#156 By Nate A. Lindell
Why Rehabilitation Ain't Happening

This isn't a fair question, but this series of posts will try
to answer it anyway.
Consider the factors in the problem.

X= prisoner, most of whom were never entirely habilitated
in the first place, some of whom "chose" (see post #
"Do We Really Have A Choice?" for clarification of this term)

Y= prisoncrats, many of whom are themselves not habilitated,
yet are given some basic training on herding people,
christened "correctional officer" then thrown in the pen
with X and vaguely told to "do your job"

Z= a nationwidely high recidivism rate.

Is it that prisoners are incorrigible scum who just don't want
to be fixed/habilitated live crime free? Or is it that the system isn't
allowing prisoners to be healthy, decent human beings?
In some case incarceration of some sort (to protect other people) is justifiable but
in other cases (I dare to include mine), the system seems intent on
thwarting, by any means, a prisoners productive development into a
full, reasonable, considerate human being- i.e. rehabilitation.

If this seems absurd to you, I contend that you are ignorant of the
absurdity of real prisons and what at least some prisoners are like.
you may cure this unawareness by reviewing person stories from prisoners
across the country at http://betweenthebars.org/blogs/. Please
disregard the Hollywood crap and even the brief superficial sketches on
news shows, which can only distort the reality. At least some prisoners
are drug-free, morally conscious, and seek to rise above their cursed
fates, yet are thwarted, even punished for such attempts. Insanely it
is only such prisoners who suffer from imprisonment, not true sociopaths.

Do you scoff?
You like yourself, right? given that you're alive, the answer is "yes"

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At least somewhat. otherwise the "slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune" would wound you so painfully that you'd cease the struggle to
live. Every living being must have some self-esteem.

But what if one's self-esteem is wholly or mostly based on the
belief that somebody else is bad, evil, not as human as them? A person
with such a specious self-esteem becomes dependent on the bad people that
enable him to perceive himself as good.

What happens if the bad person tried to improve herself, tries to become
good? The person who already deems themselves to be good (based
on the badness or bad-ernes of another) has a critical need to keep
the other person bad, rehabilitated.

"We all have, and need opponents...," said Anthony Storr in Human
Aggression (p.104)As Storr explained in pp.63-64 (of the soft covered
bantam edition). We become very dependent on out enemies, the "ugly
people" inferred by Marilyn Manson's song. This is why it's a struggle
for any person in prison (who doesn't collaborate with prisoncrats) to
get on and stay on a productive course of self development, i.e.
habilitation or rehabilitation.

Of course whole towns, such as Waupun, Wisconsin, become
financially dependent on their prisons (as plantations did their slaves,
pusher do their addicts, etc.) making it not just a psychological
threat to prisoncrats but financial and thus physical (money is
needed to eat, etc.) threat to prisoncrats to have much success at
habilitating their captives. Every monster they can make or maintain
justifies their jobs and the jobs for their offspring.

In his "Is prison Increasing Crime?" 2008 Wis. L. Rev. 1049,
Whittier Law School Professor Martin H. Pritikin thoroughly details
how prisons do increase crime. But I've not yet read anything
revealing the psychological motive discussed herein. I hope for
comment and criticisms by criminologists, psychologists and
and those involved in the legal system, so we might discover the
validity of this theory, and hopefully minimize the rehabilitation
and stagnation its responsible for.

Sincerely,
Prometheus

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