Criminal Rehabilitation Quotes

I've been all over the place in all kinds of living situations. Due to the fact that my mind is my own worst enemy. In a way I am perpetually and permanently in a state of rehabilitation m in an attempt to rehabilitate from the shock of being born.Some people are too sensitive to withstand that.

Merciful heavens! Human treatment may even render human a man in whom the image of God has long ago been tarnished. It is these 'unfortunates' that must be treated in the most human fashion. This is their salvation and their joy.

The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.

The main difference is that the enlightened believe that the poor criminal should be rehabilitated while the righteous believe that the immoral criminal should be locked up in jail. Since almost the only available system of rehabilitation in America is to be locked up in jail, the difference remains highly abstract.

Incarceration is a sustained, lifetime lynching, meant to discard your soul and make a shell of you in plain life. Make you into your monster self, the beast that comes out when you are forced to survive in the absence of love and safety. Never mind that most of us come broken and traumatized, we still are no longer worth our own humanity. We are a criminal. We need punishment and to be rehabilitated. We need shame and exclusion. We are not worthy of control of our own lives; we are hopeless and evil. We are not individuals or of a womb or a family. We are not absent from anywhere else; because we are here, we simply non-exist. The world is better without us. In this society we are taught our crimes are the summations of our lives and define the limits of our possibility. Our only potential is to harm and destroy.

A slow but steady transformation of deviance has taken place in American society. It has not been a change in behavior as such, but in how behavior is defined. Deviant behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meanings. Some say that rehabilitation has replaced punishment, but in many cases medical treatments have become a new form of punishment and social control.

If Shakespeare saves the life of a violent criminal, through rehabilitation, then he saves the life of potential future victims.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

A very distinct pattern has emerged repeatedly when policies favored by the anointed turn out to fail. This pattern typically has four stages: STAGE 1. THE “CRISIS”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis,” even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years. STAGE 2. THE “SOLUTION”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest. STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z. STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors. Examples of this pattern are all too abundant. Three will be considered here. The first and most general involves the set of social welfare policies called “the war on poverty” during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but continuing under other labels since then. Next is the policy of introducing “sex education” into the public schools, as a means of reducing teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases. The third example will be policies designed to reduce crime by adopting a less punitive approach, being more concerned with preventive social policies beforehand and rehabilitation afterwards, as well as showing more concern with the legal rights of defendants in criminal cases.

We’ve given up on rehabilitation, education, and services for the imprisoned because providing assistance to the incarcerated is apparently too kind and compassionate. We've institutionalized policies that reduce people to their worst acts and permanently label them "criminal," "murderer," "rapist," "thief," "drug dealer," "sex offender," "felon," - identities they cannot change regardless of the circumstances of their crimes or any improvements they might make in their lives.

He was opposed to capital punishment—“institutionalized sadism,” he termed it—and in favor of prison reforms that would emphasize rehabilitation. His opinions were generally conservative, however, and he did not subscribe to the fashionable view of the sixties that criminals were victims of society.

Whether it is useful to emphasize the punishment of certain criminals—rather than their containment or rehabilitation—is a question for social and psychological science. But it seems clear that a desire for retribution, arising from the idea that each person is the free author of his thoughts and actions, rests on a cognitive and emotional illusion—and perpetuates a moral one.

When the biblical premise of man being evil by nature is forsaken, society begins to believe that a criminal isn’t really responsible for his crimes. People believe instead that societal conditions and life’s circumstances are responsible, so the criminal gets a slap on the hand for violent crime since evil is no longer called evil. The lawbreaker is deemed rather to be sick or insane, and he receives rehabilitative treatment rather than punishment.

Kant stated simply enough, “[Punishment] must always be inflicted upon [the criminal] only because he has committed a crime.”7 Punishment shouldn’t be meted out for the criminal’s own good, for example, for reformation or rehabilitation. This would be treating him like an animal, like a dog. Also, punishment shouldn’t be handed out for the good of society, such as for security, deterrence, or crime prevention or any other desirable end. The criminal shouldn’t be treated as a mere means; we shouldn’t use people for society’s ends, “for a human being can never be treated merely as a means to the purposes of another.

1:THE “CRISIS”: Although Chief Judge Bazelon said in 1960 that “we desperately need all the help we can get from modern behavioral scientists”69 in dealing with the criminal law, the cold facts suggest no such desperation or crisis. Since the most reliable long-term crime data are on murder, what was the murder rate at that point? The number of murders committed in the United States in 1960 was less than in 1950, 1940, or 1930—even though the population was growing over those decades and murders in the two new states of Hawaii and Alaska were counted in the national statistics for the first time in 1960.70 The murder rate, in proportion to population, was in 1960 just under half of what it had been in 1934.71 As Judge Bazelon saw the criminal justice system in 1960, the problem was not with “the so-called criminal population”72 but with society, whose “need to punish” was a “primitive urge” that was “highly irrational”73—indeed, a “deep childish fear that with any reduction of punishment, multitudes would run amuck.”74 It was this “vindictiveness,” this “irrationality” of “notions and practices regarding punishment”75 that had to be corrected. The criminal “is like us, only somewhat weaker,” according to Judge Bazelon, and “needs help if he is going to bring out the good in himself and restrain the bad.”76 Society is indeed guilty of “creating this special class of human beings,” by its “social failure” for which “the criminal serves as a scapegoat.”77 Punishment is itself a “dehumanizing process” and a “social branding” which only promotes more crime.78 Since criminals “have a special problem and need special help,” Judge Bazelon argued for “psychiatric treatment” with “new, more sophisticated techniques” and asked: Would it really be the end of the world if all jails were turned into hospitals or rehabilitation centers?79

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the State, and even of convicted criminals against the State, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man – these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.27 In 1908 and 1909 over 180,000 people were in prison in Britain, around half for failure to pay a fine on time.28 Churchill argued that more time should be allowed for payment, since the best principle for a prison system should be to ‘prevent as many people as possible from getting there’.29 He set in motion processes by which the number of people imprisoned for failing to pay a fine for drunkenness was reduced from 62,000 to 1,600 over the next decade.30 Churchill also searched for alternative punishments for petty offences, especially by children, as he saw prison as a place of last resort for serious offenders.31 When he visited Pentonville Prison in October, he released youths imprisoned for minor offences and although he was not at the Home Office long enough to reform the penal system as a whole, he reduced the sentences of nearly 400 individuals.32 He also introduced music and libraries into prisons, tried to improve the conditions of suffragettes imprisoned for disturbing the peace and reduced the maximum amount

Addicts should not be coerced into treatment, since in the long term coercion creates more problems than it solves. On the other hand, for those addicts who opt for treatment, there must be a system of publicly funded recovery facilities with clean rooms, nutritious food, and access to outdoors and nature. Well-trained professional staff need to provide medical care, counseling, skills training, and emotional support. Our current nonsystem is utterly inadequate, with its patchwork of recovery homes run on private contracts and, here and there, a few upscale addiction treatment spas for the wealthy. No matter how committed their staff and how helpful their services may be, they are a drop in comparison to the ocean of vast need. In the absence of a coordinated rehabilitation system, the efforts of individual recovery homes are limited and occur in a vacuum, with no follow-up. It may be thought that the cost of such a drug rehabilitation and treatment system would be exorbitant. No doubt the financial expenses would be great — but surely less than the funds now freely squandered on the War on Drugs, to say nothing of the savings from the cessation of drug-related criminal activity and the diminished burden on the health care system.

Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind. This shift in understanding represents progress toward a deeper, more consistent, and more compassionate view of our common humanity—and we should note that this is progress away from religious metaphysics. Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us. Viewing human beings as natural phenomena need not damage our system of criminal justice. If we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well. We fight emerging epidemics—and even the occasional wild animal—without attributing free will to them. Clearly, we can respond intelligently to the threat posed by dangerous people without lying to ourselves about the ultimate origins of human behavior. We will still need a criminal justice system that attempts to accurately assess guilt and innocence along with the future risks that the guilty pose to society. But the logic of punishing people will come undone—unless we find that punishment is an essential component of deterrence or rehabilitation.

She and her brother got their usual table, right in front of the grimy, bulletproof window covered with steel bars. Nothing but the best seat in the house when visiting Kyle Rhodes. He laid into her the moment he sat down. “Who’s Tall, Dark, and Smoldering?” Jordan’s mouth dropped open. “Shut up. You’ve been reading Scene and Heard?” Kyle gestured to the bars. “What else am I supposed to do in this place?” “Repent. Reflect on your wrongdoings. Rehabilitate your criminal mind.” “You’re avoiding the question.” Yes, she was. Because her brother was number two on the list of people she really, really didn’t want to lie to, right after her father. “It’s no big deal. He’s just a guy I brought to Xander’s party.” Who, yes, happened to be tall, dark, and smoldering. Allegedly. And who occasionally made her smile, when he wasn’t busy getting under her skin. Like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Or a tick. “For five thousand dollars a head, I doubt he’s ‘just a guy,’ ” Kyle said. Suddenly, their friend Puchalski, the inmate with the black snake tattoo, was at their table. “So who’s this tall, dark, and smoldering jerk?” he asked Jordan, seemingly affronted. Jordan held out her hands. “Seriously, does everyone read Scene and Heard in this place?” Puchalski gestured to Kyle. “I snagged it from Sawyer here while he was reading the financial section. I’ve got to keep up with current events.” He winked. “I won’t be in this place forever, you know.” “You will be if you don’t shut your yap and start following the rules, Puchalski,” a guard warned as he passed by. The inmate scuttled off. Kyle picked up where they’d left off. “So now the big secret’s out.” Jordan glared at her brother, who apparently had decided to be more annoying than usual on this particular subject. “Yes, it’s true—I had a date. Ooh, shocking.

I’d long ago rearranged the idealistic beliefs of my youth when it came to understanding or rehabilitating violent criminals. Whether the traits that caused them to commit their terrible transgressions were created by genetics, environment, or substance abuse was no longer of concern to me. My single purpose was getting them off the streets, into a secure warehouse, and keeping them there for as long as possible so they couldn’t injure, maim, or kill again.

The executive refused to accept the Nelson resignation. Yet Cox was unrepentant, stressing the concept of rehabilitation: “We are dealing with boys playing games, and not with criminals.”13 Besides, he warned, accumulating exiles would only lead to a whole network of potentially professional players and teams in the province.

Years ago, I received a call from a paramedic I had known for a long, long time. He was a true believer; a provider in it to do good more than to do well. By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was in some serious trouble. His voice did not lie. He was. It seemed that some years earlier he had suffered an injury off the job. The injury resulted in several surgeries and months of painful recovery, physical rehabilitation, and pain medicine. It started as an as-needed remedy for intense pain but before long became a physical necessity. When the actual pain no longer necessitated the monthly refills, the feigned pain took over. When that excuse had run its course, new injuries and favors from friends took over. The cycle had begun. Back at work, he became adept at leading his double life; on the job he was clean, sober, and clear-headed, but off-duty the pills took over. The decline was slow, but steady. It would not be long before he would lose all control. One day, on a call with the entire crew, he found himself in the home of a patient whose medicine cupboard was a veritable treasure trove of pain killing goodies. Jackpot! While logging all of the medicines, it was easy to drop a full bottle of a certain pain killer into his pocket, and he did…completely undetected. The patient was transported, and the scene was cleared, and his addiction would be fed for a little while longer. Nobody would ever know. However, as he exited the scene with his supervisor, he was struck with a blunt and harsh realization: This is not who I am and it’s not who I want to be! While still at the curbside, in front of the patient’s home, he pulled the bottle from his pocket, handed it to his supervisor, and admitted sincerely: “I have a problem. I need help.” His supervisor considered the heartfelt and painfully honest plea for help, but the paramedic was summarily fired from a job where he had an impeccable record of exemplary service for nearly two decades. He was stripped of his Paramedic license and reported to local authorities and was charged with multiple felonies by the District Attorney. That was the response from his supervisor and the rest of the morally superior lemmings up the chain of command. He asked for help, and they fucked him…because they were afraid of what actually helping him might look like to the outside world. Not once was he offered treatment or an ounce of compassion. He asked for help; now he was looking at serious prison time. This brings us to the frightened and helpless tone in his voice when he called me. Thankfully, his story ends with the proper treatment: A new career and the entire criminal case being dismissed (he had a great lawyer). Unfortunately, similar stories continue to play out in agencies, both public and private, all across America and they do not, or will not, end so well.

Barlinnie Prison stands on dark and bloody ground. It is a temple of lost souls, and a place of living nightmares. It’s been the breaker of many a man’s dreams for more than a century. This prison works to a model of penitence with no pretence of rehabilitation. The criminal population that society has forsaken has filled this once, seemingly, bottomless pit to overflowing with their despair and nightmares of pain. More specifically, it is the battleground of an undeclared war that still ravages to this day, between the screws and the cons. The screws, backed by their authority, would use violence, but in return the prisoners would have to resort to their cunning, beguile, and the odd sudden act of violence.

A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the State, and even of convicted criminals against the State, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man—these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.

Even given its explicitly limited scope, The Ethics of Liberty had a distinctly old-fashioned flavor and revealed libertarianism as a fundamentally conservative doctrine. The most obvious indicator of this was the already noted emphasis placed on punishment as the necessary complement to property. More specifically, Rothbard presented a rigorous modern defense of the traditional proportionality principle of punishment as contained in the lex talionis—of an eye for an eye, or rather, as he would correctively explain, two eyes for an eye. He rejected the deterrence and rehabilitation theories of punishment as incompatible with private property rights and championed instead the idea of victims’ rights and of restitution (compensation) and/or retribution as essential to justice; he argued in favor of such old-fashioned institutions as compulsory labor and indentured servitude for convicted criminals, and for debtor’s prisons; and his analyses of causation and liability, burden of proof, and proper assumption of risk invariably displayed a basic and staunch moral conservatism of strict individual responsibility and accountability.

We are a nation that sees imprisonment as the best means of controlling crime. And why should kids be any different? What candidate for judge, or any other political office, ever got votes by promising to work towards rehabilitating criminals? Retribution trumps rehabilitation every Election Day. Thus it is America, with only 5 percent of the world's population, is home to 25 percent of its prisoners.

At Esse India, we understand that having a prior DUI offense can complicate your journey towards Canadian permanent residency or obtaining entry visas such as an electronic travel authorization (eTA) or a temporary resident visa (TRV). Canadian authorities evaluate foreign offenses by comparing them to their Canadian equivalents to determine admissibility. This approach is not unique to Canada; those pursuing Australia permanent residency or Germany permanent residency will face similar scrutiny of their criminal records during immigration. However, being inadmissible doesn’t mean your journey ends here. You have options: • Temporary Resident Permit (TRP): If you have a valid reason to enter Canada, you may apply for a TRP. This process has parallels in Australia and Germany, especially if you are using programs like the Global Talent Stream. • Deemed Rehabilitation: In Canada, if over 10 years have passed since your DUI conviction and the offense is deemed non-serious, you may be eligible for deemed rehabilitation. Keep in mind, each country has unique permanent residency requirements. • Criminal Rehabilitation: If you’re not eligible for deemed rehabilitation, you can apply for criminal rehabilitation, which permanently addresses inadmissibility issues. Navigating these complex processes requires expert guidance. Engaging Canada immigration consultants, especially those well-versed in handling cases from India, can make a significant difference. These experts can assist with the PR process for Canada from India, helping with tasks such as securing legal opinion letters to present your case. Similarly, Australia and Germany immigration consultants can help you overcome challenges in these countries. For those aiming for permanent residency, it’s important to be aware of the specific programs in place. In Canada, options like BCPNP (British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program), MPNP (Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program), and NBPNP (New Brunswick Provincial Nominee Program) can be crucial pathways to residency. Whether you're looking to work or study in Canada, Australia, or Germany, partnering with the best immigration consultants or visa consultancy services is vital. They’ll guide you through key processes like the Canada PR process, Australia PR process, or Germany PR procedure, ensuring your application is successful. For students or professionals exploring work-study programs, these countries offer valuable opportunities. With the help of expert consultants, you can smoothly navigate study visas, spouse visas, tourist visas, or your PR application, ensuring your immigration process is legally sound and hassle-free. At Esse India, we are here to guide you every step of the way.

Abolitionist knowledge reconceptualizes notions like “crime” or “innocence” (what gets to be defined as crime, and who gets defined as criminal); disability or madness (as an identity and politics, not only a medical diagnosis) and rehabilitation (which is seen as a form of assimilation and normalization, not just as benign “treatment”); ideas of punishment (transformative justice vs. revenge or retribution); notions of freedom and equality (whether we can feel free and safe without locking others away); and, on the other hand, concepts of danger and protection (Whom do we protect by segregating people behind bars in psychiatric hospitals and prisons? Is it for “their own good”?).

If the child needs a smack, he is a free individual who has overstepped the line. If he needs a child guidance clinic, there is something wrong with him which must be cured. The conservative society accepts that rebellion and bad behaviour are natural and must be curbed. The liberal society requires all its citizens to be perfectly balanced, conforming to its ideals and aims with a happy heart and a willing mind—a rather sickening thought for the reactionary who does not care what is in his neighbour’s heart provided he obeys the law. The same war between different principles lies behind the different ways of dealing with criminals, punishment versus rehabilitation, which have confronted each other throughout the century. This is revolutionary stuff, presented as kindness, undoubtedly the best way to present it, though not necessarily the most truthful way.

This amounts to nothing more than misleading propaganda. The purpose is to create a climate of acceptance for the passage of legislation which will turn the majority of parents into criminals of the most heinous kind-those whose victims are defenseless children. The resulting body of law will play directly into the hands of ultraliberal social engineers as well as social activists within the professional community. The outward motive-the protection of children-conceals several more insidious ones: • The desire to expand and consolidate the power of the helping professions. At the present time, there is no law that says an individual must, under certain circumstances, submit to psychological evaluation and counseling. If they are written as is being suggested, however, antispanking laws will require exactly that. They will give helping professionals the power to define when the law has been broken, who is in need of "help" and how much, and when a certain parent's "rehabilitation" is complete. It is significant to note that in all of history the only other state to confer this much power on psychologists and their ilk was the former Soviet Union. • The desire to manipulate the inner workings of the American family; specifically, the desire to exercise significant control over the child-rearing process. Take it from someone who was, at one time, similarly guilty, a significant number of helping professionals possess a "save the world" mentality. They believe they know what's best for individuals, families, and children. The only problem, as they see it, is that most people are "in denial"-unwilling to recognize their need for help. This self-righteousness fuels a zealous, missionary attitude. And like the first missionaries to the New World, many helping professionals seem to believe that their vision of a perfect world justifies whatever means they deem necessary, including licensing parents, taking children away from parents they define as unfit, and the like. (For a close look at the social engineering being proposed by some professionals, see Debating Children's Lives, Mason and Gambrill, eds., Sage Publications, 1994).

Incarceration rates clearly evidence the shift away from the more consensual and rehabilitative norms associated with the Keynesian era toward much more draconian legal, policing and penal practices. This is not related to a growth in crime per se but rather reflects a series of institutional changes in the law and policing practices, which include the following: the creation of new crimes and the increasing use of imprisonment as a form of punishment; the lengthening of sentences; the standardization of sentencing and the elimination of juridical discretion; and the rise of new policing practices targeting minor ‘disorderly’ behaviour. The point in highlighting these shifts, and the ideologies that underpin them, is to stress that it is not crime per se that has changed. Instead, particular sectors of the population have been criminalized and treated more harshly under neoliberalism.

There are three methods of dealing with offenders against society once they are apprehended: retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Prison officials and men generally lay claim more or less to advocating all three. At present the public thinks that offenders should be punished. There are many different reasons why this is so, among them the belief that the average criminal responds to nothing but fear and penalties. Yet there is some real evidence that only through the very opposite of fear and punishment--intelligent good will--can men be reached and challenged and changes brought about.

looming over them, the shadow of the Ministry of Pain and the great black cube called West One that was its semilegendary Department of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. West One, where the PainCriminals went … and came out as someone else.

Manifestations also were becoming more diverse. Mediums performed ever more astonishing feats of levitation: white-haired Henry Gordon was seen floating in the air across a sixty-foot space, balanced on nothing but one of Charles Partridge’s fingers. Trance mediums delivered inspiring addresses to large audiences on the pressing issues of the day, such as perfecting the body through diet and exercise or rehabilitating criminals through prison reform. Some mediums danced, others spoke in tongues. The number of healing mediums multiplied. To speed the process of spelling messages during seances, mediums began writing down the alphabet then pointing to specific letters rather than calling them out. In a room built by a man named Koons solely for the purpose of otherworldly communications, several spirits seemed to speak in their own voices, their words projected through a small trumpet.

An incompetent government locks criminals up, whereas a competent government treats the criminal as a sickened person that probably has a range of systemic deficiencies that need to be treated in order to rehabilitate them back into society.

In the late 1990s Norway made rehabilitation the cornerstone of its prison philosophy. It renamed its penal network the Criminal Care system and embraced electronic tagging and open prisons. Guards became “personal contact officers” charged with acting as coaches cum confidants to inmates.

Some released beneficiaries did rejoin al-Qaeda. Official reports cite recidivism rates of between 10 and 20 percent depending on the period examined and the set of prisoners involved.22 However, it was not the course content or recidivism rates that most concerned the Ministry of the Interior; what really mattered was the program’s dramatic public relations impact. In the Saudi leadership’s view, it did not matter if some of the rehabilitated terrorists returned to al-Qaeda. They could be recaptured and might not be given a second chance to surrender. What mattered was that the Saudi public saw how the police had trusted these young men and tried to help them, only to be repaid with lies and more criminal behavior. No one would feel sorry for them the second time they were arrested for terrorism. For Mohammed bin Naif, losing a few dozen prisoners was less important than keeping millions of Saudi citizens on his side.

The punishment and/or rehabilitation of those who have already been so damaged that they have become violent is also far more expensive and less effective than preventing violence in the first place, and it causes far more suffering, not only to the perpetrators but also to the victims. We spend incomparably more money on police, prisons, punishments and criminal courts than we do on providing the kinds of community services that have been demonstrated to achieve equal reductions in criminal violence for one-fifth of the price. As our prisons have become more and more crowded (and costly), the waiting lists in our substance-abuse treatment centers have become longer and longer — despite the fact that treatment is at least five times more effective than imprisonment, dollar for dollar, in preventing both substance abuse and the property crimes and violence associated with substance abuse.

This move to incapacitate and punish also coincided with the country’s push toward deinstitutionalization. Jail and prison populations swelled from an influx of the undertreated mentally ill. The overcrowding of prisons had a predictable consequence: violence in correctional facilities escalated. Prison systems responded with an unprecedented increase in the number and use of supermax cells, justifying this shift by classifying modern-day criminals as “harder” and “unable to be rehabilitated.” The long-held aim of reforming prisoners was now classified as a fool’s errand and therefore a waste of resources. The grim new management strategy for these “hardened criminals” was to isolate them from one another, often for the duration of their sentences, sometimes for the duration of their lives. This ethos of incapacitate and punish is now dominant in the American corrections system, and its toll is devastating.

One of her best days in America was the day she was sworn in as a US citizen! She made a promise to herself to be an asset to this great nation, not a liability. Evangeline has worked as a licensed practical nurse since 2004 in the areas of rehabilitation, hospice, and home health while attending school towards her greater passion of affecting social change as a criminal justice professional. One of Evangeline’s worst moments in America happened when her husband was arrested for immigration irregularities, detained in Miami for eight months, and finally deported back to Cameroon. The nightmares—and God’s unending presence that followed these events—prompted the writing of Letters of Gratitude. Evangeline holds a master of science degree in criminal justice and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in criminal justice at Walden University.

Prisons and penal servitude do not of course rehabilitate the criminal; they merely punish him and ensure that society is kept safe from further attacks. The only effect of prison[s] is to generate hatred, the desire for forbidden pleasures and a terrifying frivolousness. But I am firmly convinced that the much acclaimed system of shutting people up in cells can only achieve false, spurious and superficial results. It is a system that sucks the lifeblood from the criminal, enervates his spirit, and then holds up a morally desiccated mummy as a model of rehabilitation and repentance. - The House of the Dead (1862)

When a crime is committed, punishment tops the agenda in most countries. We want to see perpetrators pay for their misdeeds, and we want them off the streets so they cannot carry on breaking the law. Norwegians want that too, but even after the most heinous crimes, one of the first questions they ask is how to rehabilitate the criminal. “We don’t think about revenge in the Norwegian prison system,” says Hoeidal. “Instead, we look at what kind of neighbor you want to have when they come out. If you treat prisoners harshly and just keep them in a box for a few years, they will not leave as better people. Our work here at Halden is therefore not just about what we do with the inmates today or next week or next month; it is really about helping them rebuild the rest of their lives by helping them become normal citizens again.

Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or violence, or confronting the social forces that affect them.

Criminals have a peculiar view of themselves,’ he said. ‘They regard themselves as unique, exceptional even. They think they are smarter than most people. They think they can jump the queue and help themselves, the rules don’t apply to them. If anyone gets hurt, they’ve only got themselves to blame. So if you want to rehabilitate an offender, in other words, you have to change his entire mindset and that’s not easy.

That same year the same Yakovlev explained on television that the decree rehabilitating all those who had been persecuted since 1917 was not at all a measure of clemency, as people in the Party were saying, but of repentance: “We are not pardoning them, we are asking their pardon. The goal of this decree is to rehabilitate us, who by remaining silent and looking away were accomplices to these crimes.” In short, there was a sudden consensus that for the last seventy years the country had been in the hands of a gang of criminals.