Recidivism incentives could work
| Status: | gabe wins! | |
|---|---|---|
| Topic: | The people and corporations running our prisons should be paid in proportion to the number of their inmates who don't re-offend |
I don't think it would be all that hard to integrate. Once someone is in prison, they're already in a database somewhere, so it should be easy to find out if they're a repeat offender if they get arrested again.
The timeframe isn't much of a problem. According to the article 50% of prisoners released are back in prison after two years, so that already takes into account any time spent waiting for a trial and appeals and everything.
You could even spread out the payments, paying the prison a certain amount for each year a prisoner doesn't re-offend, up to a certain number of years. Statistically, there's got to be a point where if, say, a former criminal hasn't committed another crime after 5 years, they're extremely unlikely to commit one ever again.
From the perspective of how much it costs the government to imprison someone, committing a crime and not getting caught is as good as not committing one. Either way we save on having to keep someone in prison.
Do we trust any of these privatized facilities to report crimes committed on the inside if it would be endangering their incentives?
We have very little in the way of disclosure as to the volume of drug traffic, theft, assault, and rape inside prisons. Wouldn't putting their incentives at risk contribute to the current code of silence?
I am well aware that the tendency to overlook or ignore prison crime is a substantial problem outside of the private corrections sector, but do you think this is ever going to be brought under control while funding needed to improve security and monitoring is more accessible to facilities that don't actively expose and prosecute inmate-on-inmate crimes?
I'm not sure how it works now, but I don't imagine it reflects well on a private prison for them to report a lot of prison crimes anyway. So, any incentive a prison would need to cover up crimes, they probably already have.
The criminals who are willing to commit another crime while they're already in prison are also unlikely to be helped by any rehabilitation programs anyway. The programs would mostly help people after they get out of prison. Those numbers, the prisons can't cover up.
Isn't the perspective that "offenders willing to commit another crime while they're already in prison are also unlikely to be helped by any rehabilitation programs anyway" sort of defeatist?
It's only one step removed from saying that any offender is doomed to offend again no matter what. Unless you think the only ones destined not to recommit upon release are those who were wrongly convicted.
Let's say someone is sent to jail for narcotic possession, and then goes on to procure smuggled drugs in prison. Is this person unlikely to be helped by any rehabilition program? I would think that by rooting out criminal behavior in the prisons they may greatly reduce recidivism, especially if it is the sort of crime that involves addictive behavior or sexual deviancy.
However, since this hypothetical individual has committed a crime since his initial conviction, the prison would not be eligible for an incentive payment, if they were honest about it.
Rehabilitating these individuals before release seems like the most effective measure. This, of course, was the point we agreed on, but considering all of these moving parts we've brought up, I don't think implementing such a system is immediately feasible. In this case, an incentive could only be paid if no crimes were reported to have been committed by the individual in the x amount of time after the prison violation.
So again, even in a pilot program, I think an extended time frame of four or five years is needed just to make the examinations comprehensive. I think a short turnaround on the incentives is unrealistic. We can't just mail partial payments to prisons that release now-seasoned criminals up until the point they have been convicted again. Is DOJ (or whoever) going to spend the man hours asking for money to be returned once a new sentence is doled out? That'll never work. A longer time frame showing the big picture is the only way to approach accurate hindsight.
Private prisons should be striving for this already. Ideally, private facilities should be advertising their low recidivism rates while trying to win more contracts. Paying incentives should be after the fact.
Rather than just covering up crimes that happen in prisons, if the prisons receive bonuses for reducing recidivism they would have a major incentive to prevent prison crimes from happening in the first place.
If a given prisoner is judged more likely to commit a crime in prison based on his offense, then the prison would be smart to expend additional resources on rehabilitation for that prisoner, to ensure their recidivism bonus.
Even if there were a four to five year time lag, it would still be a better system to encourage rehabilitation in prisons. As it stands now, the only way for a private prison to increase revenue is to take in more prisoners. This is actually harmful to rehabilitation efforts. For example, if the prison is planning a 20,000 square foot expansion, and trying to decide between adding a prison library or more cells, the only profitable move under the current system is to add more cells, since the library would just cost money without bringing in any additional revenue.
If the prison got paid for successfully rehabilitating criminals though, a library could become profitable. All of the prisoners would benefit from the increased educational opportunity, giving them a better chance at an honest job when they get released, thus lowering the reason to commit more crimes and making more money for the prison through the recidivism bonuses.
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I personally really like the idea of privatizing prisons.
That said, this anti-recidivism incentive would a really hard program to integrate. Even if the recidivism benchmark is two years, this doesn't account for crimes that are not reported or unsolved. Also, beteen the accused being considered innocent until proven guilty, lengthy appeals processes, and overturned verdicts getting exact numbers will be an incredibly long and laborious process.
Any incentives would have to be held off for probably five or six years before any remotely accurate rates of repeat offense could be tabulated.