In L.A., a new vision of incarceration proves rehabilitation works

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-26/chabria-column-los-angeles-state-prison-re-entry-facility-rehabilitation

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

35 73 3 years ago

latimes.com

ImAnAmateur• 3 years ago

This article has a strange tone. It fails to prove anything by the end other than that X amount of people graduate the program without stating what amount of people enter. What the program is doing sounds like it has helped, but the article's argument leaves itself wide (Wide!) open to anyone wanting to say that it doesn't actually work.

What's missing is an interview with someone who has graduated the program and the long-term statistics for all people who enter the program.

“When they get a job, we ask them simple questions. ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And they’re just like, ‘Oh, my gosh, do we actually care?’ They are so surprised that we’re asking,” she said.
But it has to be authentic. If Mrs. C and her partner, Michael Contreras, were just playing a role, he said, the incarcerated men would “read right through everything.”
“They’re going pick out who really wants them to change and who’s just here for a paycheck,” he said.

There's no substitute for someone genuinely caring, or genuinely trying to care, for someone else. :)

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

anyone wanting to say that it doesn't actually work.

That's a great question. How do you operationalize success?

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

There's no substitute for someone genuinely caring

And this is one of the things government programs are really bad at, at least at any kind of scale.

LargeTomato3• 3 years ago

Based on the evidence I've seen and my own lived experience I believe that rehabbing criminals works better than punishing them. To me, that seems pretty straight forward.

Where I disagree is how much it costs. There are some criminals I don't want to pay for rehab for. Addicts who don't want to be sober, petty theft with short sentences, and heinous psycho criminals are all groups I do not want my taxes helping.

chuckadams2• 3 years ago

Your taxes are still paying for locking them up.

fmajid• 3 years ago

The Delancey Street Project in San Francisco has an outstanding record on preventing recidivism. Their secret, though, is inducting only ex-felons who genuinely want to turn their life around. As you point out, without this motivation, falure is near guaranteed.

echelon• 3 years ago

Gone would be death row, with its tiny, moldering cells. Gone, ideally, would be cells at all, though that may take some time. But most of all, gone would be the attitude that incarcerated people belong in cages.
Instead, following the lead of places including Norway and Finland, California would change what prison is for. The focus would be on giving incarcerated people a more normalized experienced that offered the skills, training and personal growth to be good citizens — because most people who go into prison come out again.

This all costs money that they presumably will need to raise taxes for. I'd much rather spend that on kids growing up. Providing those that don't have a good safety net or family life with more structure and activities. Or on the homeless and the drug addicted who are true victims and haven't shown a propensity to hurt anybody.

I'm not sure I can look favorably at a murderer, or even someone that commits manslaughter or negligent homicide while drunk driving. I probably need to become a better person and be more forgiving, but that's a really hard ask to make of people. I regularly imagine myself in the shoes of victims (over exposure to crime drama?) and know I couldn't bear having my loved ones taken from me.

This is a tough topic.

brvsft• 3 years ago

This all costs money that they presumably will need to raise taxes for.

I don't inherently disagree, but proponents would point out that the alternative also costs money and has other costs (especially for victims where a person turns back to crime after being released from prison).

It's unfortunate I don't think there's any source of data I can trust on the costs in either direction. So to me, it ultimately comes down to what value I'd prefer to see in society. I stand somewhere along the lines of: (1) these men did their time and deserve a second chance and (2) one of the worst things you can do with a violent criminal is release them early, before they're rehabilitated, to see them go on to hurt another victim.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

This all costs money that they presumably will need to raise taxes for.

If it works, maybe not. Keeping all those people in prison for years costs; if we can keep them for less time, we can save money on the per-year costs even if the program to get them out itself costs money.

If it works.

motoxpro• 3 years ago

I think the point is that most people in prison didn't kill someone and most people come out. We would never choose for them to "just not come out" so the question is "How do you want them to act when they come out?"

Does it lead to better outcomes to rehabilitate the person who is in there for 5 years because they stole TVs from Best Buy, or does it lead to better outcomes for us to do nothing and then release them.

Genuine question. We've done the latter, let's try something different.

lupusreal6• 3 years ago

When they say the prison cells would ideally be eliminated, they're not talking about a magical society in which rape and murderer no longer happen. They're talking about releasing rapists and murderers without locking them up. That's the ideal they're striving for.

piloto_ciego2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure I can look favorably at a murderer, or even someone that commits manslaughter or negligent homicide while drunk driving.

You simply choose to. It’s not easy, just like it’s not easy to “choose” to study or go to the gym, or do anything, but you just choose to.

It’s hard, but you can choose a tit-for-tat mindset, it’s a proven strategy in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, which is very similar to life.

lupusreal6• 3 years ago

You simply choose to. It’s not easy

I choose not to, not because doing otherwise would be difficult but because doing otherwise would violate my personal code. Why should I violate my personal code, because it's cheaper for the state if I do? I'm happy with my tax dollars being used to incarcerate rapists and murderers, that's money well spent. Lock these people up so they can't hurt people anymore and throw away the key. Damn the expense, give them what they deserve.

cush• 3 years ago

…will need to raise taxes for… I’d rather spend it on…

Politicians love to present initiatives like this as a zero sum game, and they rarely are. You’re assuming future crimes and reincarnation have no cost, and having fewer criminals in our communities doesn’t benefit children. It’s so much more complex than a line item on a balance sheet.

fwip2• 3 years ago

Most people in prison have not killed another person, or even committed physical violence against another person. Many used to be those kids who grew up without a good safety net or family life, or adults who became homeless or addicted to drugs.

Here are the stats for federal prisoners: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

gustavus4• 3 years ago

I mean not to argue against your point, but Federal prisoners are generally not going to have committed violent crimes as those kind of crimes are the purview of the state and lead to state incarceration not federal.

paxys3• 3 years ago

Murderers and rapists are convenient boogeymen when arguing against prison reform, but the reality is that the vast majority of first-time offenders are in there for relatively minor crimes (mostly drug related), and simply being in the system is what propels them deeper into that life because of how limited their options become.

roughly3• 3 years ago

I'd much rather spend that on kids growing up.

I think you're right that this would have a larger impact in the long run (and be more humane, to boot - avoid the trauma in the first place), but it's a long-term investment, and it needs to also be combined with policies that lower crime in the short term as well. Voters (hell, people) feel crime as a safety threat and don't tend to respond to feeling unsafe by supporting plans with 20-year payoffs, so if you want your 20 year plan to stay in effect, you need to show shorter-term benefits, too.

thefaux• 3 years ago

Here's something else to try imagining: your brother falls on hard times, starts taking meth and ends up violently robbing someone to support his habit. Would you want him to be left to rot in prison for 10 years or would you want him to be part of a program that both holds him accountable and tries to help him rehabilitate and make amends?

Both approaches will have costs but for me the choice is clear.

jstarfish• 3 years ago

For a violent crime, he can serve the time. Especially being a brother on meth-- he's as much a risk to family as he is anyone else.

Write bad checks or panhandle or steal bikes or rip copper out of walls or something for fuck's sake. The line is crossed by going straight to infliction of violence on the community.

pi-e-sigma2• 3 years ago

Better question: would you rather let him rot in prison or be his next victim? Because in all these discussions about rehabilitation somehow we never talk about victims of the re-offenders

petsfed2• 3 years ago

One of the things that get trotted out a lot when talking about the higher-than-the-general-population incarceration rate of black men is that a higher-than-the-general-population rate of single-parent black families. Which, in turn, drives a higher-than-the-general-population number of black teens into risky/illegal behaviors. And the cycle continues. Its not even controversial: children of two-parent homes tend to be more successful and spend less time in the judicial system*. So in a very real sense, fighting to keep these kids' fathers out of jail in the first place helps kids.

*. There are also a host of other issues that contribute to the incarceration rate, and the non-legal issues that cause one parent to leave are also (arguably) a driver of criminal activity. But in general, the less time a kid's parent spends in prison and the more rehabilitated that parent is upon release, the less likely that parent is to re-offend and the better off that kid is going to be.

Whoppertime2• 3 years ago

Spending that money on kids growing up instead won't necessarily deliver better results https://www.cato.org/blog/public-school-spending-theres-char...

kritiko• 3 years ago

Isn’t this article just describing a halfway house?

Doesn’t really seem that Nordic to me.

Synaesthesia2• 3 years ago

Incarceration is a western phenomenon, it wasn’t really used in traditional cultures, who usually had systems based on family honour. I think we are overly punitive and it’s not effective.

google2341232• 3 years ago

I’m curious, can you look up what china did in the 1600s against those that committed crimes? I don’t actually know.

pjscott• 3 years ago

Typically caning and/or time wearing a cangue, with death sentences or penal servitude for very serious cases.

Whoppertime2• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore Caning is an alternative to incarceration

gustavus4• 3 years ago

Here's something I've noticed recently is that people on different sides of the issue usually end up talking past each other.

I'll start by pointing out I feel that the prison system is incredibly in humane and we need serious prison reform to a large degree. But I think there needs to be some understanding that there isn't a one size fits all solution, on one end you have a kid of a crack addict who gets in with the wrong crowd and ends up getting busted for being involved in an armed robbery because his buddy asked for "help" with something. Is the proper solution to throw the book at this kid and put him away for 20-30 years? Probably not.

On the flip side you have serial killers like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer, those people don't need rehabilitation they're simply monsters and deviants that need to be removed from society forever.

Any discussion that fails to acknowledge both of these groups exist is probabaly fallacious.

paxys3• 3 years ago

IMO what is disingenuous is that the vast majority of prisoners belong in the first category, but when discussing any kind of reform the standard argument used is "but we can't let the Ted Bundys out!" and that kills all further progress.

ch4s32• 3 years ago

IMO what is disingenuous is that the vast majority of prisoners belong in the first category

I'm not sure evidence bares that out. I always like to reference this great project when discussing this topic[1]. Some 63% of people in state prison in the US are there for some violent crime, which is an unfortunately muddy category. I don't have the exact stat at hand but something like 70% of people incarcerated for the first time have 5 or more priors.

My point is there is a vast middle where most prisoners have some kind of violent conviction and half a dozen or more priors. It's a thorny problem to think about how to best keep communities safe, and to best serve these people who are falling through the cracks. However I think its fair to say that some of them probably need a few years to cool off where they can't be a danger to others. And I say this as someone who is highly critical of the carceral state and generally doesn't want to see any person lose their freedom.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

bb88• 3 years ago

"Who are you scared of and who are you angry at?"

If you're angry at someone for using/possessing IV drugs, why lock them up in prison with the violent offenders, e.g, the people we're scared of?

If you inject people with non-violent crime histories into a violent prison, what do you think the outcome is going to be? More people we're scared of.

FpUser• 3 years ago

I noticed that too. In Canada they've introduced sweeping rules that have increased time for pardon eligibility to be 10 years instead of 5. All because of a one fucking case of Homolka. If it was up to me I'd rather see politicians responsible for these changes to be in jail. Why is this imbecilic tendency to keep punishing people long after they've paid for their crimes?

petsfed2• 3 years ago

Its especially frustrating, given that Ted Bundy was seemingly lab-grown as an argument for the death penalty. And he was executed.

What are we even doing comparing how the system effects him and some kid who didn't find out he was an accessory to an armed robbery until after his friends got back in the car? Like one is clearly the premeditated threat to society, the other found out the hard way that he had rotten taste in friends.

thegrim33• 3 years ago

Isn't that already handled by juries recommending, and judges proclaiming, different sentences depending on the crimes committed, circumstances around the crime, and the person that committed them? There isn't a strict rule of "found guilty of X crime = Y years in jail sentence". It's all circumstantial.

gustavus4• 3 years ago

You are correct to an extant although there are mandatory sentencing guidelines, and plea bargains play into this.

But at the end of the day my point is to help introduce nuance to the discussion which often seems to be an argument between a loud group that advocates that everyone in prison is just a misunderstood jan valjean that was a victim of circumstance and should be helped instead of punished, and those who feel that criminals are need to be punished for violating the social contract and are sociopath threats to an orderly and just society. The first group likes to point to young people who had incredibly difficult environments as justification for their point whereas the latter group points to child molesters and cold blooded gang members for their point.

Both exist, both should be taken into account, and trying to depict all criminals as one or the other leads to nonsensical, impracticable ignorant solutions that come more from a desire to feel right than actually doing good.

CogitoCogito2• 3 years ago

Any discussion that fails to acknowledge both of these groups exist is probabaly fallacious.

I'm pretty sure basically every debate about incarceration has considered all these factors. They are the some of the most obvious factors to consider after all.

nostromo4• 3 years ago

The data presented in the article are unconvincing. Of course people that enter a voluntary program to reduce crime will commit less crime. They're self-selecting and indicating that they want to be reformed just by attending the program.

Meanwhile California homicide rates increased 40% from 2019 to 2021. Aggravated assault with a firearm increased over 60%. The article says these programs were started in 2015. If they think what they're doing is working I'd like to see what they think failure looks like.

https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/exploration/crime-statistics/...

phren0logy• 3 years ago

This is one city in California (a large one, but still just one) with one small new pilot program. I'm not sure why you'd expect this to be reflected in state-wide statistics from 2019-2021.

everybodyknows2• 3 years ago

Those stats go up through 2022. Why cut off at 2021? Could those crimes have gone down in 2022?

nostromo4• 3 years ago

Nope. Look for yourself.

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

The article discusses one prison, not statewide changes. Additionally, this program was introduced in 2023, after the period of time you're quoting.

Violent crimes are up across the nation; it isn't limited to California.

Those stats underscore the opposite of the argument you're making: if traditional incarceration and punishment isn't getting the job done, then maybe it's time to try something entirely new, regardless of how it affects people's sense of retribution and punishment.

nostromo4• 3 years ago

These programs started in 2015. It's in the article.

CogitoCogito2• 3 years ago

Meanwhile California homicide rates increased 40% from 2019 to 2021. Aggravated assault with a firearm increased over 60%. The article says these programs were started in 2015. If they think what they're doing is working I'd like to see what they think failure looks like.

Hmmm I wonder if there might have been some sort of confounding variable affecting all this between 2019 and 2021...

nostromo4• 3 years ago

Yes, but not what you're hinting at. The confounding variable is that California decided to let a bunch of violent criminals out of jail early in 2020 because of Covid first, then because of equity concerns.

It's unsurprising that letting murderers out of jail early increases the murder rate.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-09/covid-19...

https://trends.vera.org/state/CA

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

Here'1.s some context on this issue:

1. If mass incarceration worked, the US would be the safest country in the world. The US has 5% of the world population but 25% of the world's prisoners [1]. The US has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world [2];

3. Executing prisoners is really expensive. There have been a ton of studies on this. For example, Maryland estimates that each executed prisoners has a total cost of $3 million [3] once you factor in higher security incarceration and legal defense in appeals;

4. Since 1973, at least 195 people sentenced to die have been exonerated [4];

5. Death sentences are significantly more likely when the allegend offender is black and the victim is white [5]. The point is that this has almost nothing to do with "justice" and everything to do with anger and vengeance.

6. Of the people xonerated, 25% had confessed and 11% had plead guilty [6], both of which show massive problems with police practices and the difficulty, costs and risks in defending one's innocence.

Restorative justice is both cheaper and more effective at reducing crime. The biggest problem to solve is income inequality.

Unfrotunately, locking people up is big business. It creates jobs. Voncict labor is an unfortunate loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment otherwise banning slavery (eg [7]). Prisoners increase population without increasing the number of voters (sort of; it's a little complex). Prisoners are further milked through outrageous commissary fees, communication fees (leters and phone), medical co-pays and the failure to provide basic living conditions like sufficient food and medical care.

Mass incarceration and retributive justice have been an abject failure in the US. Spend a few minutes looking at Riker's Island. You may be tempted to call it an exception. You shouldn't. It's systemic. Retributive justice simply does not work so we need actual reform of this system.

[1] https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/keys-our-mass-incarceration-cr...

[2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/US.html

[3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/urls_cited/ot2016/16-5...

[4] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence

[5] https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-and-the-death-penalty...

[6] https://innocenceproject.org/research-resources/

[7] https://thecrimereport.org/2022/11/23/angola-will-remain-a-s...

everybodyknows2• 3 years ago

The US has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world.

Among those other lower-incarceration countries are Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China, which moderate their incarceration rate by means of considerably easier standards for execution than the US.

I assume that's not the solution you have in mind.

lnxg33k1• 3 years ago

I’d assume people would compare what they think is the greatest civilisation of the world with civilisation of compatible systems, but yeah if you want to race with Iran, SA and China and just be better than them, go ahead, be better than Iran, it will be great for Americans, there is also Afghanistan if you want to go a level further

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

Iran [1]:

Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016,[7] and at least 507 executions in 2017.[8] In 2018 there were at least 249 executions, at least 273 in 2019, at least 246 in 2020, at least 290 in 2021, at least 553 in 2022, and at least 309 so far in 2023.

There is no public information on China. This doesn't significantly change the prison population. Estimates are roughly 2400 annually [2].

Saudi Arabia executed 172 people in 2023 [3]. Again, this is statistically insignificant compared to prison population.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China

[3] https://reprieve.org/uk/2024/01/02/saudi-arabia-executed-at-...

gustavus4• 3 years ago

1. If mass incarceration worked, the US would be the safest country in the world. The US has 5% of the world population but 25% of the world's prisoners [1]. The US has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world [2];

I keep hearing this and I just have a hard time believing it. Like okay maybe technically Saudi Arabia does have fewer people in prison than the US but that's because the punishment for theft is having your hand removed rather than going to jail, I guess yes technically that isn't prison, but generally in an elightened society we moved away from those methods of punishment for the most part. Then of course China, I mean China also consistently reported the lowest COVID numbers, and are their numbers including people all those Uighyr's that are undergoing "reeducation"?

Honestly every time I hear this I get the same feeling as when the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women condemns the US treatment of women's rights despite having on it's board such well known champions of Women's rights as Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Suadi Arabia, The Russian Federation and Turkey. Something just seems to not smell quite right.

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

... Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Suadi Arabia, The Russian Federation and Turkey

A key issue in women's rights is reproductive freedom. To varying degrees, abortion is legal in every country you just mentioned. Abortion is generally allowed under Islam. Afghanistan and Pakistan have stricter laws than, say, Turkey but they have usable exceptions (life of th emother, life of the fetus) where the states in the US that have enacted abortion bans generally have the patina of exceptions. These are exceptions so vague and so strict that they're intended never to be used (eg [1]).

Russia has started limiting abortion access. India allows abortion.

So yes, by some measures, the countries you mentioned do, to varying degrees, have more freedom for women.

The issue I think is that many in the US have very skewed views of both how draconian and restrictive some US laws are and a warped view of life in Islamic and other non-Western countries.

Back to prisons, the US has roughly 2 million inmates [2], roughly 1% of the adult population and by every metric this makes the US the most carceral state on Earth. So why aren't we the safest?

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/11/texas-abortion-lawsu...

[2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

maxglute• 3 years ago

It's easy to believe because the US is very good at commercializing and entrenching perverse profit motives, i.e. prison industrial complex and the US health sector knows how to extract more from bodies. The US was also rich/socially broken enough where locking up more people made political and economical sense (for some) and had decades of head start refining the process. Take PRC, Western estimates of Uyghur internment at 1/12 of population, or about lifetime internment of US blacks. Vast majority of mass internment was measured in months because they had to process prisoners through limited new facilities over a short period of time - the point was to filter problematic populations and find edge cases who were slapped with 10-20 year sentences. Majority was was released after a short stint. There's limit on how much country that intern on politics can extract value from industrializing prison, because they prefer not to have # dissidents get out of hand in the first place. Even coerced labour or organ harvesting is lame profit driver compared to the service jobs as a result of the US prison sector that benefits from countries having too much money. Most countries, especially developing countries, diverting people to lockup people is not productive use of resources, at least not for assembling widgets. PRC doesn't have the incentives to spend resources to lock up as large % of the population as the US in both scale and timelines involved. They spent trillions upfront to process the region so long term securitization doesn't involve expensive internment. Meanwhile, in the US, mass internment has become profitable, so it should not be surprising that US ends up imprisoning disproportionately more.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

It "proves" something?

Rearrest rates for felony offenses increased toward the end of the period. When we examine the last several months for which we have data, we see that 50 percent of individuals released in June 2015 were rearrested for felonies within two years, compared with 53 percent for those released in October 2015.

Those are unimpressive numbers.

mitchbob• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/2023.12.26-124321/https://www.latimes.com...

In L.A., a new vision of incarceration proves rehabilitation works

Related Stories