Here’s an article that addresses the issue if anyone is interested.
http://stanfordlawyer.law.stanford.edu/2010/11/saving-the-criminal-justice-system-will-the-budget-crisis-force-change/
What is says, basically, rehabilitation has been tried and tested in the US. But the good news out of this trail by fire approach, is we’ve gleaned some important data that should be looked at for our current economic crisis and dwindling budgets.
Prison expenditures are expected to cost taxpayers $75 billion annually in 2011, but the social cost of what is often called “mass incarceration” also has been profound. The racial profile of inmates is disproportionately weighted to young African-American males.
It may seem hard to believe but there are more black men imprisoned or on parole or probation today than were enslaved in 1850, more than 10 years before the Civil War began.
Recidivism numbers show that what the prison system has been doing with offenders isn’t working. Instead it has produced an enormous and expensive criminal class of largely addicted, poorly educated, disenfranchised individuals with few options to lead a lawful life when they are released from prison. According to a recent Department of Justice report, approximately two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years after release and more than half are returned to prison.
What’s also helping,a ccording to renowned criminologist Joan Petersilia, Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, is rehabilitation itself has been subjected to more rigorous analysis, and we have increasingly strong evidence about what works and what doesn’t. Rehabilitation used to be considered at least an equal partner to retributive punishment in the U.S. penal system, but it fell out of favor in the 1970s and largely disappeared as a priority as the war on drugs and tough-on-crime political rhetoric escalated in the 1980s. By the 1990s, prisons were so crowded that classrooms were stuffed with bunks and education and other programs were drastically reduced. Nonetheless, sociologists, progressive judges and prosecutors, and others continued to experiment with programs designed to try to at least short-circuit the criminal careers of young offenders before they become lifetime criminals. “We are starting to amass a large body of scientific literature on evidence-based practice and how to approach rehabilitation,” says Petersilia. Perhaps just as significant, political leaders are more interested in gathering that data to inform policies aimed at lowering recidivism in the offender population. Petersilia, for example, was invited by Governor Schwarzenegger to advise on the substantial 2009 reforms to the state’s parole system. And data gathered by Petersilia and her colleagues here at Stanford Law School have influenced major legislation in the state, covering various aspects of corrections reform, from funding for community corrections to re-entry centers, rehabilitation programs in prison, and more.
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