To begin, according to the United States Sentencing Commission in 2014 fully 36% of the federal prison population was made up of illegal aliens. Or, if I need to be more sensitive and tolerant, they were citizens of foreign countries who are in the United States illegally and have been convicted of violating our laws. These men and women don’t need to be rehabilitated so that they can be reassimilated back into society because they need to be biometrically identified and deported immediately upon the completion of their sentences. In fact, since they are to be deported back to their country of origin, there is no benefit for us to rehabilitate them at all as their reassimilation back into society is none of our concern. We don’t need to provide them with psychological or career counselling or educational services. We can apprehend them, try them, incarcerate them to extract the payment to our society prescribed by our laws and then hand them over to the civil authorities in their home countries to do with as they see fit.
Next is the term “rehabilitate”. As defined by the Cambridge dictionary the word means: to return someone to a good, healthy, or normal life or condition after they have been in prison, or been very ill. So to rehabilitate someone presumes that they were good, normal, and or healthy to begin with and just made a thoughtless mistake in a moment of haste. In the culture we live in today this is clearly not the case. Many, if not most of the men and women who currently inhabit our prisons were never good, or normal to begin with. And again, to exhibit at least a little compassion, I’m willing to admit that this may not be entirely their fault although it hardly matters whose fault it is.
Since it is well known that 40% of children are now raised in homes without father present it is logical to assume that the condition of having been raised by a single mother is at least as common in the prison population and is likely higher. It is also well established that the presence of a father in the home is where children learn to respect authority and to understand how men and women properly interact with one another. This familial socialization takes many years and is generally taught to children by those who have a genetic stake in their safety, and wellbeing, starting when an infant’s brain is not fully formed and connected and they know nothing. How is the prison system supposed to raise a child who comes to it as a disrespectful adult? How is the prison system supposed to make whole again that which was never whole to begin with?
Lastly, the words Criminal Justice System sort of hung in my mind. The phrase implies that society has laws, that if you determined to have violated one or more of those laws you are a criminal and that society has the right to mete out to you whatever justice is specified by the law. Now when a child violates some rule of family behavior they may be subject to a timeout or some other form of punishment. But this isn’t referred to as “unruly child justice”. Children who behave badly aren’t rehabilitated. It’s referred to as punishment, and it's employed as negative reinforcement. It is administered in order to reaffirm where the authority in the family unit lies, and to help a child to understand that if they violate family norms (laws) that there will be unpleasant consequences. The severity and nature of those negative consequences have changed over the years, some would say for the better, some would say for the worse, but the principle is still the same: bad behavior equals swift and unpleasant consequences. But it does no good to send a child to his or her room if they enjoy being there alone in there with all of their devices and wifi.
One has to wonder if hard labor were put back into prison sentences, if prison were made to be a really uncomfortable place to be, if people wouldn’t be a little more careful to avoid the sorts of behavior that were likely to get them sent there.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks
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