TED Conversations

griffin tucker

TEDCRED 10+

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

jails should be more widely known as schools

some correctional facilities are becoming a business or already are a business, the future of these businesses depends on more people to commit crimes.

the idea here is to give incentives for correctional facility businesses to fully rehabilitate people into society by means of ensuring they don't re-offend.

one incentive in western society is money.

while giving money to one of these businesses from the tax-payer for each individual that doesn't re-offend may seem like a good idea, there are many problems with this idea. one of the problems with giving individualised incentives is that the future of the business would still depend on repeat or new offenders.

however, if the tax-payer were to give incentives to a correctional facility business based on how successful it was based on statistics, eventually the rehabilitation facility would effectively be a school.

this idea was inspired by a conversation i had with Colleen Steen.


EDIT: the main premise of the thread was intended to be an effective realistic way to utilise the commercialisation of prisons, and in the process improve society, but perhaps i didn't word the topic's title very well.

instead, i have changed the topic title to better suit the conversation, just as Salim Solaiman suggested.

Topics: courts and cases crime cultural evolution law law evolution moral psychology sociology
+8
Share:

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • Sandy Machado

    • 0
    Oct 13 2011: We should turn schools into schools first. In K-12 schools, we spend about $10,000 per student/per year (on average). In prisons we spend about $30,000 per inmate/per year. If we reversed these amounts, schools would be able to address many of the current issues and shortfalls, such as inadequate facilities, class size, teacher training, supporting special needs kids, etc. before these kids would become illiterate drop-outs destined for the rotating doors of the penal system. I'm not an advocate that throwing money at schools is going to solve all the education problems in our country, but a better distribution of funding in the education/prison symbiosis is certainly worthy of exploration.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.