Andries Louis Joubert

This post was originally published on songofodin.wordpress.com, an anonymous blog of mine that I’ve since taken down.

Our society is often concerned about marginalized groups, but one group that doesn’t get enough attention is convicts and ex-convicts. Think about it. You grow up in poverty and abused; you develop anger problems and lash out at people. You quickly get in trouble with the law. Or perhaps you do something impulsively and thoughtlessly. Perhaps you are placed under a great deal of pressure in a perfect storm of negative influences that cause you to do something you can’t take back. And then you are sentenced to life…not necessarily life in prison, but a life of social trouble, where you constantly have to tell employers what you did, and have to rely on their good graces to get by. But even then, there’s a limit to how merciful they will be. You will have to work low-skilled and other low-tier jobs. Goodbye to your dreams. Goodbye to ever living a normal life again. People deserve a second chance and a clean slate, a chance to do what they really wanted after they’ve been punished. But this is impossible or very difficult to do in the current system (in North America).

            Before we look at ways to ease their suffering, let’s first ask the question of why it’s wrong for them to suffer in this way. Don’t they deserve it? Even if you think they deserve it, there is still room for compassion. But they don’t. Determinism is true. Our actions are fixed by causes beyond our control, whether in the environment or in the brain. Utilitarianism is also true, so that we have to maximize the happiness of as many people as possible to the greatest extent possible. This includes convicts and ex-convicts. This also means that the goal of corrections is rehabilitation rather than retribution. Retribution is a primitive concept that we can do without. Our society and criminal punishment has become much more humane the less we have thought in terms of it, most especially since the Enlightenment.

            One way to make it easier for convicts is to adopt a lighter corrections system, best exemplified in Scandinavian penal systems. Norway’s penal system is a very good example. It is based on the notion of “penal welfarism” and the “principle of normality”, which means that life inside the prison should closely resemble life outside the prison. The goal of the system is rehabilitation, not retribution and it addresses the social causes of crime rather than emphasizing deterrence. The sentences are shorter than in other countries. There are no life sentences and the maximum sentence is 21 years. Half of prisoners serve their time in “open prisons” where prisoners have private rooms and access to education (including vocational training), healthcare and can also go outside whenever they want (within the prison grounds). The staff are trained as social workers, not merely guards. It is well-known that the Norwegian penal system is associated with lower recidivism and the re-offending rate in Norway is among the lowest globally (20 – 30%). This system seems to indicate that treating convicts with kindness and support goes a long way to ensuring their reintegration. However, it is important to note that the penal system in Norway works in tandem with its extensive welfare system.

            A way to make things easier for ex-convicts is to reform criminal record checks. A good case can be made that most employer criminal record checks are useless. It’s unclear what’s achieved by them. When the HR manager at a particular employer sees a criminal record, he or she (usually she) has to make a judgment about whether that person should be employed given their record. Based on what should this judgment be made? What experience or education in criminology does the HR manager have? Usually, none. They have some past experience with ex-convict employees maybe (but probably not a lot). The judgment about whether the ex-convict is ready to re-enter society has already been made more competently by the penal system. So why should an employer who has no, or very little, experience in such matters make such a judgment again? It is also arguable that employer criminal record checks encourage social exclusion and recidivism. The more excluded an ex-convict, the more likely they are to re-offend, because they will feel that their life is over anyway. The presumption should be that if a person has served their sentence, they should be trusted once again by society. This doesn’t mean that criminal record checks should be abandoned entirely. They can still be used for specified roles, and especially for vulnerable sector jobs (jobs involving, for instance, children and the elderly). For example, in Sweden, criminal record checks are generally illegal, except for certain positions (such as healthcare, work involving children, the penal system, and security personnel).