The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access.

In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track.

Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living.

So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism.

Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.

This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time.

But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example.

But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought

Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.

Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it.

Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring criminals. (the ones who got caught)

May God have mercy on your soul.

If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so.

Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working.

Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?

Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.

"Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any.

Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened."

KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization:

https://learningequality.org/about/

"In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi."

https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ "Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."

Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had.

Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it.

Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them."

What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?

I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.

The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be “stewed” in prison and then released upon you and me.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-beca...

But, sure, this seems like a good idea.

But first, stop all the horrible stuff, currently hurting prisoners.

In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.

> It has been thought that the purpose of punishment is to reform the criminal; that it is to deter the criminal and others from committing similar crimes; and that it is retribution. Few would now maintain that the first of these purposes was the only one. If it were, every prisoner should be released as soon as it appears clear that he will never repeat his offence, and if he is incurable he should not be punished at all. Of course it would be hard to reconcile the punishment of death with this doctrine.

> The main struggle lies between the other two. On the one side is the notion that there is a mystic bond between wrong and punishment; on the other, that the infliction of pain is only a means to an end. Hegel, one of the great expounders of the former view, puts it, in his quasi mathematical form, that, wrong being the negation of right, punishment is the negation of that negation, or retribution. Thus the punishment must be equal, in the sense of proportionate to the crime, because its only function is to destroy it. Others, without this logical apparatus, are content to rely upon a felt necessity that suffering should follow wrong-doing.

It goes on from here in great depth. Recidivism as a metric of the effectiveness of prison is not misguided, per se, but is not sufficient. The deterrent effect of imprisonment is hard to measure; the punishment aspect is impossible to measure.

I agree, on a purely subjective basis, that we have tilted way too far in the direction of retribution and deterrence, to the point where we have maxed effectiveness as a deterrent, and have more than satisfied the "blood lust" of the victims of the crime (that is, reducing vigilantism and private retribution to a non-factor).

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2449/2449-h/2449-h.htm#link2H...

But -- some percent of the population are predatory, or have the potential to become predatory. They have come to believe that the strong (them) have the right to take from the weak. They steal, rob, rape, murder because it benefits themselves to do so. And if you take away any prospect of bad consequences, more people will become predators.

I also think our current prison system is a pretty awful. But if you take it away, what would you do with criminals instead? What do you do with the 20 year old man who robs someone at gunpoint, or drags a woman into an alley and rapes her? I think there are alternatives out there, but IMO they must involve punishment (to deter others) and containment/supervision (to prevent the criminal from preying upon others again). My own preference for punishing something like armed robbery would be something like a sentence of 10 years of doing farm labor followed by a three year gradual reintegration into society.

If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.

I definitely try to be progressive about it, and for victimless crimes 100% rehabilitation and learning, but If a loved one or me was a victim, it would be difficult to watch them taking humanities courses.

These days, a background check is a $10 service on a website. A felony conviction is now pretty much economic ruin. The only loopholes left are working as your own business, like hairdressers that rent space at a salon or day labor for under-the-table cash.

This really would be a game changer for these individuals and the costs could be marginal given a Chromebook is <$150 and Khan Academy could provide bulk discounts.

Latest on Khan Academy: https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_n...

There seem to be trials of the offline Version of Khan Academy (KALite) at a correctional facility in Idaho and Los Angelos: https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-pro...

https://learningequality.org/ka-lite/

The prison-industrial complex and their political pawns.

[citation needed] on this incredibly inflammatory comment. Yes, people tend to end up in prison after a chain of bad decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent to the point of being incapable of learning things.

Arguably, a successful drug dealer has far more real-world experience in economics than a college grad on the topic.

Agreed, this is probably true for our current definition of "college"

> A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.

Holy shit, that's a galaxy brain take. I agree that college status signaling is out of control, but doing this would just move the signaling elsewhere. Also it would be a bit fascist IMO.

Anyway, upvoted for interestingness.

Missed the /s, I'm assuming.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/us/prison-reform-north-dakota...

A better way of putting it should be that prisons should educate people to the level of high school or county college, something that should have been available to them but wasn't because of whatever factors. This way they get no handout not available to others and at the same time get a second chance at a life away from crime.

Are you seriously suggesting that people would commit crimes to "get a free education"?

I think this is the root problem. The structure never seemed right. It didn't assist with learning as it was never the appropriate topics at the appropriate time. Once you get away from college learning is so much easier as you are not dependent on the linear timeline set out by someone else. And because you're actually learning, which is one of the most pleasurable things going, you are excited to keep reaching for more. College fosters none of that.

I understand that learning on your own time is part of the package, but the problem, which I may not have effectively communicated, is that you are still left learning the 'wrong way' as you still have to stick with the course requirements while also trying to learn the 'right way' because that is the only way you are going to learn anything at all. As it is, two hours of lecture is two hours that could have been spent actually learning instead of wasting time.

If you are smart, I am sure that none of this is a problem and the structure of the courses are most likely to your benefit. But for someone who is stupid like me, it just doesn't work. Literally everyone can learn. Not everyone is smart.