Thursday, July 23, 2009

Three Strikes Sentencing & Ineffective Rehabilitation

In this article about lifers in prisons—most as a result of three strikes sentencing—there is a plaint about not enough attention being paid to rehabilitation in our nation’s prisons; but that lack of attention is based on good evidence that rehabilitation, as it has been practiced for several decades, does not work.

We’ve posted on that several times, here is one post.

An excerpt from the New York Times article.

“Seven prison systems — Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system — do not offer the possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms.

“That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in 2008, 1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led the nation in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.

“The expansion of life sentences suggests that we’re rapidly losing faith in the rehabilitation model,” said Ashley Nellis, the report’s main author.”