This whole piece reads like it's written by someone who has never set foot in an actual, general-population prison.<p>The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access.<p>In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track.<p>Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living.<p>So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism.<p>Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.
> learning gives us a different understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and it provides us tools to become more empathetic<p>This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time.<p>But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example.<p>But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought<p>Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.
I'm a felon. Trafficking Marijuana. I considered the consequences, and knew it was very unlikely I would get sentenced to jail time, so for me the consequences played a role in the amount of marijuana I was willing to traffic(i.e. not enough to be likely jail time) What I vastly underestimated is the long term reduction in earning potential, and the level of instantly shut doors/disrespect that comes along with being a felon.<p>Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it.<p>Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring <i>criminals.
(</i>the ones who got caught)
At a previous job I had to turn people away that had felonies. Some of them just had drug related ones. Felt terrible about it.<p>If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so.<p>Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working.<p>Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?
"a study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showing that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison."<p>Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.
Idea for a novel: Faced with a fierce job market, young academics scramble for prison jobs. To cut costs, they are roomed and boarded with the very prisoners they're there to teach...
This provides something for free to an inmate. The philosophy of those like Sheriff Arpaio and those politically aligned with him run counter to this. Where inmates are limited in water while living in tents outside in order to save money. Until we can extricate the culture of cruel and unusual punishment in the name of greed by those like Joe Arpaio, we'll not overcome the political hurdles of doing something nice for an inmate to reduce recidivism.
Here are some interesting initiatives with interesting challenges:
<a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-programs/out-of-school-programs-case-studies/a/use-case-correctional-facilities" rel="nofollow">https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-pro...</a><p>"Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any.<p>Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened."<p>KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization:<p><a href="https://learningequality.org/about/" rel="nofollow">https://learningequality.org/about/</a><p>"In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi."<p><a href="https://learningequality.org/kolibri/" rel="nofollow">https://learningequality.org/kolibri/</a>
"Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."
One concern I've always had when people discuss recidivism rates is that it's sort of impossible to find an effective control group, no?<p>Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had.<p>Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it.<p>Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them."<p>What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?
The evolutionary reason prison exists is because it is cheaper to society and government than riot and vendetta. As society grows more peaceful perhaps the balance will tip in favour of no prisons and they'll be shut down by the powers that be.
In my opinion, teaching meditation to inmates could change prisons in a significant way. You give them the tool that will allow them to cultivate inner peace, rewire their brain plus understand their own behavior by disengaging the "ego".
Maybe not colleges but schools. Someone I know went to prison. He was there for 5 plus years but learned absolutely nothing. Like it's been said, he came out worse than before.<p>I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.
In each state there is probably one prison worth of people who are capable of earning a college degree. They should be put in one place and encouraged to do so.<p>The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be “stewed” in prison and then released upon you and me.
This reminds of the Shon Hopwood story from last year's CBS 60 Minutes.[1]<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-became-a-georgetown-law-professor/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-beca...</a>
> Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students.<p>In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.
The point of punishment is not a Skinner box to use operant conditioning to bring about desired behavior. People are punished as a clear, unambiguous message that "you did wrong". This is the most humane option because it treats criminals as moral agents with free will who can change and choose what is good. These other "progressive" approaches treat a criminal like an irrational animal or child that must be conditioned. Consequently, the criminal learns their moral intuition is wrong, and to act irrationally and not accept responsibility for his or her own actions. A just penal code with appropriate punishment is the most humane and dignified way to treat criminals.