Mind you, I'm all for prison reform -- but mostly of the sort that would lead to fewer and shorter prison sentences for all but the truly dangerous, and much more effort put into prevention in the form of eduction, drug treatment, a better social safety net, etc. etc. (in other words, yes, I'm a bleeding heart liberal, and quite willing to sign on to some of Strelnikov's and Academic Monkey's gulley-washing proposals below). And I don't think the fact that colleges and universities -- which might play a role in that sort of reform -- increasingly do look a lot like country clubs (and cost far more, in part thanks to the facilities which create the resemblance) is helping things any. In short, market forces -- especially when the people who make up the market have flawed or short-sighted judgment -- are not the answer to everything.
So, without further ado, the flava:
You've heard of school vouchers. How about prison vouchers?And the link to the full story.
“Some of the same factors that led early education reformers to suggest school vouchers apply with equal, if not greater, force in the prison context,” Alexander Volokh writes in “Prison Vouchers,” an essay forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. . . .
Of course, “the prisoners’ own standards” are exactly what might make prison vouchers unworkable. Would incarcerated gang members choose lock-ups favored by their posses? Would escape artists choose prisons with the sleepiest guards? And what Volokh calls “market success” in a voucher program might not make prisons the undesirable places many think they are supposed to be. “Perhaps the prison becomes a country club,” he writes.
This is really nuts.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find to be most striking is the Finland model, where prisoners are required to re-create the institutions of the Real World. Rather than cells, they are given dorms with computers and (restricted) internet access. They can email and view a small handful of websites. They have 8-hour per day jobs and after a certain time, they "graduate" to small town houses where their families can spend a weekend with them as though they lived together. They do shopping. They are surrounded by a "park" where they can go jogging. They have to plan ahead, "pay bills" and arrange for insurance. They take online school programs and attend courses in prison.
Then, when they finish their debt to society, they return fully ready to the rigors of real life: paying bills, going to work, cleaning after themselves.
Finland has the lowest recidivism rate in the world.