What is the purpose of a prison? To punish law breakers and deviants? To separate the worst of society out from the rest? To give denim uniform makers a good market to sell to? These may all be true, but there is a far better question to ask: How can our prison system work to help society in general, but also help those within?
I firmly believe in punishment and justice, but our prison system is not providing either, and the problems are only growing. We lock men and women in concrete boxes with, packs of wild animals, then stupidly hope that those same men and women will somehow come out better on the other side. I know that many deserve even this, but we cannot ignore countless studies that show rates of re-offenders to be into the high 80 percent range! Unacceptable. Call me selfish or an idealist, but I want a win-win-win situation!
To start, replace the corrections officers with drill Sargents and give everyone a rank - something less than private at first, say grunt, then private when it is earned and so on. An internal structure is established that involves the inmates themselves which give real responsibilities associated with those ranks (Say, a lieutenant gets command over other soldier/inmates, aswell as a private cell, TV privileges, some time off, and and other privileges; as opposed to the grunts and privates under them who are worked hard and get nothing but the essentials). The ranks and privileges will be revocable, thus giving incentives and goals to the inmates. The day to day activities will go on much like any boot camp progressing them to the rest of the program:
Those who refuse to be disciplined or reformed in this way (there will always be a few), go to a standard prison like anyone else. Those who do well enough can go on to labor projects like farms, road work, or entirely new manpower initiatives. But those who do very well and progress through the ranks in this system will go on to a bridge program between this system and the actual military (not walking in at full rank, but some way of equating the prison ranks with lesser military ranks - Say a Prison Master Sargent = an Army Corporal which is 4 ranks below). This will give the convict a purpose, a goal, and a means to progress... Things these people usually desperately need.
Offer this to any convict, with the exceptions of the most vile predators such as rapists and pedophiles, who will be excluded from this option, and they will jump at it to avoid the hell of Standard Prison, and they will be better off for it. How do i know this? Similar systems like this have already been tried and, not surprisingly, the rate of re-offenders drops from the mid 80's down to the staggering 20's or less. This idea is not new, I simply propose that we make it bigger, and tie it into the service of our country.
Is this a win-win-win situation? Well, these systems have an extremely high success rate, helping the convicted. They remove the undesirables from the streets by turning them into something better, helping society. These reformed convicts bolster the vital numbers of military personnel, helping our nation. Finally, these programs tend to run much cheaper and safer, helping the tax payers (you) directly.
Enough said.
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