Most people really do just want a pill that gets them out of jail quicker. Yet, freedom is different for different individuals and even on the streets your are not necessarily free. Knowledge is suppose to be power, but it is only power if you can apply it. Most people don’t even take the time to gain the knowledge needed to actual be free. Those that do still have to mix it with some type of want or desire. If there is no want or desire everything is for nothing. So even if they get out quicker they are in same situation. Trying to find out what they want or desire in/from life, then the proper knowledge to obtain it. The knowledge we should have obtained in prison rather in working skills, financial intelligence, or anything that has to do with being able to actually fit into society is always outdated upon release. We must always be retrained and then feel inadequate because time and technology have not stopped since we have been missing.
Prison is overcrowded and even the skills most think we obtain are not reality because we are always on a waiting list for every class and then we don’t always have a chance to put it into action. Trial and error through action are truly the best teachers and create new habits. Creating new habits so the brain runs on auto pilot is the only true reform out there. The way the system is ran is not conducive to real life without a real reintegration process. Even people that are free right now are not comfortable in/with society the way it is and are trying to figure it out. To add to that as the saying goes, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” Most opportunities come from connections. If you have 9 broke friends you are the 10th and if you have 9 rich friends it is the inverse. Yet prison and a record after hinders and kills almost all connections we have with productive people in society. Most mirror the people they are around so if you don’t have a strong support system at home or training on how to build new habits and apply knowledge that is out dated then what does the system expect?
Bringing a combination of programs that create better habits, training that includes action for it to sink in, and some type of mentor or big brother like program to be around the right people that influence good actions and introduce you to more productive people in society might work but there is always a difference in philosophy and actual practice. We have enough inmates to experiment with and nothing else has worked so just expressing some thoughts that could go deeper cause it’s not a simple answer and the same thing that might work for me might not work for somebody else. One thing for sure though you have to create a desire for someone to want to reform or grasp opportunity. You can never make somebody do something they don’t want to do. So maybe it’s as simple as creating or finding a picture of what one wants out of life and proving they can have it.
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