Is There An Alternative To Prison? Yes! I, Karl Loren, propose to establish the validity of my answer -- on these pages.
Whether "treated" with solitary confinement or drugs, if there is true "rehabilitation" that can be offered in prison, then neither solitary nor drugs would seem as necessary. The drugs and "devices" used in mental health treatment are consistently exposed in the Wall Street Journal, and other media, as frauds. Click for example. I propose to show that there is an existing program that reduces recidivism -- and suggest the logic that a reduction for recidivism is the beginning of a reduction of the need for prison. "Recidivism" is typically defined as:
The problem with that definition is that is not sufficiently precise to use in a scientific investigation. The following is NOT a suggested final definition for the word, for our usage, but gives the flavor of a final definition. First, the "return" to some previous behavior must be easy to measure and have no ambiguities. Thus, I suggest that "previous criminal behavior" be more carefully defined as "a person found guilty of a felony, sentenced to prison for 5 or more years, serving 2 or more years and who, while in prison is released from prison on parole." There was "previous" behavior which included prison and has "ended" with parole. The person is now in a new condition == "on parole." "Parole" means that there is a formal system of rules for behavior while on parole and some formal method of detecting violation of those rules of behavior, even if only failure to show up for some scheduled meeting with a Parole Office (for instance, because he was arrested and is in jail). The "return" would be measured ONLY by such violation of that parole that the parole jurisdiction observes the person having been sent back into prison, whether because of the action of the Parole system, or in any other way. The parole system, however, must learn about this or the statistic cannot be measured. A person could violate some required behavior and the judgment within the Parole system is such that he is NOT sent back to prison, or that he convinces some judge that he should not be sent back to prison. The "return" means he is, again, an inmate in prison, whether or not the same prison. We would not attempt to keep track of a person who leaves prison and gets arrested in some different jurisdiction, etc. unless, in that process he has violated his parole and the Parole Officer determines (somehow) that they guy is actually back in prison (even if somewhere else). When a person is "on parole" it is usually very specific as to how long is the parole and how he must report to his parole officer. If, during this parole period he is arrested or handled in any other way so that he goes to prison (again) and this comes to the attention of the parole system in which he was being observed, that would be "a return." More of such type of careful definition of terms is needed before you can then start looking for statistics that can accurately measure "recidivism" and even begin to look, further, for what "differences" there might be among the prison population (that get out on parole) which could be measured as to possible effect on recidivism. |
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The impetus for this work by me was an