I think I may have worded that poorly. I'd didn't mean to imply rehabilitation is impossible. I meant that, in broad strokes, taking the last 200 years of experience on earth, successes have been few an far between. On average, prison time may have even increased future criminality.
Even the best examples aren't great. From random study I just googled:
The 2-year re-arrest rates ranged from 26% (Singapore) to 60% (USA), two-year reconviction rates ranged from 20% (Norway) to 63% (Denmark), and two-year reimprisonment rates ranged from 14% (USA – Oregon) to 43% (Canada – Quebec, New Zealand)
Interesting things to read about (i'd need to do some research to find this research paper again, i think it was on hacker news 6 months ago or so):
most people committing murder fall in the following categories:
- they premeditated and thought they were NOT going to be caught, so prison isn't a deterrent. They thought they were smarter than forensics.
- they were in a situation and had to kill someone due to circumstances of the other crime. Such as robbing a store, the clerk pulls a gun, now you gotta shoot them before you die. This was a massive lack of foresight and thus again punishment isn't a deterrent because they don't think things though.
- they were angry and it got out of hand. No foresight, they acted on pure emotion. This may be anger issues or other reasons. There is no deterrent here, only rehabilitation.
- political / hate-based killings. These people feel they are doing society a favor, they feel RIGHT to do this killing. Deterrent doesn't help if the political climate is empowering them and making their message amplified.
Now just imagine how much crime is in similar categories as above. The same logic applies.
So basically we need to focus entirely on prison time being a rehabilitation to: make the person understand and accept what they have done. make the person feel genuine remorse. make sure the person has alternatives in life to doing what caused the problem to begin with. Most places in the world focus more on "remove the undesireables" and "punishment is future deterrent". So really we're doing literally the opposite.
Even the best examples aren't great. From random study I just googled:
The 2-year re-arrest rates ranged from 26% (Singapore) to 60% (USA), two-year reconviction rates ranged from 20% (Norway) to 63% (Denmark), and two-year reimprisonment rates ranged from 14% (USA – Oregon) to 43% (Canada – Quebec, New Zealand)
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-28/v1
That's recidivism over just 2 years, and I suppose some people commit crimes and don't get caught.
My point is that it seems we should be doing better. Maybe Norway is a model, maybe oregon. Anyone know what Oregon do different?