I couldn't agree more. We are literally number 1 at people in jail both by total number and per capita, we absolutely LOVE throwing people in jail in this country. What we do with most prisoners, prisoners that are to be released after relatively short sentences, is actually quite the opposite of rehabilitation.
Just spitballing here, I think there are kind of 3 main groups of offenders:
1. People who have never been taught better & can be rehabilitated
2. People who can never be rehabilitated, or who have done a crime so heinous they should never be released
3. People with mental issues who belong in an institution, not a prison
Without going into detail, I had a guy fresh out of prison stay with us while our mutual friend helped him get back on his feet. It really changed my view of ex-cons in a lot of ways because for starters, he wasn't the stereotypical Hollywood depiction of a bad guy...he had done some bad stuff, but he wasn't a rotten person. We basically provided dinner & a place to sleep for a couple of months and got to know him and it pretty much turned out he never stood a chance growing up. It's easy to say that once you're an adult, you should magically be responsible & make proper choices, but growing up, if your dad bailed, your mom was an addict, you grew up in the ghetto, got kicked out of school, and your only friends were street thugs who dealt drugs & robbed people, then it's kind of hard to completely change your worldview & a lifetime of habits because that's simply not your interface with the world & how it works.
I saw that guy go through a lot of growing up in a very short amount of time as he got really serious about turning himself into a productive member of society. I saw him shift mentally into realizing he could put in a good job every day at work, he could live a stable life & provide for himself through legal means, basically having a lightbulb turn on that there was a whole world that everyone else was living in where they didn't have to be jerks to each other or live in a dog-eat-dog world, or lie, cheat, or steal to make ends meet. I feel very, very fortunate that I grew up with good role models in relatively safe neighborhoods because it became very obvious to me how my parents & surroundings had kind of pre-set me mentally to expecting to get educated, work hard, contribute, etc., similar to how systems like KIPP focus on making the kids focus on going to college to get a stable job that will support them throughout their lives. I can't imagine growing up in conditions like this dude did & then having to complete redefine my worldview later in life as an adult after making mistakes that landed him in prison.
I think a lot of it boils down to personal desire. I remember back in college taking shifts driving one of our buddies into rehab every week. He had turned into the definition of a loser; even his own mom had kicked him out because he couldn't stop using & couldn't hold down a job. His core problem was simply that he didn't want to change. Everyone is a mess in their own way, some in more serious ways than others, but most issues in the past can be overcome if you're willing to work through them, but he had no desire to stop being a drug addict. I eventually quit taking him to rehab once I realized he was still using & just doing a charade for the last of his friends. It's hard to drop friends because you feel like you're bailing on them, but he was an adult and his choice at the time was to keep making crappy decisions about his life & his future, and I had to decide, as they say, to fish or cut bait. I hope he turned his life around, but I haven't talked to him in over a decade now. I think people like him can be rehabilitated, but he has to hit a point where he either willingly decides to grow up, or where he hits rock-bottom & ends up in a really bad situation or in prison before he's forced to reconsider his life.
Then there's the group of people who have mental issues who have committed wrongdoings & really belong in institutionalized care, not in prison, but we don't have the best system for dealing with that in America right now. I do think a lot of our laws & legal approachs need revamping, not just with the basic stuff like people who carry drugs get 5x the sentence time of people who rape others, but with stuff like Norway's approach to rehabilitation...eventually these people will be back on the streets, and a lot of them simply never stood a chance to fit into normal society...but
can fit in given the opportunity. Not everyone wants to, and not everyone is capable of being rehabilitated in that way, but I think an awful lot of people who are in there can be better served with programs like that. A lot of other countries are successfully adopting programs that do just that:
http://www.takepart.com/article/201...tional-prisons-put-rehabilitation-punishment/