Hear That Sound? It's Feces Hitting the Fan.

[Occhidiangela]

To those who claim that there is no evidence that the death penalty actually deters crime:

http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/Balkan/Dracula.html

You want to rehabilitate criminals? That's fine. Teach them how to do something useful. But don't give them frekking millions of ways to be distracted from why they're there. Make them want to rejoin society. Make them wish they hadn't done what they did. And fairly pay those who were wrongly accused. What happens if the state makes a mistake? "Oh, sorry Mr. Billy, but you didn't kill those kids after all. Oops. Sorry. Here, we'll let you out, but your record still says you were convicted, so nobody's going to trust you since you were suspicious enough to be put in jail for the last 8 years. Have a nice life."
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Short term thinking is part of the institutional problem. Running on a year to year budget horizon, guards come cheaper than psychologists, socialogists, psychiatrists, and counsellors. Likewise such a mentality avoids the costs of continual system churn as lawsuits and fallacious arguments force overhead expenses through the roof for whatever program is designed and implemented for robust rehabilitation.

Looking at a long term budget, recidivism costs the same amount of money again and again, and court costs expended again and again, and police costs expended again and again.

From a total systems perspective, I wonder where the recidivism and associated costs break even point arrives, where it becomes more cost effective to establish a prison system with robust rehabilitation and attitude reformation focus rather than the present cross betwen "Hell on Earth" and "Limbo on Earth."

Occhi