Rehabilitation
By: Ed Howes
As in nearly all things, America has been of two minds
concerning the rehabilitation of criminals. One camp believes
the more severe and lengthy the punishment, the less opportunity
a criminal will have to re offend. Lock them up and throw away
the key. Statistics prove this camp wrong and alternatives are
far from their concern. They are the law and order people who
have a strong appeal to a society that fearfully sees itself as
victims.
The other camp wants to rehabilitate criminals but can seldom
raise the needed economic support to initiate and evaluate
rehabilitation programs. These are folks who know that no life
is beyond redemption or incapable of productive work.
Rehabilitation has failed so often because it rests on the idea
of stripping every right from a person, throwing them in a cage,
isolating them from the larger society and destroying any sense
of personal identity or value. Treating people worse than
animals is not conducive to self improvement. Rehabilitation
must begin by not caging non violent offenders. House arrest,
victim restitution, fines, counseling and work habilitation will
prove much less expensive to society than caging and produce a
better outcome.
Anti social behavior grows out of confusion and
misidentification. That is, anti social people believe they are
someone different than who they are at their core. They are
books judged by their covers; judged by people only interested
in covers. They come to believe and behave as though they are
the covers others have created for them. They are the products
of other people’s expectations and imaginations as so many of us
are. Unfortunately, the expectations of many role models were
low and easy to fulfill. Let society help the victims of low
expectations to distinguish between who they are and who they
have been told they are. This explains their confusion to them
and alleviates it. Clearing this confusion makes good candidates
for rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation begins by helping an offender find their true
identity. The tools trained counselors now have at their
disposal for this identification process are readily available:
aptitude and IQ tests; personality and character tests;
astrological and numerological charts and reports; literacy
tests. Poor readers are non readers and have a lifetime social
handicap until they want to read well. Probations should
continue until literacy is achieved. Once a person can read well
and wants to do so, they can learn anything else they so choose.
This opens a world of options previously denied.
Lives of total dependency in cages help no one. Not keepers,
the prisoners or the society trying to protect itself. To treat
a person as though they will never have an opportunity for
revenge and then releasing them with hearts full of fear,
resentment, anger and rage, guarantees that society will pay a
price for the way they treat people who were most often fellow
victims, long before they turned to crime.
In Orwellian double speak, society talks of caging people as
criminals paying a debt to society. The fact is the reverse.
Society is creating a debt to the offender, turning a marginal
life into a hopeless and useless life. Society is restricting a
person from any opportunity to contribute to the society he or
she offended; allowing no opportunity to support a family for
which they may be responsible; innocent victims of terrible,
thoughtless social policy.
Society has so long applied this cruel punishment that its debt
to the criminal element cannot be paid. Just like the debts owed
Native Americans and the descendents of African slaves. We can
go ahead and live our lives as though no debt existed and we do.
America will pay in blood, terror and plague - death and
destruction. It is a sad thing we have so chosen. Divine justice
does not allow for life in cages or a few living well from the
misery of many.
The rehabilitation of social offenders will not prevent the
judgment of a dispassionate, unrepentant people, long past due.
It could create pockets of mercy within that judgment. Perhaps
you and I will know a little of that mercy. Perhaps you and I
will make some effort to end a social injustice that is
worldwide and ages old. Perhaps you and I will no longer
ignore the problems some are paid to hide from us. Perhaps we
actually do know right from wrong. Perhaps knowing the
difference, we will choose what is right. Perhaps - but no one is
betting on it.
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Ed Howes sought and found, knocked and entered. Now he sees things differently. To see more of what he sees, please visit http://www.justanotherview.com or do an author search here at Ezine Articles.