Because liberals have made the term ‘punishment’ politically incorrect, there is a general misconception that prisons are designed to rehabilitate criminals. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First and foremost, prisons are for punishment and the protection of society, not for rehabilitation. We punish criminals by locking them up. We keep criminals locked up to protect children from child molesters, women from rapists, homeowners and businesses from burglars, drivers from carjackers, cops from cop killers, etc.
To begin with, unlike the free world, prison inmates live in a highly structured society. They are told when to get up and go to bed, when to shit and shower, when to eat and what to eat, when to work and when to relax. There are any number of prison rules which when broken gets the inmate thrown into the ‘hole’. There are also the rules that have been established by the inmates themselves and when these are broken, the violator can expect to get beaten up or even killed.
When an inmate stays in prison for many years he becomes prisonized and if released, he cannot survive unless he has the constant help of family members and/or social workers. Many prisonized inmates refuse parole and those that are released because their time is up, often commit a crime just so they can be returned to their home, the prison.
So prisons cannot actually rehabilitate criminals. What prisons can do is to provide the inmate with the tools he needs to rehabilitate himself once he has been released to the free world. All prisons offer GED programs. Most prisons offer high school classes and many offer college degree programs … at the taxpayer’s expense, of course. All prisons offer some vocational programs such as auto mechanics, cosmetology, welding (especially useful for safecrackers), computer technology, carpentry, etc.
Vocational courses should be offered only for jobs that will be available in the community to which an inmate will be released. Every prison in California used to offer upholstery courses. The problem was that the demand for upholsterers comes from furniture manufacturers and those were not located in California. The inmate trained in upholstery could not get a job in that field because the upholstery businesses were almost all mom and pop operations.
Some of the Texas prisons have a Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) in which my friend and Houston real estate broker Jay Wall is committed to and involved in. PEP volunteers from Houston’s business community, like Jay, provide “real-world values-based business skills to inmates so that once they are back in society they have the tools, skills and support structure to pursue healthy, fulfilling and productive lives. Upon release, PEP supports its alumni with a comprehensive slate of re-entry services including case management, transition housing, assistance in finding employment and connecting to social services.”
So, there you have it. Prisons cannot rehabilitate any inmates, they can only provide them the tools with which to rehabilitate themselves once they are back in the free world.
Now there are some prison inmates who should never be released. Take Herman Bell for example. Bell was a member of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers that engaged in robberies, bombings, prison breaks and attacks on police in the 1970s.
In 1971, Bell and two other BLA members ambushed and murdered NYPD Officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini. Bell also killed police Sgt. John Young in San Francisco. He was sentenced to life for the NYPD officer murders. Bell became a cause célèbre for liberals who claim that the scumbag has been rehabilitated and is remorseful about killing the three cops.
It is real easy to become ‘rehabilitated’ behind prison walls. Just follow all the rules and be sure to attend chapel services every Sunday morning and bible study classes every Wednesday. Then say how sorry you are for what you did and promise to do good deeds once you have been released to the outside. Voila, the inmate is rehabilitated.
Liberals go into a masturbation frenzy every time some celebrity inmate is reported to have been rehabilitated in prison and expresses remorse for the crime he has committed. Such is the case with Herman Bell, the scumbag who murdered three police officers.
The New York parole board succumbed to the demands for Bell’s release that liberal groups made and this week, after serving 46 years behind bars, Bell,70, walked out of prison a free man.
Murder is the most serious of all crimes and the murder of cops is the most serious of all murders. Those who kill a cop should be executed, but barring that, they should never see the light of day outside the prison walls.
By freeing Herman Bell, who murdered not just one cop, but three, the New York parole board stuck a dagger into the heart of every law enforcement officer in the United States!
The criminal justice system has come under fire for sending too many offenders to prison and for imprisoning a disproportionate number of minorities. Hogwash! A disproportionate number of minorities are in prison because minorities happen to commit a disproportionate number of crimes.
As for sending too many offenders to prison, California has reduced a number of felonies to misdemeanors, thus keeping many criminals out of prison. From all appearances, that has been disastrous, with a significant increase in the no-longer felonies and a corresponding increase in the number of law abiding citizens that have been victimized by criminals.
Those who commit serious crimes need to be punished by imprisonment. Some of those criminals should never see the light of day outside the prison walls. And don’t forget, prisons also serve to protect society, which is you and me.
This is perhaps the worst rant ever posted on this blog.
Since any of the others written by this particular author, you mean.
Seriously, these are definitely not up to the standards of other articles on this blog, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with them.
Instead of expressing your comments on where you disagree with this article, the best you can do is to slam me.
Howie, I would love to point our all the places where I disagree but then I would be pointing out everything in the entire post. This absurd post does nothing more than reinforce societal ignorance regarding the justice system.
I’ve certainly had my disagreements with Howie, but I’ve always tried to make them specific and objective. And I’m not sure I totally agree with his points in this particular post.
However, calling this post a “rant” is both pejorative and insulting. If you have disagreements with what he says, then point them out. Otherwise, Steve, what you and Mick have posted in reply are indeed “rants” and certainly not up to the standards of most posts on this blog.
Howie I tend to agree with you, but can you point me in the direction of web pages etc so I can use quantifiable numbers in conversation when these matters are discussed?
Greg, there have been numerous articles in the Los Angeles Times and The Sacramento Bee on the increase in crime resulting from California’s prison reforms.
As for minorities committing a disproportionate number of crimes, that has been a long established fact. Instead of saying the criminal justice system is racist, liberals should look at why minorities commit a disproportionate number of crimes and stop playing the race card with respect to the prison population.
And they do neither!
What they do is create more crime!
Punishment is a socially valuable concept. If the victims feel they are getting some sort of retributions, some sort of protection, they are much more likely to be willing to forgo private payback in favor of collective, social payback. Rehabilitation is a nice concept. Sometimes it even works. It is, however, not reliable. Punishment works in that both the victim and the malefactor understand what has happened, and why. That makes it a socially valuable, and in fact probably a socially necessary, concept.
Howie, I will try to explain why you are wrong.
First, the first paragraph is a gratuitous shot at liberals and is only intended to incite readers.
Second, the next paragraph shows a fundamental misunderstand of the purpose of prison and sentencing limits. Now let me explain: when a crime is committed it robs society of something, whether it be tangible or intangible, something is lost. A person is sent to Prison because they have injured society, not because we are trying to protect society but because we are trying to repair the damage done by that individual crime. The sentencing range is supposed to reflect what society perceives as the relative harm and should reflect the debt they are required to pay to re-enter.
Third paragraph: The idea that the “free world” does not live in a highly structured manner is also untrue. Humans are creatures of habit. We wake up, go through our morning routine, go to work, return home, and rinse and repeat for the next four days. Do prisoners have less autonomy? Sure.
Later on in that paragraph, you claim that inmates are “prisonized” and they can’t function without the help of family members and/or social workers. This, again, is misleading. There are reasons why part of your claim is true and that has nothing to do with the conditions of the US prison system. The reason prisoners cannot find comparable work as non-felons is because of the stigma associated with their respective crimes. It has very little to do with their intellectual capabilities. Take, for example, this prison debate team who defeated Harvard’s debate team. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/08/bard-debate-prison-team-beat-harvards-heres-how-we-did-it
I agree with you that prisons should offer vocational programs to help inmates re-integrate to society. However, I disagree with your conclusion that prisons cannot help re-rehabilitate. They can offer drug and mental health counseling. The very vocational programs you advocate for helps teach these inmates skills that likely would have kept them out of prison in the first place. The list goes on and on and on.
Finally, you finish off with a disturbing rant about the proportionality of the crime committed by blacks and other races in this country. You completely omit any statistical analysis of the number of patrol cars in black neighborhoods v. other races. You completely omit any statistical analysis of the number of petty crimes black people are charged with versus other races. You completely omit any statistical analysis of the school systems, job prospects, transportation difficulties, or other societal ills that people are born into.
In sum, your post was a horrible and displayed an ignorance of our justice system, its purpose, and the reasons so many people of a certain race are in jail.
Steve, I beg your pardon. I happen to have spent thirteen years working in the criminal justice system and 25 years as a criminal justice professor. What are your credentials?
“A person is sent to Prison because they have injured society, not because we are trying to protect society but because we are trying to repair the damage done by that individual crime.” What a load of liberal hogwash! A person is sent to prison as punishment for the crime he committed. And people are kept in prison for the protection of society.
You also show that you know absolutely nothing about the difference between prison society and free world society.
The prizonization syndrome is a long-held view of criminologists and experts in corrections.
Oh, I clicked on post too quickly. As for the disproportionate number of crimes committed by minorities, you imply that if there were more patrol cars in white neighborhoods and fewer in black neighborhoods, there would not be a disproportionate number of minorities in prison. Where did you come up with that one? The reason more patrol cars are in black neighborhoods is because more crime is committed therein and the increased police presence is designed to protect black law abiding citizens from criminals.
“You completely omit any statistical analysis of the number of petty crimes black people are charged with versus other races.” Steve, in case you do not know it, people convicted of petty crimes are not sent to prison.
Let me suggest that before you accuse me of being ignorant, you take a long hard look in the mirror.
Your credentials do nothing to address the central point of my arguments. You could be a Ph.D. in criminology and someone with a bachelor’s degree could still argue against your points. Ignoring your logical fallacy, let’s move on.
Your first post again, does not address the central point of my claim. Instead, you claim it is liberal hogwash, provide zero citation for your position, and restate unfounded personal beliefs. Here, read up on sentencing principles in Theory and Practice. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9468/aef35f1d6d22f7d71578ca5416d7f2ef6b31.pdf
In the mid-1970s, American society shifted away from the idea putting people in prison on the basis of the belief that “incarceration would somehow facilitate productive re-entry into the freeworld to one that used imprisonment merely to inflict pain on wrongdoers (“just deserts”), disable criminal offenders (“incapacitation”), or to keep them far away from the rest of society (“containment”). The abandonment of the once-avowed goal of rehabilitation certainly decreased the perceived need and availability of meaningful programming for prisoners as well as social and mental health services available to them both inside and outside the prison.” https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment. So you can see, here, that your claims are relatively recent ideas regarding our justice system and have no roots in the historical purpose of the system.
Regarding prisonization syndrome, which has similar markers as Stockholm syndrome, the following is your claim: “When an inmate stays in prison for many years he becomes prisonized and if released, he cannot survive unless he has the constant help of family members and/or social workers.” However, this is a bastadization of what prisonization syndrome actually is and the impact it has on former inmates. Psychologist agree that prisonization syndrome occurs due to the horrendous living conditions and treatment caused primarily over-crowding and over-criminalization. See above citation.
Finally, regarding your claim that black people disproportionally commit more crime–again you are wrong. You mistakenly conclude that I meant petty crime convictions lead to prison sentences. That is not what I meant or said. Thanks for the misquote :). What I meant was that black people are more likely than other races to be accosted by police officers and then searched for some pre-textual reason. Black people are more likely to be stopped for speeding, more likely to be stopped for jaywalking, more likely to be stopped for open-carrying, the list goes on and on and on. So, while it is widely-percieved that Jerome on the corner is slinging all that heroin and all those pills, the more likely scenario is that it is Bobby living in the suburbs. However, more Jeromes than Bobbys get caught because there are more police in Jerome’s neighborhood. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1043986207306870
Read some more articles on it before you go on another logically-flawed rant based on your own personal biases and anecdotal evidence.
There is no sense arguing with someone who believes prisons are warm fuzzy places that prepare its inhabitants to become sterling citizens.
I’ll match my experiences as a street cop, criminal investigator and parole officer against the links you have provided. I have made numerous visits to prisons in California, Texas, Florida and Arizona. I’ve conducted group therapy sessions at a Texas prison and conducted pre-release classes to inmates there.
I’ve related these experiences not to blow my bugle, but to show why I wrote that prisons are for punishment and the protection of society, rather than for rehabilitation.
You can cherry pick all the resources you want but that does not invalidate the views I expressed in my article. And your comments about the disproportionate number of crimes committed by minorities are nothing short of ridiculous.
That’s my last word on this subject.
Here, here! Cop killers should be executed federally if a state does not have the death penalty.
I agree with the focus of the article, and specifically with the concept that certain people cannot be rehabilitated. Those who commit violent sexual acts, those who molest children, those who do not value life at all. There comes a time when society should be protected from predators, and we have slipped on this one. In Texas, we have rights that New Yorker’s do not, specifically a more complete right under the 2nd amendment to the US constitution, and additional rights to sentence really bad people to be removed from the Gene Pool.
Enjoyed reading the article. More people really need to stand up for the rights of the citizens before we consider the rights of the convicted.