A recent book by journalist Bill Keller asks, “What’s Prison For?” The author never answers the question, but, as the book is almost entirely about rehabilitation, the implication is that prisoner reform is, or at least should be, the main goal.
It is a worthy aspiration, even a noble one, but one that seems out of reach for most of the prison population. And this is even true in Scandinavia, which has been touted as a model of progressive incarceration.
Criminologists differentiate rehabilitation and specific deterrence. The former is internally driven by a positive desire to remake one’s life, engage in legal work, raise a family, and most importantly, obey the law. Deterrence may have the same effect, but it is driven by fear: a negative desire to avoid the pains of reincarceration.
The significance of this distinction is that, as Keller recognizes, prisoners do not truly reform until they are ready to change. They must internalize the rehabilitation mentality; they must want to live clean. This is extremely difficult to achieve in prison. As places built around security and suspicion, they are hardly a therapeutic environment.
Some European countries have sought to redesign the prison by reducing the mistrust between guards and inmates, providing dorm-like facilities, and offering work and therapeutic interventions. Keller says the prisoner treatment there is “mind-blowing.”
But it is doubtful that we can replicate it in the United States. We have many more prisoners than European nations because we have many more violent offenders. Europe
