In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs

If you want rehabilitation then you should ensure that they're working for more than slave wages and that money is set aside to be available to them upon their release.

Ensuring they can communicate with their families at no charge would be a huge plus as well.

Do we have high-quality studies on what facilitates rehabilitation?

I would imagine that the best data comes from places that have the highest rates of rehabilitation and lowest rates of re-offending. As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out.[0]

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-...

> As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out

Agree, but do we have experiments trying Nordic models in America to see what aspects of their model work here (and which may not)?

No. Also, if you try, conservative voters will call you evil and/or sinful for being nice to people.

Here's one, in Pennsylvania:

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-will-little-scan...

Sounds like Oregon started but hasn't gotten very far:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/08/425946/how-norway-helping-...

What we're currently doing is creating a permanent underclass of "criminals" who are viewed as subhuman and used as political fodder. The status quo benefits wealthy people by providing cheap labour and a convenient scapegoat. People who have been incarcerated are impoverished and cut off from careers and social lives, so they can't function outside of prison.

There's lots of evidence that maintaining connection to family, and providing skills training reduces recidivism. You should be asking for studies proving that what we're currently doing is effective or humane.

On a related note, we have a bunch of replication failures in education for selection effects reasons. It turns if you have a highly motivated staff and engaged parents - pretty much every flavor of educational approach has a positive impact. When you try the same thing with an overworked and demotivated staff, unengaged parents, and with non-selective student populations that have behavior issues or other concerns ... most methods fall apart. And some of the approaches might even work, presuming similar conditions.

Getting policy right under adversarial conditions is really hard - even harder than the already hard problem of identifying and testing good policy.

Do we have conclusive evidence that causality isn’t actually reversed here in a large percentage of cases?

As in, a certain % of the population is, very unfortunately and not of their own volition, born with innate antisocial traits. They just happened to roll a 1 at birth on many attributes at once, and are stuck with it for life. Assuming humans are not a blank slate, many said humans will not be re-trainable to be pro-social. They will cause mayhem and misery to those around them unless isolated, humanely, with dignity and compassion, from the rest of society. Given a large enough of a denominator, that’s potentially millions of people.

And fair point around social ties being important here, I wonder what percentage of imprisonment that would prevent.

Recent metaanalysis of intervention effectiveness (2025, UK) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/680101e3da5bb...

In short: humans are not inherently good 'uns or bad 'uns. The social interventions made by friends, families, community, state-run programs, have a discernable effect on reoffending rates.

I imagine Norwegian-American recidivism rates are comparable to Norwegian rates.

Just like Swedish-American homelessness rates are comparable to homelessness rates in Sweden, etc.

> Just like Swedish-American homelessness rates are comparable to homelessness rates in Sweden

...are they? (Serious question.)

(Note: "There was no significant difference in rates of lifetime adult homelessness between foreign-born adults and native-born adults (1.0% vs 1.7%). Foreign-born participants were less likely to have various mental and substance-use disorders, less likely to receive welfare, and less likely to have any lifetime incarceration. The number of years foreign-born adults lived in the United States was significantly associated with risk for homelessness" [1])

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00333...

“Discernible effect” doesn’t really refute their point, it affirms it. Some aren’t responsive to any of that.

I think it’s logical that you’re both right, with the disagreement being in the ratio. If you honestly think all humans are born equal, I suggest visiting a mental ward, or more relevant here, watching some interviews/analysis of mass murderers. There’s a well accepted, by the medical field, by objective metrics, spectrum of self control, awareness, autonomy, and intelligence, expressed in humans. We’re not all the same. You typing here suggests you’re on the relatively extreme end of the “genetic luck” spectrum.

>Do we have conclusive evidence that causality isn’t actually reversed here in a large percentage of cases? >As in, a certain % of the population is, very unfortunately and not of their own volition, born with innate antisocial traits.

Assuming the certain % is something meaningful and not like 1% then:

Yes, given that America and the world has run the largest ever social experiment, America imprisoning a higher percentage of their population than any other country and most other countries continuing to thrive with lower crime numbers than America (in cases where countries do not thrive obvious external and environmental factors are seen) it follows that America, a nation of immigrants with higher heterogeneity of the population than other nations of the Earth, does not have a population with a greater percentage of the population genetically predisposed to anti-sociability.

America has a population where 1 in 3 adults has a criminal record. If criminality was in any significant way genetically hard-wired in Americans it seems difficult to believe the country would have lasted as long as it has, although I admit my argument here may be slightly weak given the current state of things, but I think one can argue that is not the fault of the anti-social population.

Is there any evidence that Nordic countries have higher rates of rehabilitation? The original assertions were based on terrible data: Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% because it only counts convictions in the following 2 years whereas the US counts any arrest in the following 5.

> If you honestly think all humans are born equal

I don't. But in addition to genetics, babies pop out of rich and poor vaginas. Socioeconomic status is a much stronger indicator for being incarcerated than genetics (not counting "male vs female"). There is also the theory that the children of prisoners grow up without fathers and are more likely to go to prison, thus perpetuating the cycle. Children that lose both parents (to imprisonment, drug addiction, abandonment) and enter foster care or become wards of the state have terrible life outcomes. Not genetic, but familial due to disrupted social support networks.

I also think that if, for example, you get addicted to heroin, and you don't have a good support network, that will be your only life until you're dead. But if you do have a good support network, you have an better chance of getting clean and staying clean.

I agree, and I think the other person will too. You’re correct.

But they’re also correct. There will be some subset of the population that will be, and remain, harmful to society. This isn’t even a purely human concept, and can be found in all species with collective/social behavior.

> born with innate antisocial traits

If this were true, sociability wouldn't be so incredibly overwhelmingly correlated with trauma, and to the extent that trauma & poverty are related, poverty. This is a full and utter complete fact, it is foundational knowledge to social science, psychology and psychiatry.

People. Are. Not. Born. Bad. They're born to traumatized parents raised in a society that squeezes them for all they're worth.

> many said humans will not be re-trainable to be pro-social

The vast, vast majority of people absolutely could be, but they will never receive the resources (time, attention) to be better. It is not that we don't know how to help people, its that its /expensive/ and we /would rather punish them than help them/.

Scandinavian countries have prison populations in the thousands (1000) and the USA has a prison population in the millions (1000000). The USA has an incarceration rate 10 times that of any Scandinavian country. Recidivism rates might be similar, but I'm certain the fact that so many fewer end up in prison means something important about the USA

At least in the US your race is stronger indicator for being incarcerated than your affluence levels. E.g. Black Americans are somewhere 10-30x more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than Asian Americans of similar poverty levels. Race here, similarly to economics, is again a confounding variable for something else that is actual causal to this. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353 . And again, the direction of causality here isn't obvious either.

Most likely it's a combination of genetics, cultural expectations, social support networks, and a litany of other elements that all come together to affect the ultimate outcome. Which aligns with your thesis around one's support network making a huge difference. But it's just important to point out that poverty by itself is not causal of crime, it simply makes it more likely given many other factors such as culture and community. It's mildly predictive, but up to a point.

Funnily enough, as a side-note, the stats show that most white-collar crime is committed by well-educated and affluent white men in their forties or older, causing a lot more financial harm than your everyday street crime added up.

Nordic societies and people are very different than what you'll find in the USA. I'd be curious to see how a US-like prison system would fare in Sweden, with Swedish (native) prisoners. Probably quite well.