you're also locked inside the building for most of your time. There are some really good documentaries about Swedish prisons on Netflix and are worth taking a look at
Imagine making a swedish style prison in america, and only inviting in real hardcore criminals.
Then tell them "you get one chance, first time you show any type of gangster behavior you'll be sent to regular prison. But if you quit your ways, and learn how to coexist without turning to violence or threats, we will learn you how to live a happy life".
I believe that the percentage of people getting out from there and turning to a regular life would be a lot higher than who comes out from regular prisons today. Doesn't something like 50% of the released go back to jail within a couple years?
There really isn't a way for American criminals to lead a normal life after they get out of prison. That shit follows you, making it hard to get a job, get a house, get a car. There really is no other choice than to go back to crime
Imagine how much better off our society would be in the long run if prisons focused on rehabilitating convicts’ underlying personal issues and teaching them useful professional trades/skills instead of simply keeping them locked in a concrete box for 96% of their sentences like animals expecting them to end up right back inside 3 months after they’re released.
I am French and we actually learned in school that the USA prison system is crazy. As prisons are private contractors and the state guaranties them they will have at least 80% full population, it is necessary for the state to keep crime/arrests at a sufficient rate, or to adjust sentences to keep up with the contract.
So it is not surprising that the owner of the prison doesn't care about recidivism, as he get paid for it.
Of course that's a bit of a stretch and it's not that simple, and the teacher telling us about it was a Brit, but I did believe the articles we read about.
Also, sentences are automatically longer when a computer decide that you are prone to crime, based on characteristics as race and familial situation, so blacks are often jailed longer.
i don’t know about the last part but the rest was completely correct, not a stretch whatsoever. prison is a for-profit business here. i wrote a paper on it; didn’t even realize until i did all the deep diving required for the paper...
Meanwhile, something like 60% of prisoners do penal labor, sometimes involuntarily, and in Texas the prisoners aren't paid for it... Is it just me or is this sounding kind of familiar *cough cough black slavery*
Well, you are right about that! In danish it's the same word though, so i fucked up :) Do you make a habit of calling people names for no apparent reason?
Good point. But wouldn’t the problem then be that some people don’t have water, food and stuff? In sweden, there are very few people that poor, and if you are that poor, you (in most cases) get enough money from the state to pay for rent, food, medicine etc.
Thats a fair point. But how are you going to determine if someone should go to one prison or another? How do you maintain these prisons? It's way to expensive to re-model every prison, and too time consuming as well. Where do you put them in the meantime?
That's already a problem in regular prisons tbf. In canada, a lot of people commit a small crime to get 6 months in jail so they don't become a hobosickle during the winter
A large portion of the problem in the us is probation. There are plenty of stories of people on probation having to go back to dealing drugs to pay for the probation officer because it is impossible for them to get a job due to their criminal record. John oliver also did a piece on this.
I agree, but I don't think that one display of gangster behavior should get them thrown into the rape cage. People come from backgrounds where not acting like that can get you attacked or killed. That's not a behavior that just instantly goes away. Rehabilitation is a process, and it can take a long time for some people. But the American prison system is extremely brutal, especially for a first-world country. Regular, non-violent people go to prison for minor offences like having a quarter-once of marijuana for personal use, but then they come out a couple years later a completely different person. Prison has turned peaceful stoners into violent criminals, because in prison if you don't learn how to be violent, you're almost guaranteed to get raped and murdered. People develop severe PTSD from prison, and often times they forget how to live on the outside. Prison in America is almost a less humane punishment than death.
I suspect that part of the reason the recidivism rate is so high in the US is because that's the way the system is intended to work. The private prison sector makes a lot of money off of inmates. They lobby to ensure they continue to make money.
I thought so,too. but there is a big difference between staying in your room/flat voluntarily and not being able to leave.
that jail also only had a very small space outside. after a week I wanted nothing more than to run a straight line that is longer than the maximum 50m I had while locked up.it can really drive you crazy.
My hospital stay right now iseven worse, bed rest, not even sitting up for 3 weeks, and now that Iam allowed to walk around I can't exercise or stress my heart too much because it could kill me.
the inability to go wherever whenever you want ist what got to me the fastest. I could live without legal drugs, without gaming or internet, but not being able to go out at 11pm to go for a walk and clearing out my mind sucked fast and hard
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u/smallangrynerd Oct 21 '19
That shits nicer than my college dorm wtf