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In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs

(www.mainepublic.org)
245 points voxadam | 1 comments | 22 Sep 25 22:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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taurath ◴[22 Sep 25 23:07 UTC] No.45340733[source]▶
If we get serious about actual rehabilitation in prisons instead of punishment there’s never been a better time to be able to learn just about anything on your own time. But we’d have to stop dehumanizing criminals. Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.

We can also be concerned about the incentives for prison labor - for profit prisons and all the many service providers that get paid a mint. Phone calls in many prisons are like $10. Labor gangs and the such. It’s just horrible how badly we treat people in the US for some middleman to make money.

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coolestguy ◴[22 Sep 25 23:11 UTC] No.45340773[source]▶
>Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.

Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated.

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JumpCrisscross ◴[22 Sep 25 23:14 UTC] No.45340794[source]▶
> Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated

This is literally what rehabiliation entails. Convincing criminals that they have better options than crime.

It doesn't work for everyone. There are absolutely bad people who will just violate social contracts, or who can't control their rage turning into violence. Those people need to be incapacitated. But for the vast majority of criminals, particularly non-violent criminals, crime is an economic cost-benefit exercise.

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1. jakelazaroff ◴[23 Sep 25 01:02 UTC] No.45341648[source]▶
On top of that: the US has ~5% of the world's population but ~25% of the world's prisoners. So when we talk about "criminals", most of the people we're referring to are only incarcerated because they're subject to the US carceral system. If they lived in any other country, they'd considered upstanding citizens.