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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Indeed! In the USA, the prison system is brutal and focused on punishment. There's little chance of someone coming out of prison in the USA as a better, kinder, gentler person than they were when they went it. Hell, many prisons make it hard to get books even if a prisoner does want to better themselves.
Meanwhile, Norway's recidivism rate in the 90s was nearly as bad as the USA's. They reformed their system though. They replaced large prisons with smaller community-based correctional facilities so convicts could be close to their homes and maintain relationships. Many allow visits, including conjugal visits, up to three times per week. As you mentioned, the recidivism rate after 2 years is only 20%, which is the lowest in the world, and rises to only 25% after 5 years. They treat prisoners like people and allow them to stay a part, to some extent, of their community.
If you want people to be good and valued members of society, you need to treat them like people and allow themselves to improve themselves while incarcerated. If however, you want a person to act like an animal, then treat them like an animal. The USA's punishment focused model treats prisoners like animals where a prisoner's only focus is sometimes just to survive. Naturally, those learned behaviors become ingrained and they behave like that when they get out of prison too.
Thank you for adding the context to my 20% figure. I remembered running into it, but did not know it was the two year rate, and an improper comparison.
For proper comparison, the US 2 year recidivism rate is 35%. (and that 80% figure I cited is a 10 year rate)
Thank you. I actually didn't realize that the 80% rate for the USA was a 10 year rate. 20% vs. 35% over two years is clearly still impressive, but now I want to see what the Norwegian rate is at 10 years for a proper comparison but I can't seem to quickly find it.
That requires treating prisoners like human beings tho. That might be a little much for most of us Statesians.