To Lower Crime Means To Revisit Recidivism

We would all agree that crime is a horrible act to commit. It goes against everything that we know to do, think, or even say. Even the most violent offenders tell their children to not follow in their footsteps. Crime is the unthinkable. But so many people continue to engage in it day in and day out. There is a group out there that is dedicated to robbing cars. Another group doing home invasions, stealing identities, committing harmful acts against children, adults, and even animals. It’s a sick world. But why should we make it sicker than it already is. Why feed the beast, when if we just took a step back we could figure this out.

Victims want payback. I completely agree with their logic. You committed a crime against me and now you need to pay for your actions. I agree. We need to take our punishment. And we let a jury of your peers decide that punishment. The judge agrees with it. The court clerk makes it official. If it’s two years, ten years, a life sentence, along with five years of probation, once that sentence is over, that’s it, end of story. Our felonies should be over. But they aren’t. So this means we need to somehow live being a felon, which no one has taught us to do. No one told us we couldn’t find work. We can’t rent a place. The two necessities to live. After a months of trying. We give up, we have a chip on our shoulder, reoffended. and now we are back in the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is made up of tons of different dots. It’s been connected the same way for the past 200 years. Sure, there have been upgrades and new rules surrounding it. It’s still the same system we all know to be unbalanced.

The system is a lot like a simplified version of the Matrix; and much like the Matrix, no one really knows anything about it. All people know is that it’s a well-oiled machine that hasn’t needed a tune-up in three centuries. It’s the most disorganized entity in the nation, and no one cares about it until it impacts them directly. People know that it exists, now that they have the ID Channel, the Court TV Channel, Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, and many more. They just want to ignore the fact that it couldn’t happen to them. Ah. But it could. Let’s talk about this.

Recidivism is the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend, to repeat a pattern of questionable behaviors that have led to a negative outcome. Whether it’s a probation or a parole violation or they picked up new charges, whatever the case may be, they’re going back to jail or prison. Think about that for a moment, any way you look at it, the offender did something harmful to another person. That person that was harmed could be anyone, someone in your family, a friend, a colleague from work, or even an acquaintance. Why did this happen? Because the alleged offender had nothing to lose, this was the only thing they knew how to do when they hit the survival mode button. What can we do to prevent this from happening?

I hope you, the reader, can see the moral dilemma that has been presented to you. Now I will confuse you even more. Why won’t the system help train these individuals, educationally and vocationally speaking, why won’t they give them the skills they need?Because the system runs off something called money, the more money private correctional facilities make, the more prisons can be built. What incentives do they have in rehabilitation? None, they want the individual to fail cause for each inmate they have they get paid $50k a years per individual. Private prisons are motivated by profit, which means they have an incentive to cut costs more than public facilities. Private facilities have been shown to hire fewer staff and train them less, which creates unsafe conditions for inmates. Private prisons are inherently unethical because they do not provide very much good for anyone – they do not save the government money, and they keep inmates on lockdown most of the time when they could be educating them.

So, what does a second chance really look like? What hope do these men and women have? Being put back into society without the skills that they should have been getting so they don’t reoffend and hurt someone. The biggest question to me is if society knew that an inmate wouldn’t reoffend because they got the education and vocational training they needed, who would vote against that? By providing education, training, and home economics to the incarcerated individual, that individual would have a fighting chance at survival. Furthermore, they would have the skills necessary to find and maintain gainful employment, which would in turn decrease the likelihood of recidivism.

I have paid my dues. I did my time. I have made amends with the people I harmed, and they have supported me in starting this non-profit. Because my crimes were nonviolent, it was easier for me to survive, with help from my friends and family I have been able to overcome so much. It’s been seven years since I made my last mistake. My sentence, my probation, my life as a criminal is over. But my punishment will endure a lifetime.