A single perspective on a problem is less than optimal, hence the old adage "a person with a hammer sees all problems as nails." The same is true with a risk aversion mindset, i.e, all risks are to be avoided--full stop. At first blush, this might seem like the best approach to prisons. If all one focuses on are risks and their avoidance, they overlook opportunities and how to enhance them.
Opportunities in prison can take on a number of guises. Long ago someone decided to use prisoners as a source of cheap/free labor. Examples of this can be seen throughout Eurasia thanks to Roman and ancient Chinese architecture, and as in American history vis a vi chain gangs of the deep south, especially under Jim Crow. However, the age of the chain gang is largely over. Machines can perform many menial tasks more efficiently and at a lower cost than a group of laborers, even inmates. Sentences of hard labor are largely relegated to those under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which means a person will spend their days reducing a block of concrete to dust, one cadenced hammer blow at a time. This is an example of a wasted opportunity, where that same person's energies could be harnessed for a constructive end.
Other examples of unexploited opportunities could be gardens, gyms and weight rooms, wood shops, barber shops, and kitchens, relatively ubiquitous prison features. Each one of these is an opportunity to create a certificated program for inmates. For example, gardens could be used to train inmates in landscape design, maintenance and horticulture; gyms could produce certified personal trainers; wood shops might turn out experience cabinet and furniture makers, or finish carpenters; barbers and hair dressers are always in demand; and kitchens could train cooks, teach management, planning and logistics. The focus here was jobs because gainful employment has been shown to keep more people from returning to prison than menial labor, the basis for most in prison jobs.
Not all prisons are the same. Some have more opportunities than others. The problem is to see beyond risk, to understand that with the proper incentives in place risk can be mitigated. Staff will balk at a program and use "safety and security" as a reason not to pursue a course of action. Often this is without exploring or entertaining any form of mitigation. Such knee jerk reactions undercut the premise of a department of correction, to correct something. Isolation and deprivation don't work as corrective methods as was learned more a century and a half ago. Engagement, enfranchisement, therapy and incentives work.
Five-year rates of return nationwide are around thirty percent, ten-year rates are as high as seventy-eight percent. There is a myriad of factors that contribute to this. Among them are missed opportunities to train inmates in marketable job skills. While capturing as many as possible will not end incarceration, it will lead to more success for states when it comes to returning inmates.
When it comes to crime, both inmates and the state have the same goal, to see low prison populations. There are risks with such a goal. There are also a myriad of opportunities.
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