> We'll never figure out how to do it until we actually start trying to rehabilitate people.
We'll never figure out how to do it because it's unethical to experiment on humans. But even more damning than that, we don't have a good theory of mind that explains criminality. It's all half-assed woowoo nonsense meant to bolster this or that political ideology.
My only agenda is that it's irritating to listen to non-scientific and pseudo-scientific nonsense bandied about by people who plainly should know better.
What do you propose? That if we can't rehabilitate, we don't bother to deter criminals, or to sequester them from society so they can do less harm, or even that we refuse to punish them thereby encouraging private vengeance? Is that why you irrationally hold onto the clearly mythical rehabilitation, because if we can't have that then we must also abandon the others but subconsciously you know what that shitshow would look like?
The world needs more thinking, not less, and it needs less feeling/empathy, not more.
A researcher would have a hard time getting an IRB to let them build a study at a jail where the jail treats a random half of the inmates in a different way. And judicial oversight might not allow that, either. Further, it's hard to control adequately.
We're going to be stuck with time series and case control studies of changes made haphazardly. It doesn't mean we can't get better, but it's a tougher hill to climb.
We'll never figure out how to do it until we actually start trying to rehabilitate people.
> There are places in this country where attitudes develop for many years, decades even, before that person is ever incarcerated.
This is text book bigotry.