Posted: Oct 02, 2014 3:22 pm
Sendraks wrote:
If all you're going to do is lock someone up, then to realistically expect them to be much different at the end of the duration with zero interventions intended to benefit the individual have occurred, is madness. Sadly, so many people out there think that being in prison will magically change a person.
Particularly in most U.S. prisons, hellholes that they are. European penal systems are often held up as exemplars of modern, rehabilitation based penology, particularly the Nordic countries. But is this true? Recidivism rates are the most common metric used to judge the success or failure of a particular correctional philosophy. In Florida, recidivism rates for violent crimes varies from 26% for murder to 39% for robbery. Non-violent offenses vary between about 20 to 34 percent. So the overall 36 month recidivism rates vary between 20 and 39%. From what I know about the Florida penal system, rehabilitation and education are pretty far down the list of priorities.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/recidivism/2012/
Contrast this with Norway, which is usually held up as the best European system. I can't find the same statistical breakdown but their overall rate is about 20%. Looking at all Nordic countries together, their recidivism rates vary between 20 and 34 percent.
http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/space/publications/recidivism-studies/
You can't draw any hard and fast conclusions from this data, there are too many variables in statistical methodology. However, it certainly isn't a clear cut win for rehabilitation versus punishment.
Perhaps there is a subset of the population that are not good candidates for rehabilitation?