Q: There are plenty of psychological debates regarding rehabilitation. Being on the ground floor, what's your take on it? Have you ever been in contact with a prisoner long enough to witness it?
A: It's quite depressing. About once a year I'll find an inmate who makes me think, "He's not coming back." Out of the eight or so inmates I've said that about, only one or two have stayed out.
It's a vicious cycle. 90% of the inmates have the deck stacked against them from the day they are born. They usually have bad families. The inmate's parents are often criminal types themselves and they instill that mindset into their children. To top it off there is a lot of abuse - sexually, physically, and/or emotionally.
Eventually, the kids become adults who do stupid shit. At that point it's time to blame the person even though it was bad parenting that created them.
When that broken individual comes to prison it becomes our job to try to fix/rehabilitate them. The challenge of changing someone who has a moral compass so different from our own is nearly impossible. For example, imagine how hard it would be to talk a normal person into believing molesting children is OK- that it is perfectly normal to have sex with children. It sounds pretty incomprehensible, doesn't it? That is what it's like trying to convince inmates that the way they think and behave is wrong.
The level of difficulty we face when trying to repair the thinking errors these guys have developed is massive. We give them high school classes, substance abuse treatment, therapy, job training, college, etc and even with all of that help the recidivism rate is usually well over 75%.
Another big problem for inmates is that they are often used to having a good income from illegal activity (drugs, gangs, theft, etc) and the reality is that they are only qualified for jobs that make laborer wages. Most of them have too much greed, pride and sense of entitlement to work an honest job and once the reality of lower class living sets in they go back to their illegal activities to supplement their income. Eventually they get caught and the cycle starts again.
There are other factors like drug addiction, and the inability to even find a job, that often figure in as well, but that's the gist of it.
So, can people be rehabilitated? Only if they want to be.
