Prisons
I was discussing prisons over lunch with some co-workers and came up with two ideas which seem interesting and certainly couldn’t hurt our prison problem.
First as a qualification to become a warden at a prison an applicant would need to have served some time in jail. Selecting and finding these people may be difficult, ideally they would have served and then gone on to become contributing members of society. But they would have to choose to step back into a prison, which seems like it would difficult even if you are doing it on the other side of the cell door. My suggestions below may make this easier.
Having wardens with prisoner experience would make sure the agency keeping order in prisons remembered that the prisoners were human and still had the potential for a successful civilized life. They would also know what parts are the most de-humanizing and thus stand in the way of a rehabilitation process. They’d also know how prison culture works and may be able to nudge it without heavy handed techniques.
The second and much larger change would be create a matriculation process. Create a number of levels, each independently housed, which a prisoner would be expected to move through during their time in jail. Each level affording more freedoms and demanding more responsibility from the prisoner. At each level the prisoner is incentivized to get to the next level and greater freedoms and privacy, but also have the risk of stepping out of line and being sent back down to a previous level.
Getting to higher levels isn’t just about not breaking the rules it is about conforming to what we expect out of a contributing member of middle class society. There are social, moral linguistic and even dress norms that are expected to be adhered to at least in public. I’m not suggesting that prisoners have to become something they aren’t but they need to become adept at donning the guise or respectability which will serve them in job interviews and holding down jobs once they are released.
With luck, at higher levels the prison environment should be very similar to a boarding school. Prisoners should be attending classes, either in tradecraft or a two or four year degree. At some point prisoners should function in a “cash” economy (in quotes because actual cash may or may not be in the hands of prisoners).
They should hold down and get paid for jobs which can be accomplished from prison. A call center comes immediately to mind (though anything being outsourced can likely be done by prisoners who can’t leave the prison yet). Once they are paid for their work, they will be gradually ramped up to paying for going market rates for room and board and they will start being able to make choices on how to spend their money on different accommodations and benefits (pay more for a larger room, a better dinner occasionally or save it for later uses).
Prisoners aren’t just released all at once, there would be levels where the prisoner is aided in finding employment outside the prison and is allowed to travel on their own to these jobs but is expected to return to the facility for room and board. There would a be a number of slow incremental steps weening the prisoner away from the facility until they could stand productively on their own two feet (even then the prison system should always stand prepared to lend aid and advice when requested/required).
Which such a matriculation system a judge could assign a prisoner to a particular level as they are sentenced for a major crime and when they finish the program their sentence has been served. This may take longer or shorter depending on whether the prisoner embraces or fights the process.
It was an interesting enough idea that I thought I’d present it to the Internet.
This would serve well for prisoners who committed crimes primarily due to their economic or cultural roots, however, a true sociopath or drug kingpin would easily pass through the system without necessarily changing or growing. I’m not sure how the system should be adjusted to handle this.