REHABILITATION CANNOT REALLY OCCUR INSIDE PRISONS

On Sunday’s Grits For Breakfast, Grits wrote about a four-year Theology degree that is being offered in the Texas prison system at the same time budgets for vocational and college education courses are being ‘slashed to the bone.’ Grits’ post generated 15 comments about the rehabilitation of inmates, the theology degree and other education programs, and the willingness or unwillingness of inmates to participate in such programs (by the time I sat down to compose this post).

I've worked with both the California and Texas prison systems and I have yet to find a single follow-up study on the success/recidivism rate of inmates released from those prisons or prisons from other states who received two-year or four-year college degrees. The same applies to vocational programs. I know that long before the current financial crisis, California cut down on its vocational and academic programs because they were found not to be cost effective.

I see two major problems. The first is the reluctance of white-collar employers to hire ex-cons. While that isn't fair I can understand their fears of getting ripped off. And a lot of blue-collar employers aren’t lining up to hire ex-cons either.

An even bigger problem is that prisons do not prepare inmates for the change between the structured prison society and the free world society. That's sort of what Half-Way Houses are supposed to do, but most inmates are not placed in those transitional residences once they are released.

On the inside, inmates are told when to shit, shower and shave; when to get up and when to hunker down; when to speak and when to shut up; etc. In the free world that ain't the way things are done. And a lot of ex-cons just can’t handle that freedom, especially if they've been locked up for years and have become institutionalized.

The question is: How can prisons prepare inmates to handle all those freedoms they've been deprived of while they've been locked up in the joint? Some will say that's a function of parole. Please don't make me laugh!

When all is said and done, the bottom line is that prisons serve to punish lawbreakers, not to rehabilitate them.

Reality tells us that rehabilitation cannot really occur inside prisons. At best, the inmate can be provided with some tools – literacy programs, counseling, vocational training, health care – he can use to rehabilitate himself after he leaves prison. Then it's up to the ex-con himself. Hopefully he'll have the assistance of the parole authorities, family members, social service agencies and employers willing to give him a chance. Without that help, his chances to remain out of prison are slim to none.