Our current justice system is largely based on the idea of retribution, not rehabilitation. This is a trade-off where the State delivers vengeance for victims/families of victims to prevent vigilante justice. It may not make much sense in terms of impact today, but as a cultural norm it still exists and this idea does nothing to address that.
Other thoughts:
Does not really address “recidivism” of victimless crimes, including most drug crimes, except in the most general sense. Convincing people that smoking weed is morally wrong is much harder than convincing them that murder is morally wrong.
I’m not sure I’m convinced that it would interact with the idea of retribution. I’m personally not behind the idea of retribution as the final goal of our justice system, but of this proposal would be adding rehabilitation as an explicit end goal without making any statement for or against retribution as a possible concurrent end goal. This isn’t a proposal to reduce or alter sentences in any way, in other words, in the mind of people who demand retributive justice, justice will continue to be served.
In an ideal world, I would rather that the US moved away from retribution, but changing cultural norms that are as established as that one is much more difficult than changing payment structures, I imagine. And very few people, including those who prefer retributive justice, would argue that recidivism rates should be increased or stay the same if decrease is possible.
I’m also not really on board with imprisoning people who commit victimless crimes. But that is well outside the scope for this. Again, this proposal specifically makes no value judgments on other policies (in hopes that it could actually be passed without partisan bickering). So pot is an issue for another day. And if recidivism of weed smokers isn’t reduced at the rate of victim crimes or even at all that will be reflected in the statistics so that someone was a weed smoker, they would add more to the prison’s expected recidivism rate. There are some very effective CBT based strategies, though (namely CRA and CRAFT) which can be very effective in reducing addiction, so I don’t think drug crimes would be as difficult as you think to reduce. And I still think it would still be better to reduce some recidivism than reduce no recidivism, especially if the recidivism you’re reducing is crimes with victims.
Missing actor/incentive structure:
Our current justice system is largely based on the idea of retribution, not rehabilitation. This is a trade-off where the State delivers vengeance for victims/families of victims to prevent vigilante justice. It may not make much sense in terms of impact today, but as a cultural norm it still exists and this idea does nothing to address that.
Other thoughts:
Does not really address “recidivism” of victimless crimes, including most drug crimes, except in the most general sense. Convincing people that smoking weed is morally wrong is much harder than convincing them that murder is morally wrong.
I’m not sure I’m convinced that it would interact with the idea of retribution. I’m personally not behind the idea of retribution as the final goal of our justice system, but of this proposal would be adding rehabilitation as an explicit end goal without making any statement for or against retribution as a possible concurrent end goal. This isn’t a proposal to reduce or alter sentences in any way, in other words, in the mind of people who demand retributive justice, justice will continue to be served.
In an ideal world, I would rather that the US moved away from retribution, but changing cultural norms that are as established as that one is much more difficult than changing payment structures, I imagine. And very few people, including those who prefer retributive justice, would argue that recidivism rates should be increased or stay the same if decrease is possible.
I’m also not really on board with imprisoning people who commit victimless crimes. But that is well outside the scope for this. Again, this proposal specifically makes no value judgments on other policies (in hopes that it could actually be passed without partisan bickering). So pot is an issue for another day. And if recidivism of weed smokers isn’t reduced at the rate of victim crimes or even at all that will be reflected in the statistics so that someone was a weed smoker, they would add more to the prison’s expected recidivism rate. There are some very effective CBT based strategies, though (namely CRA and CRAFT) which can be very effective in reducing addiction, so I don’t think drug crimes would be as difficult as you think to reduce. And I still think it would still be better to reduce some recidivism than reduce no recidivism, especially if the recidivism you’re reducing is crimes with victims.