> What someone did in the past shouldn't matter to anyone if that person has been rehabilitated.
That's just it though. The US prison systems, as a general rule, don't rehabilitate; they punish. There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.
We need to work towards the prisons rehabilitating before we can trust the people coming out of them are "safe" (understand that a lot of people that get sent to prison _are_ safe... the term has a vague meaning the way I'm using it).
> There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.
We can't effectively rehabilitate when we have so many people in prison.
Our rates of re-offense are also messy because we literally don't give people another option other than returning to crime.
>We can't effectively rehabilitate when we have so many people in prison.
But the reason we have so many people in prison is that we have stupid laws that mark as jail-able offenses the stupidest stuff. Just take financial fraud, why must someone be jailed for that? Are they a menace if outside?
That's just it though. The US prison systems, as a general rule, don't rehabilitate; they punish. There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.
We need to work towards the prisons rehabilitating before we can trust the people coming out of them are "safe" (understand that a lot of people that get sent to prison _are_ safe... the term has a vague meaning the way I'm using it).