I was watching a really vile movie tonight, and it started me thinking about the American penal system. According to the Wesleyan University “Hermes Index”, as of 1985 the US Government spent a total of $20 billion on prisons and corrections, and $16 billion on education.
I hear an awful lot about holding our schools accountable for results, and measuring to make sure our students are really learning. Why isn’t there a similar emphasis on accountability in our penal systems? Shouldn’t a prison be measured on whether their prisoners are being rehabilitated, and taken to task when a former inmate is incarcerated again?
heh heh heh
Sorry. As a teacher, I can’t help snickering over the whole idea…
Oh, I didn’t say that I thought any of the efforts to measure the accomplishments of our schools were particularly useful. I’m far too cynical for that. 🙂
Moreso, I was just curious when it’s such a big deal in one context and not the other.
Interesting thought. With some prisons now being privatized, I can just picture the adversing.
“Our ex-cons have the lowest recidivism rate in the state!” (small print–of course the electroshock treatments help . . . )
The myth of prisons
The modern penal system has nothing to do with rehabilitation, and they dropped that pretext long ago. Oh sure, politicians will still pratter on about it, but there’s nobody left in the industry that even pretends that rehab is what they’re attempting.
And recidivism is a wonderful subject too. Logically, you’d want to keep the prisoners that are most likely to re-commit their crimes locked up, right? Um, there’s little logic in the system. For example, murderers have the lowest recidivism rate of any type of crime, yet they get the longest sentences, on the whole. Petty crimes, particularly those that are committed for the purpose of paying for drugs, have a very high repeat offender rate. Those guys get shorter sentences, and zero help in kicking their drug habit, virtually guaranteeing they’ll just strike again.