Prisons Eat Up Tax Dollars

Rehabilitation Failures Lead To Repeat Crimes: Is Public Truly Better
Protected?

REHABILITATION IS A MYTH

One of the tenets of Department of Correction's conventional wisdom when I
worked there was "The Giant beathes in, the Giant breathes out." That meant
the state locked people up and then after a while the state let them out.
The recurring urge to focus on rehabilitation is a natural one, optimistic
and compassionate. Unfortunately, its underlying premise -- that a majority
of adult offenders can be "set straight" is wrong. When adult offenders get
out of prison they go back to their old neighborhood, their old friends,
their old culture and, inevitably, their old ways. History shows that
offenders' criminal activity slows down only with age.

A high school diploma that helps a criminal get a low end job is
irrelevant; they are not going to accept a life of minimum/low wage work
when they can make ten times that selling drugs or burglarizing. Closer
supervision of adult criminals is not the answer, either. A drug user with
no prior history of violence who was placed in the Intensive Sanctions
program by correctional experts and who wore an electronic ankle bracelet
still murdered three people. The files at DOC are full of cases like that.

The greatest concern of the vast majority of citizens in Wisconsin
regarding these issues is safety from criminals. That comes only from
locking criminals up as long as possible. The citizens are willing to pay
for it; they do not want their sons and daughters to bear the risks that
come with alternatives to prison and chasing the "rehabilitation" myth.

So what's the solution? Another old saying in Corrections is that it was
predictable that 80 percent of the people in prison would end up there.
Talk to grade school and middle school teachers; they can make good
predictions about which children are probably going to end up in that 80
percent.

The key to lowering the crime rate is focusing on the front end. Deal with
the children who aren't fed over the weekend, who eat nothing but
cornflakes and consequently suffer damage to the part of the brain that
allows them to anticipate the future consequences of present actions.

Deal with the emotionally damaged and neglected children whom the human
services departments don't help because their staff is overwhlemed just
dealing with the children whose suffering involves bruises. Deal with the
children who start drinking alcohol at age 9, start doing pot at age 11 and
graduate to harder drugs after that; prevent the organic brain damage that
comes with that lifestyle. Deal with the children who grow up in chaotic
households where commmunicating is done at a screaming level and violence
is possible at any moment for unpredictable reasons.

Is that going to save money? Of course not. It will cost more if you do it
right. And you might actually permanently reduce crime. Doing crime
fighting on the cheap doesn't work. It doesn't help public safety to have
criminals wear ankle bracelets to tell you when they have left their house
if you don't have enough staff to notice it and notify the police. If the
state decides to try the rehabilitation approach yet again, then the state
should waive its dicretionary immunity legal defenses. The victims of
criminal behavior or their survivors could then sue the state for the harm
done by criminals who have been put on probation or released from
confinement to some form of community supervision. Put a cap on the
recovery level, if cost is a concern.

In my opinion, of all of the costs associated with crime, by far the most
important cost is the cost of crime borne by the victims. We have to do
whatever will keep that cost as low as possible.

Gregory V. Smith

McFarland