And I got to thinking: who does jail “correct”? That jail, at that moment, was probably filled with some combination of screwed up scared kids, psychopaths, and the continuum between them.
Who winds up in jail? Disproportionately, the children of single mothers who grow up in poverty brought on in large measure by only having one income, and that often largely from the government.
These kids have major psychological problems, and jail does nothing to “correct” this. They are in pain, lonely, confused, ignorant. Often, they have dropped out of school because no one ever taught them to value it, no one ever spent time, among other things, teaching them to read; and because their wounds make it hard for them to concentrate and sit still.
What makes sense to me is that anyone accused of a crime is put through due process, and, when convicted, subjected to a psychological evaluation. People who are not psychotic, who are in states of severe but treatable trauma, are given treatment. When they are relatively “healed”, such that it seems likely they will not commit crimes again, they are released.j
Note: this has nothing to do with reconciling their crime with their sentence. Horrible decisions can be made under the influence of drugs, despair, and stupidity.
Untreatable psychopaths, of course, we never release. And for capital crimes, why not let the criminals themselves decide what they want: a lifetime in prison, or death?
These are random, as yet unorganized thoughts, but don’t you think our system could be more intelligent? Can we admit in principle that we are in fact a society, and that even given our diversity, a certain amount of consideration should be given to each of us?
Perhaps this looks socialist. I don’t view it that way. What I want to do is expand the tribe in ways socialists would never be able to.
And Emerson:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.