In terms of rehabilitation, prospects in this nation look grim. George Dismukes, a prisoner himself, perhaps conveys this sentiment best: "We, the imprisoned, are America's shame. Society has no use for [us] outside, so it pays to lock [us] out of sight, without opportunity or spiritual rehabilitation...Building bigger and better...prisons does not begin to [resolve] the reasons behind the problems and madness" (Dismukes, 1995). Also, Davis, in If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, expresses absolute exasperation with the state of the prison system in America. She writes that "today's prison system should be abolished because it is a system pre-designed and constructed to warehouse the people of underdeveloped and lower economic communities" (p. 138, 1971). Davis, along with Dismukes, is a prisoner writing from within. Explanations on the current state of prisons can be considered the most accurate from these writers' standpoint.
“Investments in new treatment facilities [for drug addicts] have not kept pace with demand” (Belenko, p.115, 1995). Consequently, overall consensus has been towards imprisonment, rather than rehabilitation. The hysteria surrounding crack instigated extreme measures for the identification of crack dealers. In Florida, undercover cops even made their own crack cocaine, 1200 rocks at a time (p. 115, 1995).
Illustration by Eric Drooker
In terms of recidivism rates,
inherently a goal of prisons should be a reduction of those rates. However,
such a reduction would directly conflict with private prisons’ main interest:
profit. The longer a prisoner resides in their prison, the more that company
will profit. The return of freed prisoners adds more to their gains. Thus, rehabilitation
would be the opposite of a profiteer’s goal (Smith, 1993). As logic would
suggest, educating inmates lends a sense of purpose to their life; this increases
self esteem and happiness and produces better behavior. Research has also shown
that “inmates who had earned college degrees…had a 4% recidivism rate
versus the customary rate of 33% for non-degreed inmates” ("FAQ #5",
2001). Considering the grand scale of the American prison system, calculations
have shown an enormous savings for taxpayers for every one percent reduction
in recidivism.
Without education, however, inmates have no goals and no ventilation for their
emotions. “Prison teaches people not to acknowledge or deal with feelings
such as fear and sadness” ("FAQ #6", 2001). Research has also
shown that younger prisoners quickly learn from the more seasoned ones. “Prison
culture has its own rules which must be learned and followed in order to survive”
(2001). As these younger peoples age and become used to this learned way of
life, the outside world is more and more forgotten. This is a major cause of
the large number of freed prisoners who eventually find their way back behind
bars.
There is evidence that learning true job skills via apprenticeship or similar
intensive training programs significantly affects the recidivism rate; but programs
such as these would be very difficult to instate for the entire U.S. prison
population, which is now greater than two million. However, true training programs
that stimulate and challenge prisoners are a hopeful possibility for the future;
such programs “provide a concrete alternative to the ‘lock ‘em
up and throw away the key’ mentality currently in vogue. And they avoid
the exploitation of captive labor typical of profit-driven prison industry programs”
(Erlich, 1995). Although these programs may appear idealistic at the moment,
in the future, hopefully, such training and stimulation will be possible.