How to Fix the Prison System
The following is the transcript of my troop deployment (i.e. ending rant) from episode 97 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
I tend to be against official segregation by gender in most circumstances. Whenever I bring this up, someone says “what about prisons?” The implication there is that everyone knows men in prison commit violence and rape constantly, and exposing women to that would be inhumane. And it’s true! But it’s also inhumane to expose men to that! It is outrageous that we all know how hellish prisons are, but nobody does anything about it.
It’s especially outrageous because of how easy it would be to stop it for 90% of prisoners. Prisoners don’t have any right to privacy. Just put cameras everywhere! Then anytime there is any violence, it can be immediately punished. There will always be some people who have such poor impulse control or short-sightedness that they will be violent even if there is near-certainty that they will be caught, but those prisoners can be transferred to the supermax prison where there is less opportunity for that. For everyone else, the near-certainty of getting caught and transferred should be an effective deterrent. Swift and certain punishment, even if it’s mild, has been shown to be the best, most effective way to prevent recidivism.
The other thing we ought to be doing is having a relentless focus on making sure everyone who gets out of prison has marketable skills and job prospects. Currently, the only things people learn in prison are how to be better criminals and how to get addicted to drugs. They should instead be learning useful skills. The one thing prisoners have a lot of is time, and we should be encouraging them to put that time to good use.
I complain about schools a lot. I complain that they are too authoritarian, too controlling, and too involuntary. In short, they are too much like prisons. But they are also a useful model for an environment that is justifiably involuntary, authoritarian, and controlling. Schools should be much less like prisons, but prisons should be more like schools! Days should be filled with going to classes. Prisons should be filled with teachers. Earning a high school diploma (or demonstrating that you can’t) should be a condition of release. Prisoners should be taught how to apply for jobs, and how to dress and speak in interviews. They should have the opportunity to learn trades like plumber or electrician (which you can actually do if you eliminate the violence). Have a sufficiently rigorous program and “ex-con” becomes a plus in certain trades, similar to how certain employers prefer to hire ex-military.
Going to prison shouldn’t just be a punishment. Our prisons should be dedicated to doing everything we can to take antisocial impulses and channel them toward prosocial ends. My proposal might not be the ideal one, but currently we’re not even trying.