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[Neonivek]

One of the issues with improving the prison systems is that there is a fundamental belief that a large portion of the United States believes in...

That the terrible prison conditions are part of the punishment.

Which ACTIVELY opposes the idea of rehabilitative justice.

I think, dealing with that belief is a good place to start.

Possibly by comparing two maximum security prisons in the United States.

[Descan]

Or by focusing on selfish desires.

"If we don't focus on rehabilitation, then these monsters will get out unchanged and wreck even more havoc! And keeping them locked up for decades or on death row (basically the same thing) costs way too much money! Do you want your taxes to go up even more? Do you want your children out with unrepentant monsters roaming around?!"

[SalmonGod]

It is going to be a long time.  I don't know many people in the U.S. who don't believe wholeheartedly in retributive justice.  Common belief is when you commit a serious crime, you become less than human.  Your rights are forfeit and the only reason you're kept around at all is the cries of naive bleeding hearts.  Unless you're rich or famous.  I've never had a single debate with one of those people that didn't come down to "this is how I feel about it, and that's all that matters to me."  This is from people on both sides of the political spectrum.

[Frumple]

At least until family members end up in the clink. Tunes seem to miraculously change when that happens, fairly often. Least from what I've seen. Then suddenly they're very human with human failings and it was just mistakes and how dare the judge treat <close family member> like that and so on and so forth.

At least for a little while, and in relation to that particular criminal, if they're particularly lacking in self-awareness. But eh.

[Antsan]

PTW. I'll also leave that here:

It's more profitable to minimally invest in cheating the metrics than it is to invest a great deal more in operating in good faith to create genuine progress.

That is distinctively well put, I think. Not only in relation to privatized prisons, that is.

[Wolfhunter107]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/09/29/5208297/former-charlotte-pastors-if-i.html#.VCplgmDD8v4
If it wasn't 4 in the morning, I would be doing a victory dance. With music.

[Phmcw]

Yeah, but having guilty people go free is better in my opinion then having innocent people go to jail.

Not really, it's better to have assumption of innocence because most peoples don't commit crime, and thus it make a lot more sense to consider peoples innocent until proven guilty, but if your justice system is too lax, you'll have problem like we have. Recidivist killing and raping again and again.
Never forget than an minority of criminals commit a majority of crimes.

[Frumple]

Which has pretty much jack all to do with the justice system being "lax", and just about goddamn everything with it doing near everything in its power to make sure criminals cannot re-integrate with society. Laxity has roughly fuckall to do with recidivism rates, unless you want to just start offing repeat offenders (which, no, isn't on the table).

Seriously, the US has some of the worst prison conditions in the western world, combined with more or less completely destroying an ex-con's ability to live a civilian life afterwards. The get put through a situation where rape and assault are massively more likely than in civilian life and afterwards have whatever hope of a future they had pretty close to completely wrecked. There's not terribly much else we can do outside of outright systematic torture.

[Phmcw]

Forgot to add "like we have in Belgium". Here resinsertion isn't bad, but the criminality number is inflated by the fact that a culture of impunity developed among criminals. The system is defangled, and that's not a good thing either. 

[Sheb]

I'd dispute that, the Netherlands have if anything an even laxer justice system (To the point where we have to rend prison space they no longer need from them) and their crime figures aren't very different from ours.

[Phmcw]

Netherlands are efficient with their prisons, we are lazy. We don't let peoples go because they are harmless, or we rehabilitated them or anything. We're letting them go because we lack space in prison and fixing the problems is tiresome. In the netherland, if the law says that you must go to prison, you do. In Belgium, meh, there is no space...

EDIT: I checked, they also have a true life sentence .

[Sheb]

Why do they have less prisoners than we do then?

[Frumple]

... does either country even have a prison industrial complex? The "lack space" comment seems to suggest not, heh. Always more space for more penal slaves in good ol' USA. If not, build new place to turn profit on backs of prisoner labor and undercut domestic civilian production labor market! Privatization~ Building your electronics with viciously underpaid and subsequently unemployable criminals since a while now.

Here we get complaints from corporate scum bastards about not having enough slave labor prisoners to keep up with production quotas. If not enough space in other places, eh, fuck it, shove extra person into cell. Not enough people care if conditions turn to shit. Gotta' be sadistic subhuman pieces of filth "tough on crime". Nevermind it goddamn backfires. Who cares about the communities and families the process completely buggers. No one gives a damn about the amount our bullshit is funding southern cartels. And so on, and so forth.

Just... bleh. Frikkin' bleh.

[Phmcw]

Why do they have less prisoners than we do then?

Less potential for criminality (wallonia is still in pretty rough shape, and Bruxelles have issues), better rehabilitation rate, better education than the south of the country (where criminality is much more serious).

[Sheb]

Less potential for criminality (wallonia is still in pretty rough shape, and Bruxelles have issues), better rehabilitation rate, better education than the south of the country (where criminality is much more serious).

Quoted for emphasis. To me, it goes to show that being "tough on crime" is not the way to go.