No Second Chances Here Can prisoners be rehabilitated? My preliminary response to this question is yes, prisoners can be rehabilitated, but prison is not the place for that to happen. I believe that people want to change if they are driven to change within themselves. Never have I seen or heard of a man who changed because someone else told him he should. He had to want to be rehabilitated. It is my personal opinion that you can’t take every man in prison and expect him to be successfully rehabilitated. He has to prove that he truly wants to change, and then the process can begin.
What do I mean by rehabilitation? I believe that rehabilitation, when referring to prisoners, is taking an inmate, finding his or her weaknesses, and strengthening them to better him or her permanently. By permanently I mean to the point where they could be released back into society without any concern that he or she would relapse and cause a disturbance again, whether it be the same crime they previously committed or a new one altogether. For example, in Scott Antworth’s essay “The Tower Pig”, he discusses how he has tried to better himself during his time in prison. In the end of the essay his guard takes him to his grandmother’s funeral, where he lets him out of his chains. He didn’t do anything stupid, and both he and the guard trusted his judgment. That is rehabilitation. Every person on the face of the earth has a weakness. In general, a weakness is viewed as a flaw that causes one to fail. However, that is not necessarily the case. It isn’t uncommon for someone to fail, only to strengthen the weakness that caused the failure, ultimately becoming a better person for it. A weakness isn’t something that can’t be fixed or improved. It’s not a lost cause.
For the average person who has managed to stay out of prison, their weakness hasn’t caused them to entertain themselves with an illegal activity, it hasn’t compromised their morals, or convinced them to break the law. We either know how to control, handle, and accept our weaknesses, or we have been very lucky. Whatever the case may be, the weakness was, is, and will be there. For most inmates, it was that weakness that got them into prison. Their weaknesses can be anything from impulsiveness, anger management issues, or even an insecurity that caused them to turn to mood altering substances.
I think that in order for rehabilitation to take place in any way, shape or form, a person needs to be surrounded by positive influences, ones that do not exist in prison. You wouldn’t send a recovering alcoholic into a bar, just as you should expect a prisoner to be rehabilitated in prison. Of all that I have read over the past few weeks, one thing has been made very clear. Once a man is in prison, his goal is not to better himself, it is to survive. Survival in prison takes drastic measures, causing inmates to deviate from the right path, repeatedly.
Assume a man enters prison after committing murder. This man is aware of his anger management issue, and hopes to get out of prison early for good behavior. He minds his own business during his day to day affairs, making him seem weak to antagonizing inmates. One evening, while said man is sleeping, a gang comes in to “disturb” him, only causing him to become angry to the point of no return. In the blink of an eye, he is back to square one. Only now he has made an enemy, one which he must protect himself from, using whatever measures necessary. Both men are in prison, likely with the same weakness, one trying to be rehabilitated and the other couldn’t care less. How is that poor man who is trying to change supposed to under those circumstances, let alone prove that he deserves a second chance?