If an individual and the law don’t agree to the point the individual is imprisoned, one hopes lawful imprisonment changes the individual, right? For the better, right?
Unfortunately, American prisons have proved the opposite of rehabilitative or hopeful of positive change. Recidivism rates in America are between 60% and 68% (depending on the source).
"Prison has changed you, Mom" © 2009 Marshall for the New Yorker
Spurred possibly by the fiscal-driven prisoner releases across the nation, Marshall penciled this pearl.
Some of the best comedy is simultaneously tragedy. The truth is America’s prison archipelago has bruised the lives of the current 2.2 million prison population, the lives of family members AND our lives and communities. Inmates returning to society haven’t been suitably prepared or shown new paths. Change has been for the worse in majority of cases.
I was astonished to read this AlertNet article. It excavates the background to Lovelle Mixon’s massacre in Oakland that killed four people.
I cannot agree with the article’s logic 100%. It would be a sad day if I ever presumed the individual totally powerless and unable to act upon non-violent decisions, but as the author writes:
“Though Mixon’s killing spree is a horrible aberration, his plight as an unemployed ex-felon isn’t. There are tens of thousands like him on America’s streets. In 2007, the National Institute of Justice found that 60 percent of ex-felon offenders remain unemployed a year after their release.”
It is not easy to resist the urge to think of mass-murderous crimes as the singular actions of an individual.
I appreciate Earl Ofari Hutchinson‘s article because it brings together the many invisible and minor trials in life that collectively make daily stress unbearable. I finished the article amazed that there are fewer desperate crimes akin to Mixon’s. An uncomfortable thought.
Again, Hutchinson reminds us that the problems of incarceration, recidivism, education, unemployment and crime are inseparable:
Washington, D.C. is a near textbook example of that. Nearly 3,000 former prisoners are released and return to the district each year. Most fit the standard ex-felon profile. They are poor, with limited education and job skills, and come from broken or dysfunctional homes. Researchers again found that the single biggest factor that pushed them back to the streets, crime, violence and, inevitably, repeat incarceration was their failure to find work.
Q. Why do we warehouse people, break them, and then return them to society in a poorer position to cope?
A. Punitive and immovable laws, collective arrogance & utter denial.
With an estimated 600,000 prisoners either released or due for release in 2009, it’s about time we make a small change in our accomodations – especially given the size of change we expect of former prisoners.
Prison Photography 
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April 13, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Midnite Scribe
Why does anyone suppose that completing a prison sentence will wipe a slate clean? It won’t – it can’t. The released prisoner is not a new man who is equal to all others in any aspect of life – including employment prospects. Many of them were not employed before going to prison, many have never held a steady job. Respectable, honest, reliable, trustworthy people are finding it hard to find employment, why would you expect a felon to fare any better?
When they commit a crime, they put themselves on a path that is not magically changed once they are sentenced and then released. They are not different people, they are not better, they have not become honest, trustworthy or reliable, they are simply felons who are not currently incarcerated. Their character has not changed, just their accommodation has changed. How can anyone be so unrealistic as to expect otherwise?
The very few who truly regret their life choices and who are determined to make good will do so. It might be difficult, but that is of their doing. Those who make a token effort and revert to their original attitudes and mores – while blaming society, are not worthy of society. I will not employ a felon in preference to an honest man – why on earth should I? Even if it is one of the very few who do change – I am not about to relegate them to a higher status than someone who has always been honest. That would be pointless idiocy.
April 13, 2009 at 6:09 pm
petebrook
Midnite Scribe. You seem very certain that our society can be divided into two groups. Those who have led criminal pasts (and possibly futures) and thusly you class them felons, and those whose lives have not involved transgression. If the line is so distinct, at what point does a person become distinguished from “honest men”? At what age? Is it really a one-way door? How do you account for those that don’t reoffend?
Also, do your personal and moral positions tally exactly with those of the authority which dominates your society? Does everyone in prison deserve to be there? What are your thoughts on the prison system? Do you think prisons are flawless in their execution of justice?
I contend that over-crowded, under-funded prisons in America do not offer satisfactory rehabilitation. In this regard we may be arguing a similar point – that being, that some prisoners don’t change. 70% recidivism rates attest to that and it is by that figure I assess that prisons are not adequately carrying out their mandate.
As I said in the article, men and women must take responsibility for their own actions, but to dismiss the effect of social institutions and structures (not only prisons, but also pre-school care, health education, community programs, high school management, social care, employment policy etc.) is too reductive for my liking.
Repeat offenders are a nuisance and a frustration, but why do some find it so easy to dismiss people based on their history of incarceration. Such dismissal says more about social attitudes than it does about the offender.
April 13, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Midnite Scribe
petebrook. Society consists of far more than two groups, there are infinite groups and sub-groups. Yes, once someone commits a felony, I class that person as a felon – because that is what they are.
Your question regarding the distinguishing point for “honest-wo/men” is when someone begins to live in a dishonest manner. Becomes a criminal, not when they are caught and charged as a criminal. Most criminals are lacking something that cannot be restored – empathy, conscience, respect for others and their property. If they are not recidivist in most cases it is not because they have reformed, it is because they have learned to fear the consequences.
I have absolutely no interest in rehabilitation, it is a futile concept that has always been doomed to failure. You can possibly prevent future criminal behavior, but you cannot make a criminal into a decent person. You cannot “rewire” them, add character traits that are supposed to be integrated into a personality in childhood. It is too late.
If you live in a flood zone, you do not try to change the rivers and oceans, modify the rainfall, you adapt to the situation and build walls/levies to control it. You protect your dwellings and property against the potential damage and make changes in your lifestyle to avoid being vulnerable to the damage that a flood can and will bring. It is the same with society and criminals amongst us. We control them, we don’t waste time and effort trying to change them. Those few who wish to change themselves – we can offer support. The others we simply accept as damaged and treat accordingly. No amount of bleeding heart wishful thinking will address that in any *successful* manner. It hasn’t since the time of the Greek and Romans, it hasn’t through millenia of history, and it sure isn’t about to happen now. Sociopaths cannot be rehabilitated and most criminals are sociopaths. The few exceptions can seek and find rehabilitation voluntarily, but it cannot be forced upon them with legislation or social programs.
It would certainly be of benefit to try and prevent this stream of broken adults, see that they have a better childhood, that they are taught how to be a genuine part of society, but it is not likely to happen. In order to have that happen it would require control of parents and their responsibilities and with the world insisting on complete freedom in those areas the situation can only get worse. One day we will have to arm ourselves against the feral terrorists that society is now producing. Fairytales with their morals have given way to gory, sexually explicit and violent games and videos. Kids are taught to steal cars, fight the Police, build drug empires, rape woman in the most popular kids games. Rap music supports violent anti social behaviour, cartoon show kids making fools of their parents and all authority.
People should have a licence to become parents, but as it stands, all they need are sexual organs and a few moments of semi-privacy.
April 14, 2009 at 1:14 am
petebrook
Scribe. I am happy you agree there’s more than one group of people in society. Why do you not afford such subtlety to prison populations? Why your insistence on an ‘us and them’ mentality? Whether someone is a felon or not is proscribed by law. Do you agree 100% with every law of this land? If you do you are in a small minority. I think we’d agree that slight infractions of the law shouldn’t receive a prison sentence and violent crimes should be punished by a long term. (i’d say any long term is a good opportunity for education and rehabilitation, but I won’t push that argument).
What are your thoughts on drug offenders – people with NO history of violence, only drug abuse? I think they are addicts who need help. I don’t think they need locking up with violent criminals. I think prison destroys these types of people. I acknowledge, that non-violent drug offenders are a favourite example for those seeking to reform the criminal justice system – but they are for a reason, because they show glaringly how inflexible the system is. It has become easy for politicians and citizens driven by shock-media to let their emotions rule their minds, suspend evaluation and implement an ineffective, burgeoning and expensive prison system.
You brought up the issue of money. America currently spends $47 billion a year on its prisons. The prison system is breaking the back of state budgets. Study after study has shown that if you invest in rehabilitation programs, you reduce recidivism and you reduce your future spending. IT IS CHEAPER TO OFFER REHABILITATION. It might not succeed with every inmate, but the returns on investment are better than simply locking them away.
You dismiss rehabilitation as a “futile concept”. I disagree. I have learnt that it makes social, moral, and fiscal sense to offer education and rehabilitation. We differ there.
You seem to presume the nature of all prisoners as the same, and you do so in sensationalist terms. I would argue less than 1% of America’s prison population would be psychologically assessed as a “sociopath”. You inability to accept different types of prisoner says more about your fear than it has to say about any reality of prison populations.
Perhaps, we misunderstand the current situation and this is why we disagree. America has 2.3 million people in prison – that’s more than 1 in 100 adults in America. That is the highest incarceration rate in the world by a long distance. The main reason for this was a raft of mandatory sentencing laws in most states throughout the 1990s. This country is paying now for its tough on crime rhetoric of the past. That’s all it was – rhetoric – a one step plan brought into play by politicians who realised that once they locked folk up they wouldn’t need to be answerable to or for them for as long as the public turned a blind eye. PRISONS IN AMERICA ARE UNSUSTAINABLE. California spends more on prisons than university education. There are critical structural problems that arise from criminalising and forsaking large portions of society.
How many of the 2.3 million do you think would voluntarily seek rehabilitation? I’d like to think at least 50% would be interested in education and rehabilitation to relieve the boredom of 23 hour lockdown and provide some stimulating thought. That’s over 1 million of your “exceptions”, and I guestimating conservatively.
In your final point you offer something that we can agree on, and that is that parenting is the most vital element of a persons development and the largest determining factor on whether someone will involve themselves in criminal activity. I am offended by your term “feral terrorists”, but I get your gist. That is why I’d like to see states spend more on education than prisons. That’s why I’d like to see sensible sentences so a child is not an adult when their father is released, that’s why I’d like to see more visiting opportunities, that’s why I’d like to see life-management programs, personal finance education and child development education for prisoners … so that they may put right their failings of parenthood, once they’ve paid there debt to society.
I am opposed to violent video games. I think some of them are hideous. I would love to talk to parents who allow their children unhindered access to these games, but I must also add that NO scientific study has proven a link between video game violence and actual violence. That is a myth. The problem may not be so much the content of the video game as the fact a child is in front of a screen for too many hours a day inhibiting his/her development.
I think with love and community and, yes, a strong shared understanding of the law (with clear consequences) these things can be discussed and put right. I think sexual education in schools is going to prepare people to make better choices; empowering choices. It is a shame that many children are born into family structures ill-prepared to care properly for them.
I think we share the same frustration with adults who who through mistakes, misguidance or selfishness can’t give their offspring the best chance, but your notion that people should have licenses scares me. You are talking about the state controlling reproduction, which has been done in China (with catastrophic consequences for women’s rights) and was done in Nazi Germany – it was called eugenics.