Pell grants coming back for Federal and State prisoners

[vaskidmark]

They'll start working when they get hungry enough because the welfare benefits keep getting stingier...]/quote]

Historically that has not happened.  IIRC it's probably unconstitutional to deny benefits to someone who has not committed welfare fraud - see drug users.
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True, but the few times we've tried the reform thing it's worked darn near as well.

Do you have a citation for that?  See esp your comment below.
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Acknowledged.  But that's not what I'm talking about.  Any program that is to progress beyond 'pilot program' to test outcomes and produce a trained core in case it merits expansion has to show the reduced recidivism rate.  That means that the program they undergo has to reduce the chances they'll cause crime again.

How long does one need to try habilitation (they were never right in order to go wrong in order to need rehabilitation) in order to say it does in fact work?  There have been a few decade(s)-long attempts, but public pressure regarding the lack of  large-scale success has pushed the pendulum back in the other direction.  After 35+ years of proven success NYS's use of the therapeutic community model for some drug offenders has continued to remain a model program for the simple reason that the vast majority of inmates cannot/will not make the psychological/behavioral changes necessary to actively participate in the program.  England, where the notion started in their psychiatric hospitals, found that about 85%-90% of the patients, even with symptomology controlled by medication, could not/would not follow the behavioral schema of the program.  It works best, both for druggies and mental patients, with those who "fell into" their condition from a sound middle-class background and continued to maintain those middle-class mores while incarcerated/inpatient.
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I'll repeat:  The US System, as seen in many states(a few have pushed reforms, and said states see no higher crime rates and MUCH lower prison populations), tends to make criminals worse, not better.  THAT is what I want to fix.

Again, do you have a citation for overall success?
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Like I said earlier, I actually agree.  It's just that it can be made cheaper yet.  If we imprison a guy for 9 years for stealing a car, then he steals another within a month of getting out, getting another 9 years for it, while Norway imprisons him for 3 and he doesn't go stealing another car when he gets out, it's a better success than our result.

If the options were 3 years for a 60% recidivism rate or 9 years for 60%, I'd be much closer to agreeing with you.  But they manage 20%.  And US prisons that go heavy on reform, especially with after-prison support, manage to get close, sometimes even beat it.  Such programs should be expanded.  It's too expensive to do otherwise.

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Like many others, you assume the fallacy that the only crime that individual is going to commit is the theft of one car.  There is a concept known as "theft days".  It's the number of days per time period that a person is engaged in any criminal activity.  Back 15 or so years ago the national average was 295 crime days per year.  Look up the number of cars stolen before the average car  thief gets caught.  You have to account for all of those as well as the one they were caught and convicted of, plus all the other criminal behavior they engage in.

Incarceration as a means of incapacitation works not only to prevent repetition of the crime the individual was convicted of, but of all criminal activity.  It may not be the cheapest answer, and it certainly is not the only answer.  It has been shown to be the most effective answer.

As long as you keep harping on the Norwegians and how they do things and how successful their ways are you are going to have to include how to change the social construct of the USA so that it more closely resembles that of Norway.  You cannot just wave your magic wand and turn the whole country into Lake Woebegon.

stay safe.

[Tallpine]

The British answer used to be Australia.

Maybe we need to fund NASA to get that moon colony going .... 

[Firethorn]

Vas, could you fix the quote close?  It's messing up your post.

Anyways:

Historically that has not happened.  IIRC it's probably unconstitutional to deny benefits to someone who has not committed welfare fraud - see drug users.

It's not denying them when you're making the entire system more stingy/frugal with it's benefits.

Like many others, you assume the fallacy that the only crime that individual is going to commit is the theft of one car.  There is a concept known as "theft days".  It's the number of days per time period that a person is engaged in any criminal activity.  Back 15 or so years ago the national average was 295 crime days per year.  Look up the number of cars stolen before the average car  thief gets caught.  You have to account for all of those as well as the one they were caught and convicted of, plus all the other criminal behaviour they engage in.

Actually, you only assumed that I fell for that fallacy.  I don't.  I'm certainly not assuming 100% catch rates.  I'm fully aware that an active criminal on the loose is much more expensive than one that's locked up, even if they only commit relatively 'petty' crimes.

Like I said earlier, I have no problems with putting an active criminal into prison/jail.  The difference is that I believe that we can do a heck of a lot more to prevent creating new criminals, hardening the ones we have, as well as rehabilitating them.

And I will use the word 'rehabilitate' because they're like a dog that's learned to *expletive deleted*it in the house - they were habilitated wrong, so we gotta go in and fix the initial training.

It has been shown to be the most effective answer.

Not really.  Or perhaps it'd be better to say that we should keep seeking better answers.

I've seen examples of all sorts of successful reform programs.  Perhaps the answer isn't a 'one size fits all' solution, but a series of them, tailored to what's wrong with the individual.

Oh, and dirty little secret about the Norwegians and their limited sentences:  If you're determined to still be a threat after your sentence is up, it's straight into a psych facility for 'further treatment'.  It's a life sentence in all but name.  You need not even have been found guilty of a crime 'worthy' of life in prison in the USA.  A group of people simply have to sign off that they have valid reason to believe you're a threat to others requiring continued restriction of freedom.

Finding rehab success studies will require some work I can't do at the moment, sorry.  I don't have links handy.