Give Criminals The Right To Vote?

[WinePusher]

We will be going off severe crimes in this thread such as rape and murder, not minor misdemeanors.

1) Should a criminal be given the right to vote when incarcerated?

2) Should a criminal be allowed to vote when their sentence has been served completely?

[ChaosBorders]

It has shown that rehabilitation for drug offender can cut recidivism by around 90% saving the CJS millions.

Where do you get this stuff from?

Where you get your number from? I've read that rehabilitation for drug offenders is significantly better than just jail time, but I've never even seen the number get as high as half, much less 90%.

It was just on NPR some time ago. I also think the place where my wife works (they to criminal justice research, reintegration and research, etc..) also have the same number. Ill see if I can find an actual source.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

[theopoesis]

We will be going off severe crimes in this thread such as rape and murder, not minor misdemeanors.

2) Should a criminal be allowed to vote when their sentence has been served completely?

There's a disproportionate number of minorities incarcerated in the US. There are many reasons for this, but one strong argument that I have heard is that there are negative effects in terms of deterrence once incarceration becomes normalized. Normally, incarceration is a deterrent for crime because individuals fear prison, but this deterrence no longer has much of an effect once you know dozens of people who have gone to prison and returned. What once produced fear might now be considered as a right of passage in many ways.

How does this relate to the question at hand? Well, in some regions of the United States, as many as 1 in 10 individuals from a community are incarcerated, with higher numbers of ex-cons. If you normalize the incarceration cycle, but then eliminate a significant majority of that demographic's ability to vote, you create a situation where the community is seen as barred from participation in society as a whole but is accustomed to and used to and (in some senses) immune to the disciplinary deterrence of that society. In short, you set up conditions for increasing anti-social behavior: one has no access to participate, and no fear of repurcussions, so one ignores the societal norms as a whole.

If we present an alternate model of rehabilitation and a return to voting, we might imagine a situation where inmates are returned to a society that has mechanisms for restoring them to participation in society, and thereby for voicing the opinions of the specific demographics in a way that leads to increasing governmental concern for the needs of that community. Packaged with a "restorative justice" rather than a "Retributive justice" framework, voting would be a critical element in moving from a normalized deterrence to a social-restoration of anti-social communities where incarceration begins to work against perpetuating crime instead of for it.

[Lux]

Psychopaths range from 7% to 25% of the prison populace. (I suspect the 25% more likely also includes sociopaths who not psychopaths). However, there is some indication they are 2.5 times more likely to get released early as well, so presumably they make up a very slightly higher percentage of ex-cons than they do of the prison populace.

Fair enough. I would venture that psychopaths are less likely to vote than the average Joe, since voting doesn't provide them any benefit and they are not particularly concerned about the well-being of society. This is mere conjecture, though. But, even if most psychopathic ex-cons were anxious to vote, I still don't think they would make a significant difference, and if they did it'd have to be in favor of a candidate that was already very close to winning.

Psychopaths could be as much as 1% of the population, which means a scary 3.1 million people in the USA. I honestly doubt any significant percentage of that number has ever been incarcerated. This means we can not stop psychopaths from having a say in the elections anyway, unless we start requesting psychological clearance to vote.

From a psychological perspective the incarceration has absolutely nothing to do with punishment. It merely serves as a source of retribution and temporary detainment. Which is to say, it's completely broken and needs to be fixed. However, taking away the ability to vote has little to do with the many failings of our justice system.

I agree the justice system is very flawed and needs to be fixed. One of the main reasons why the system is failing (besides being poorly designed in the first place) is that it's saturated. One of the reasons why it's saturated is because the recidivism rate is 67%.

We already have "punishment" covered, we need to start working on rehabilitation and reinsertion. If making small concessions like letting them vote, not denying prisoners visiting and conjugal visiting rights, investing a little in better psychological attention or even programs to help them get jobs can help lower recidivism rates, count me in.

Also, a very sad fact that I feel is at least slightly relevant to this conversation. They did an experiment where they gave some cons plastic surgery and compared the effectiveness of that on reducing recidivism rates compared to having them go through rehabilitation programs...guess which one was more effective by a large margin.

That is pretty sad... What sort of plastic surgery was it? (I think this is relevant because something like having your face altered significantly can give a person the perception of a "new start")

Not really. The other people's lack of education, judgment, and psychological issues is apparently insufficient for them to have been caught committing a serious crime. I would still like there to be other tests of some sort to exclude them, but I think "Can you follow the most important laws we have?" is a good start.

If you're ok with letting everyone else who is uneducated, psychologically unstable or showing poor judgement vote but not prisoners, it would seem that the reason you don't want them to vote is because they are prisoners/ex prisoners. A part of why I'm opposed to that is moral-based, but even without that, I think it's not in society's best interest to punish criminals for life, and by itself that's all that not letting them vote is: punishment.

[ChaosBorders]

Fair enough. I would venture that psychopaths are less likely to vote than the average Joe, since voting doesn't provide them any benefit and they are not particularly concerned about the well-being of society.

Helping, at least in part, to get people elected whose policies would be of benefit to them would provide them with benefit. Whether they actually do vote or not is definitely questionable. (I could conceive of them more likely being lobbyists...)

This is mere conjecture, though. But, even if most psychopathic ex-cons were anxious to vote, I still don't think they would make a significant difference, and if they did it'd have to be in favor of a candidate that was already very close to winning.

Should we list how many elections have been determined by small margins? Bush won the 2000 election by less than a thousand votes in Florida (despite losing the popular vote by half a million). I'm sure you can tell how well that presidency has worked out for this country. Don't underestimate the impact adding in a few hundred thousand less than ideal voters might have on who gets elected.

Psychopaths could be as much as 1% of the population, which means a scary 3.1 million people in the USA. I honestly doubt any significant percentage of that number has ever been incarcerated.

Even by the lowest estimates of 7% of those incarcerated being psychopaths, that would give us at least 10% of psychopaths having been incarcerated. Going by the higher estimates we would reach over a third of all psychopaths ending up in jail on a felony charge at some point in time. Which given their inability to consider or care about the repercussions of their actions is rather to be expected.

This means we can not stop psychopaths from having a say in the elections anyway, unless we start requesting psychological clearance to vote.

Not being able to stop all of them is not a good reason not to stop as many as you can. Though honestly, I could definitely conceive of psychological clearance being a good thing....

I agree the justice system is very flawed and needs to be fixed. One of the main reasons why the system is failing (besides being poorly designed in the first place) is that it's saturated. One of the reasons why it's saturated is because the recidivism rate is 67%.

And marijuana users...just so dumb to be locking up marijuana users.

We already have "punishment" covered, we need to start working on rehabilitation and reinsertion.

A) From a psychological standpoint we don't actually have punishment covered because nothing about our justice system lends itself to being an effective punishment. I guess we could say that we have 'retribution' covered and some people call that 'punishment' despite its total ineffectiveness as such.
B) Though I do agree we need to start working on rehabilitation, going back to the issue of psychopaths (and other sociopaths for that matter), they basically can't be. Until we separate out those who are incurable, in addition to rehabilitating those who genuinely need it, we will also be helping those who cannot be rehabilitated become even more dangerous predators in the future.

If making small concessions like letting them vote, not denying prisoners visiting and conjugal visiting rights, investing a little in better psychological attention or even programs to help them get jobs can help lower recidivism rates, count me in.

And perhaps controlled experiments should be run to see if letting them vote would genuinely impact recidivism rates in a positive manner. If they indicated that it might have an impact then I would reconsider my position. But if you're just going off principle I see no reason to think it would have enough of an effect to justify giving millions of former criminals the ability to influence who gets to make laws.

That is pretty sad... What sort of plastic surgery was it? (I think this is relevant because something like having your face altered significantly can give a person the perception of a "new start")

I don't really know the full details. I'm pretty sure it corrected some disfigurements sustained while in jail though. But it was being discussed along with a whole lot of other evidence that looks have a huge impact on the justice system (as well as other areas of life).

If you're ok with letting everyone else who is uneducated, psychologically unstable or showing poor judgement vote but not prisoners, it would seem that the reason you don't want them to vote is because they are prisoners/ex prisoners.

I'm not ok with it, I just don't know how to prevent them given they haven't screwed up badly enough regarding something most of society cares something about.

A part of why I'm opposed to that is moral-based, but even without that, I think it's not in society's best interest to punish criminals for life, and by itself that's all that not letting them vote is: punishment.

Restriction is different than punishment. If this were a 'punishment,' it would not be a very effective one. I'm open to ideas on how ex-cons could demonstrate that whatever mental failings they had to lead them to their crimes have been fixed, but simply going "Ok, you're a demonstrably dangerous idiot, but we'll let you vote again anyways" just doesn't cut it for me.

[Lux]

Helping, at least in part, to get people elected whose policies would be of benefit to them would provide them with benefit. Whether they actually do vote or not is definitely questionable. (I could conceive of them more likely being lobbyists...)

That'd be true to the same extent that all of us vote for candidates who serve our interest. I don't see how a psychopath voting republican because they want to pay less taxes is dangerous.

Should we list how many elections have been determined by small margins? Bush won the 2000 election by less than a thousand votes in Florida (despite losing the popular vote by half a million). I'm sure you can tell how well that presidency has worked out for this country. Don't underestimate the impact adding in a few hundred thousand less than ideal voters might have on who gets elected.

I know it can happen, all I'm saying is that candidate would need to have massive non-psychopathic support. Bush had massive amounts of support.

Even by the lowest estimates of 7% of those incarcerated being psychopaths, that would give us at least 10% of psychopaths having been incarcerated. Going by the higher estimates we would reach over a third of all psychopaths ending up in jail on a felony charge at some point in time. Which given their inability to consider or care about the repercussions of their actions is rather to be expected.

I was going by what you posted here:

Psychopaths range from 7% to 25% of the prison populace. (I suspect the 25% more likely also includes sociopaths who not psychopaths).

Sociopathy is 3 times as common as psychopathy, so if those estimates include sociopaths, we can say that the percentage of psychopaths in prison would be much closer to 7% than to 25%. Even if we go by a median of 16%, we end up with 320,000 incarcerated right now, which is about 10% of all psychopaths. Is there a way we can make an approximate on how many ex-cons are psychopaths?

About psychopaths not caring about the repercussions of their actions, that's only true in that they don't care about the damage they might cause others. They care about the consequences for themselves, and they avoid negative repercussions if possible.

Not being able to stop all of them is not a good reason not to stop as many as you can. Though honestly, I could definitely conceive of psychological clearance being a good thing....

I can conceive of it being a good thing too. But if we do it for everyone fairly. Not being able to deny suffrage to all people who (allegedly) shouldn't be voting is indeed a very good reason not to deny it to some of them. It'd simply unfair to do so.

And marijuana users...just so dumb to be locking up marijuana users.

Absolutely...

A) From a psychological standpoint we don't actually have punishment covered because nothing about our justice system lends itself to being an effective punishment. I guess we could say that we have 'retribution' covered and some people call that 'punishment' despite its total ineffectiveness as such.

Could you explain? Being locked up in a prison sounds like punishment to me, especially considering the stuff that goes on in prisons. Bad, bad punishment...

B) Though I do agree we need to start working on rehabilitation, going back to the issue of psychopaths (and other sociopaths for that matter), they basically can't be. Until we separate out those who are incurable, in addition to rehabilitating those who genuinely need it, we will also be helping those who cannot be rehabilitated become even more dangerous predators in the future.

Why should we deny all prisoners a decent chance at rehabilitation, and continue to overload our prisons (at considerable public cost) because we can not identify a group that could be as small as 7%?

And perhaps controlled experiments should be run to see if letting them vote would genuinely impact recidivism rates in a positive manner. If they indicated that it might have an impact then I would reconsider my position. But if you're just going off principle I see no reason to think it would have enough of an effect to justify giving millions of former criminals the ability to influence who gets to make laws.

As I've said, I think small things that can give them the feeling of being a part of society can help. That is the issue with ex-cons: they can't adapt once they are released and therefore they return to criminal behavior.

I don't see how denying them the right to vote helps at all.

I'm not ok with it, I just don't know how to prevent them given they haven't screwed up badly enough regarding something most of society cares something about.

Then I will continue to think it's inherently unfair to deny some individuals the right to vote while granting it to other individuals who present the same negative traits.

Restriction is different than punishment. If this were a 'punishment,' it would not be a very effective one. I'm open to ideas on how ex-cons could demonstrate that whatever mental failings they had to lead them to their crimes have been fixed, but simply going "Ok, you're a demonstrably dangerous idiot, but we'll let you vote again anyways" just doesn't cut it for me.

I'd be open to hearing how not letting them vote helps in the first place, especially in the case of ex-cons who are no longer on probation. They've served their time and they have arguably demonstrated that they are not an imminent danger anymore (hence the removal from probation). How is their vote any less valid than the average guy's?

If a fair way to determine which criminals are not psychologically stable enough to vote was installed, I'd be ok with not letting the ones that don't pass vote. But just saying "Well, approximately one in nine convicts is a psychopath and an undetermined number are psychologically unstable, so you can't vote even if you're neither of those things" is just too unfair.

As far as education and judgement go, I'm sorry but too large a part of society shows a lack of these. If a test is required in those areas, I'd say it should be required for everybody.

[ChaosBorders]

Helping, at least in part, to get people elected whose policies would be of benefit to them would provide them with benefit. Whether they actually do vote or not is definitely questionable. (I could conceive of them more likely being lobbyists...)

That'd be true to the same extent that all of us vote for candidates who serve our interest. I don't see how a psychopath voting republican because they want to pay less taxes is dangerous.

Should we list how many elections have been determined by small margins? Bush won the 2000 election by less than a thousand votes in Florida (despite losing the popular vote by half a million). I'm sure you can tell how well that presidency has worked out for this country. Don't underestimate the impact adding in a few hundred thousand less than ideal voters might have on who gets elected.

I know it can happen, all I'm saying is that candidate would need to have massive non-psychopathic support. Bush had massive amounts of support.

That's at least partly my point. The system is already dictated largely by selfish stupidity without adding the possibility of the worst citizens being able to swing what could already be a narrow vote in favor of candidates that serve their interests.

Sociopathy is 3 times as common as psychopathy, so if those estimates include sociopaths, we can say that the percentage of psychopaths in prison would be much closer to 7% than to 25%. Even if we go by a median of 16%, we end up with 320,000 incarcerated right now, which is about 10% of all psychopaths. Is there a way we can make an approximate on how many ex-cons are psychopaths?

Given all ex-cons were cons and "findings indicate psychopathic convicts have a 2.5 time higher probability of being released from jail than undiagnosed convicts, even though they are more likely to recidivate," presumably they make up at minimum 7% of ex-cons.

About psychopaths not caring about the repercussions of their actions, that's only true in that they don't care about the damage they might cause others. They care about the consequences for themselves, and they avoid negative repercussions if possible.

Half true. Most of them lack impulse control and do not care about (or are unable to conceive of) the long-term consequences of their actions. They will often try to avoid negative repercussions if it occurs to them there might be some, but not remotely to the extent most people would.

Another way of putting it is that they will almost always sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term gains, even if the most rational course of action would be to sacrifice the short-term benefits in order to benefit in the long-term. In some ways this is why high-functioning, non-psychopathic sociopaths can be a lot scarier. Psychopaths, sooner or later, will almost always be detected because their behavior is self-destructive, whereas other high-functioning sociopaths are more likely to have the capacity to be patient and remain unnoticed.

I can conceive of it being a good thing too. But if we do it for everyone fairly. Not being able to deny suffrage to all people who (allegedly) shouldn't be voting is indeed a very good reason not to deny it to some of them. It'd simply unfair to do so.

What makes fairness a good reason? For that matter, if we're going to go by fairness, why is it fair that people who have violated other people's rights end up getting to maintain absolutely all of their own?

Could you explain? Being locked up in a prison sounds like punishment to me, especially considering the stuff that goes on in prisons. Bad, bad punishment...

From a psychology perspective, punishment is something that reduces a behavior. To actually be effective it has to be consistently and almost immediately applied. Nothing about prison system is consistent or immediate and it clearly does not do a good job actually reducing the behavior. From a psychology perspective it should not be considered a punishment. (And since its goal is to reduce the negative behavior I would assert it should use psychology definitions so that its complete and total failure at this goal is more vividly outlined).

Why should we deny all prisoners a decent chance at rehabilitation, and continue to overload our prisons (at considerable public cost) because we can not identify a group that could be as small as 7%?

We can identify most of them. The problem is people don't think it is fair to treat them differently just because they are incurable monsters. The issue with that is it completely screws everything else up. And don't forget that other sociopaths are also incurable once they've reached the point of becoming a full-fledged sociopath, so the 25% rate is probably more appropriate for this part of the discussion.

As I've said, I think small things that can give them the feeling of being a part of society can help. That is the issue with ex-cons: they can't adapt once they are released and therefore they return to criminal behavior.

I don't see how denying them the right to vote helps at all.

And I don't see how it hurts. I don't care about how the right to vote effects ex-cons unless it can be demonstrated that having that right would demonstrably improve the recidivism rates. The only way to show that would be to run experiments and if those come back positively then I would change my position. But until that is done, I see no benefit to society by allowing some of its worse members get to help decide who runs it.

Then I will continue to think it's inherently unfair to deny some individuals the right to vote while granting it to other individuals who present the same negative traits.

Now, in fairness, those other individuals did manage to keep their negative traits in check enough to avoid getting caught committing a felony. Though I wish none of them had the right to vote, it's not like they're 100% equivalent.

I'd be open to hearing how not letting them vote helps in the first place, especially in the case of ex-cons who are no longer on probation. They've served their time and they have arguably demonstrated that they are not an imminent danger anymore (hence the removal from probation).How is their vote any less valid than the average guy's?

They've demonstrated that while being regularly monitored they have the capacity to avoid randomly committing a crime. I'm open to implementing some sort of system to demonstrate that they are committed to becoming more productive members of society such as getting education and therapy, but simply not completely screwing up while having to periodically check in does not seem like the hall mark we should strive for.

As far as education and judgement go, I'm sorry but too large a part of society shows a lack of these. If a test is required in those areas, I'd say it should be required for everybody.

Yes, it probably ought to be.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 21:

There's a disproportionate number of minorities incarcerated in the US. There are many reasons for this, but one strong argument that I have heard is that there are negative effects in terms of deterrence once incarceration becomes normalized. Normally, incarceration is a deterrent for crime because individuals fear prison, but this deterrence no longer has much of an effect once you know dozens of people who have gone to prison and returned. What once produced fear might now be considered as a right of passage in many ways.

How does this relate to the question at hand? Well, in some regions of the United States, as many as 1 in 10 individuals from a community are incarcerated, with higher numbers of ex-cons. If you normalize the incarceration cycle, but then eliminate a significant majority of that demographic's ability to vote, you create a situation where the community is seen as barred from participation in society as a whole but is accustomed to and used to and (in some senses) immune to the disciplinary deterrence of that society. In short, you set up conditions for increasing anti-social behavior: one has no access to participate, and no fear of repurcussions, so one ignores the societal norms as a whole.

If we present an alternate model of rehabilitation and a return to voting, we might imagine a situation where inmates are returned to a society that has mechanisms for restoring them to participation in society, and thereby for voicing the opinions of the specific demographics in a way that leads to increasing governmental concern for the needs of that community. Packaged with a "restorative justice" rather than a "Retributive justice" framework, voting would be a critical element in moving from a normalized deterrence to a social-restoration of anti-social communities where incarceration begins to work against perpetuating crime instead of for it.

That, my friends, is one heckuva compelling argument that has me rethinking my take on this issue. It really gets at how seriously we must consider the issue and where and when we are prepared to remove the rights of our citizens.

That said, I'm not quite prepared to totally reject my position. I consider those who so severely violate the rights of others should have their rights taken away. Individuals act, and when they do they should reap the rewards and punishments. That so many of a given strata of society may be affected by laws should only be considered in relation to whether a given law is just / accurate / good.

Rehabilitation and deterrence are laudable goals, but I think some punishment should be involved in addressing violent crimes and felonies.

To me, it doesn't matter near as mush that a given section of society is more likely to commit a crime, but that a crime has occurred and there is a victim.

To try to tie this all back to the OP:

1) Should a criminal be given the right to vote when incarcerated?

No. Lay in the beds you make.

2) Should a criminal be allowed to vote when their sentence has been served completely?

Not for violent crimes / felonies.

I'll offer the disclaimers that I've been incarcerated and have committed felonies (and still do when I brew my hooch), while having no violent crime convictions.

[theopoesis]

That said, I'm not quite prepared to totally reject my position. I consider those who so severely violate the rights of others should have their rights taken away. Individuals act, and when they do they should reap the rewards and punishments. That so many of a given strata of society may be affected by laws should only be considered in relation to whether a given law is just / accurate / good.

Rehabilitation and deterrence are laudable goals, but I think some punishment should be involved in addressing violent crimes and felonies.

To me, it doesn't matter near as mush that a given section of society is more likely to commit a crime, but that a crime has occurred and there is a victim.

I know the federal government through the Adam Walsh Act has set up the means to psychologically evaluate sex offenders and to detain them beyond their sentences if they are deemed a serious threat and quite mentally deviant (this also relates to Chaosborders psychopath argument). On the other hand, a large number of inmates seem to be incarcerated based on drug charges. Perhaps an evaluation by Bureau of Prisons officials could determine the nature of the crime and the mental status of the offender to determine whether full or limited rights would be restored. (Other rights, such as certain social programs, are also eliminated). It would add a lot to the legal costs, but it might be worth it.

In terms of victims, I think a holistic approach is important. I am focusing on rehabilitation with the thought of future victims in mind. Rehabilitated individuals and communities do not create future victims. On the other hand, you rightly call me out for ignoring past victims. Again, on a case by case basis, there might be some variance in terms of consequences for rights balancing past and future victims according to the crime. Restorative justice practices might have something to contribute to the debate, as they take into account both victims' and perpetrators' desires and needs.

[ChaosBorders]

I know the federal government through the Adam Walsh Act has set up the means to psychologically evaluate sex offenders and to detain them beyond their sentences if they are deemed a serious threat and quite mentally deviant (this also relates to Chaosborders psychopath argument).

Yes. For that matter, that's another area of the justice system that could be fixed considerably. Many (maybe even most) people jailed for sex offenses committed minor things (soliciting a hooker, getting drunk, consensual statutory rape between people with fairly minor age discrepancies, and flashing people by accident, etc). Though I'm not a fan of these behaviors at all, locking them up and calling them sex offenders is both a waste of resources and obscures the recidivism rates of the more dangerous predators. When you look on the surface it appears that sex offenses have one of the lowest recidivism rates of any type of crime, but digging deeper it becomes apparent that many of the sex offenses were minor errors in judgment that had nothing to do with a deeper rooted and more malignant psychology often held by those who committed the more serious offenses.

There is some indication that psychopaths might be more likely to act on an impulse to rape, should they have such an impulse, but regarding pedophiles it's a largely separate issue, though furthers my contention there are other individuals in prison besides just psychopaths we presently have little to no idea how to 'fix' who need to stay locked up.

On the other hand, a large number of inmates seem to be incarcerated based on drug charges. Perhaps an evaluation by Bureau of Prisons officials could determine the nature of the crime and the mental status of the offender to determine whether full or limited rights would be restored.
(Other rights, such as certain social programs, are also eliminated). It would add a lot to the legal costs, but it might be worth it.

It may add a fair amount to legal costs, but if they implemented it correctly I could foresee the system becoming much, much cheaper. First, stop locking up people for relatively minor offenses that didn't involve violence. (More community service maybe. Want them to be part of society? Force them to contribute to it). Second, assess the psychology of the violent offenders. Those that clearly psychopathic, have anti-social disorder, or are sadistic pedophiles, you can pretty much throw away the key and never revisit the issue. We have no way of fixing them and efforts to do so will just cause many of them to adapt until they can 'pass' for normal and get released back onto the world, more dangerous than ever. If there was a way to streamline an execution system so that they couldn't go through so many appeals and it would be cheaper than locking them up for life that would probably be the most sensible.

Those that seem like they might be fixable, put through rehabilitation programs and reward good behavior. Study and put into practice the most effective programs for lowering recidivism rates. If experiments indicate that allowing them to vote again would be effective, go for it. Apparently plastic surgery may help too. Weird, but whatever. Get them educated. Help them get jobs. Do whatever is possible to address the root cause of why they committed the crime, such as drug addiction or desperation, then get them out the door and back into society in a functional role.

If they keep ending up back in prison on violent crimes though, throw them in with the first group and shut the door. (Repeated violent drug addicts would likely fit this).

For the segment of the population that actually has a chance of being rehabilitated, it would cost considerably more per person. However, by not locking up the significant amounts of non-violent offenders that we do, by reducing recidivism rates, and by lowering the amount of actual jail-time for those most likely to be fixable, I think overall costs can be reduced considerably despite spending more money on rehabilitation and more to keep the truly dangerous threats permanently locked up.

Unfortunately, I do not think this system will ever truly be implementable, for many reasons but at least in part as the result of many people complaining that it is unfair to treat people differently even if they have very different underlying psychologies....

[DeBunkem]

I think convicts should be given the right to vote. The more you alienate a person from society, the more unlikely it becomes that they will ever reform.

Considering the high percentage of psychopaths and other mentally unstable individuals among such criminals, does it really make sense to allow elements of society known to be the most dangerous to have influence over who is in charge of it?

I have noticed the same among a large percentage of Wall St. moguls, Congress, and the militaries of the world (those "in charge of it"). Throwing drug offenders in with felons is anti-rehabilitation. The purely punitive approach is a throwback to 19th century.

We don't even train animals with beatings and other corporal punishment...just watch the Dog Whisperer. Yet here we go merrily back to the Middle Ages including drowning torture on unconvicted political prisoners.

Our prison system reflects the inbred puritanism of the System. Note how many prisons rely purely on religion as the road to rehabilitation and more prison privelege. The majority of these are evangelical. This is a microcosm of how Calvinism breeds a particularly toxic form of hypocrisy.