehabilitative system may be better both for the criminal and society - both in terms of cost effectiveness and crime prevention.

If we really want to have criminals change, we need to be willing to change the prison system. We need to be willing to figure out means and methods to help convicted criminals become fully functioning members of society.

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