News FeedIncentives Would Improve Prison Culture
The U.S. Congress published findings that show how much prisons cost taxpayers to operate. They swallow more than $59 billion each year. According to the Pew Report, those funds are diverted from social programs like education, health care, and unemployment assistance. What taxpayers may find especially troubling is that despite the massive expenditures, recidivism rates remain at the troubling high level of more than 60 percent.
As a long-term prisoner, my experience convinces me that the reasons so many prisoners adjust in ways that fail to prepare them for law-abiding lives upon release may be found in the tactics and strategies of prison management. They extinguish hope. To change the dismal results, we need prison reform that would bring fundamental improvements to prison culture.
Stephanie Kidder, a criminal justice student, asked what sort of incentives I thought would be appropriate to improve our nation’s prison system. The purpose of incentives, I think, ought to focus on inducing prisoners to adjust in ways that will prepare them for the challenges that await their release. Current management practices result in rebellion, defiance, and adjustment patterns that perpetuate cycles of failure. Incentives should not exist to make life easier for prisoners, but to make society safer by lowering both recidivism rates and prison operating costs.
To achieve such an end, the incentives ought to be wide and far reaching. They should provide a mechanism through which all offenders could work toward gradual increases in freedom. That does not mean all offenders can lead a cushy life, but rather that they can improve their existence through merit and positive adjustments.
Some of those incentives would include access to more telephone time, access to more visiting opportunities, access to the use of email and other technologies that may prepare them for release. Congress found through its Second Chance Act that strong networks of community support represent the best probability for success upon release. Administrators ought to offer incentives that prisoners may earn to nurture those ties.
Incentives can lead to a better prison culture. I measure “better” by safer prisons that reduce recidivism and operating costs. Administrators ought to use incentives to create prison cultures where guards can become correctional officers, and thus enjoy more fulfillment from their profession.
Hi Mr. Santos
My name is Greg Muncer
I can really relate to your finding our non-corrective prisons.
I played little league baseball at the Milan FCI in the early sixties and
I have a friend that has been incarcerated there for 9 years and has 5 to go. His name is Jason Bucher. I have given the subject of real corrections, a lot of thought as well, though I am sure you could enlighten me plenty.
With yourself, I believe we could correct the prison system.
Feel free to return your thoughts to me, Greg Muncer, email: NOAHDogs@gmail.com.
My findings -
I am not for capital punishment, though
civil folks need be protected from the uncivil.
I believe uncivil folks if left with loving productive folks, would become civil if there is enough time in their lives and only this would prove that these behaviors are adopted from others that make their way attractive. I share your thoughts too.
I believe that like a monkey swinging from the trees to maintain there kind of strength to live, that folks have to be forced like the monkey to stay above the ground where they will not survive. This isn’t the perfect analogy, but I swing from a lot of trees and benefit being 53 years old.
I would like to start a nutrition business where the price of the total benefit is reduced to a bare minimum, while there is promoted great taste and good feeling. Surely we have some human resources that need be exercised. I sent a book to my friend Jay in Milan FCI from The National Academy of Science, called Dietary Reference Intakes DRIs, where Jay could read and be challenged at the level of his capabilities and because the book was a hardback cover, the prison returned the book to me. The author does not make it in a soft cover and I am guessing that I have to make a soft cover and modify the book. What a bitch and expense.
Surely, if there were exercise and reward of experience, profit and enough time we would win the winnable hearts and live healthier with the former uncivil’s help.
There are issues in society however, like alcohol and ramped perversion that work directly against the civil society and you can find it to the largest degree in the uncivil. These things need be won along with the spirit of the ill, so they may help turn around all things that are really against us all.
I thank you for your work and understanding. Greg Muncer