NONSENSE: GINGRICH BRANDS CORRECTIONS A FAILURE

For Mr. Gingrich’s edification, our prisons exists for the sole purpose of keeping convicted felons locked up for the term prescribed by law, and since they do that, corrections is not a failure

By Jeff ‘Paco’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
May 27, 2014

“Our corrections system is not correcting. Within three years of being released from prison, nearly half of prisoners are convicted of another crime with one out of every four ending up back in prison.

When a typical bureaucracy does its job this badly, it wastes money, time and paper. The corrections bureaucracy, in failing to correct the large majority of inmates in its charge, not only wastes money but also wastes lives, families and entire cities.”

So says disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his self-avowed communist CNN co-host, Van Jones.

In an Op-Ed published by CNN last week “Prison System is Failing in America”, the delirious duo predictably repeat verbatim every recidivism statistic available, lament the continuing criminality of criminals and come to the inane conclusion corrections is not “correcting.”

Surely, applying the same logic and literal-ism, Gingrich must believe the constant growth of bacteria means “Our sanitation system is not sanitizing.” Which is to say, Sanitation is (more-or-less) a euphemism for keeping the sewage moving along and minimizing its bacterial content.

Similarly, corrections is a euphemism and the smartest man in the World ought to know it. Corrections does what it supposed to do: Provide a secure environment to house offenders (PERIOD).

For Mr. Gingrich’s edification, “correction” takes place when the prison system takes custody of a lawfully convicted felon and maintains custody until the lawfully imposed term has been satisfied. Thus, the criminal justice system corrected the situation by punishing, as in segregating, the offender as prescribed by law.

An alleged failure to rehabilitate prisoners is what Gingrich means to lament but, surely, that massive brain of his must know concentrated populations of criminals will NEVER be amenable to mass rehabilitation. Rehabilitation, or redemption, is a personal path, not a freeway.

The record will show Paco favors making meaningful programs available to all offenders who demonstrate amenability to perform and change. That said, the very recidivism rates cited by the former Speaker support the premise a VERY small percentage are so willing at any given time. Yet, Gingrich and Company would have us spend untold billions providing mammoth programs designed to “correct” the millions of ne’er-do-wells populating our jails and prisons.

They know naught of which they speak.

A lettered historian and Constitutional scholar, Newt Gingrich knows the type of system needed to accomplish “correction” is viable and effective in countries unencumbered by the Constitution. Japan, China, North Korea and and a good many other nations employ techniques which break the human spirit, producing compliant, docile “corrected” offenders. We can’t do what they do to prisoners, nor should we want to.

Our corrections system, as my first sergeant often said, “exists for the sole purpose of keeping convicted mother fuckers locked up for the term prescribed by law. No more, no less.”

In that context, Mr. Gingrich, corrections is HUGELY successful, with a historically minuscule number of escapes and errors.

Perhaps the profession should reconsider the term correction, err on the side of honesty, and follow the State of Arkansas’ example. There, the parole authority is the State of Arkansas Department of Community Punishment and Parole. I like that–No ambiguity there.

No matter what we call the prison system, it will NEVER correct offenders because, in this country at least, it cannot. Smart idiots like Newt Gingrich and Van Jones know it. However, you can’t blame a pair of has-beens at a failing “news network” for trying to stir things up…even when they know better.