I honestly think that legalizing drugs (which would result in virtually no black market for them, would require the user to show ID to a licensed professional, doses would be regulated, drugs would be safer, street gangs would lose a ton of money and neo-conservatives would have a collective aneurysm) would help free up alot of the time, money and resources needed for better rehabilitation.
It would seem our inability to rehabilitate prisoners, lies (partially) with our lack of funding for decent rehabilititation programs. There's obviously many of those that are simply incurable, the biggest question is how to handle them. It seems the prison system itself is designed to perpetuate crime, to a certain degree.
Once a person has a felony on their record it makes it twice as hard to get work once they get out of prison and with the temptation of the easy money associated with crime (in stark, direct contrast with a low paying, high risk, factory job) it is quite understandable that there'd be a lot of repeat offenders under this circumstance. Lordy knows I'd choose the former over the ladder under the same circumstances!
They need job placement programs (if they don't have them already), they need compassionate and humane facilities. They need to train their guards to handle certain types of inmates differently...(Afterall, Tommy Chong should not be treated like Charlie Manson)
The Buddhist Peace Fellowship Prison Project has had some success...According to wikipedia, they:
work with prisoners and their families and other religious groups in an effort to address violence within the criminal justice system. They oppose the implementation of capital punishment and also offer prisons information on chaplaincy opportunities. The committee's founding director was Diana Lion, who also has served as associate director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
...the BPF Prison project...is attempting to transform the prison system through reforming the prison-industrial complex, abolishing the death penalty, and bringing the teachings of "dharma" to those persons confined in prisons and jails...
Now, although I am an Atheist, it does seem that there could be some benefits to prisoners who might be encouraged to read or discuss philosophies of this type. Plus they are nonsectarian. This would be a good example of how to approach the system. Granted this wouldn't work for
every prisoner, but it's a great path for many.
A documentary about this project came out a while ago, I can't remember for the life of me what it was called. But I guess they had a pretty good success rate on previous repeat offenders.
Compassion is what's really missing I think. Many of the more extreme criminals get the shaft on the streets, from their parents, from their peers and society and they go into prison and get the same treatment. You can't break a vicious cycle by adding to it.
Great question, I was actually just thinking of this the other day, while watching a great Frontline documentary called The New Asylums...It's about how Mental Hospitals have been overflowing and as a result, many prisons have become defacto asylums.
So there's my two cents
