As we all know, Sweden tends to be better at things. In Sweden, the life sentence is not given as freely as it is in the USA. As of 2015 There were only 142 people serving a life sentence, one of then was convicted of genocide. In Sweden only .03% of its prison population is serving a life sentence, while in the USA it .07% - a clearly higher percent. Do you think that the USA should not give as many life sentences, try to focus for on rehabilitation, and try to actually release people back into society?
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I think that one of the major issues with US prisons is the major focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Practices such as solitary confinement can have massive adverse effects on the mental health of prisoners, and thus can prevent people from adapting to society effectively. One of the most significant issues, however, is the lack of job opportunities for released prisoners. Many employers will discriminate against convicted applicants. This causes some felons to return to criminal methods to survive which thus increase the prison population further. Ultimately, criminal justice reform will require not just prison reform, but also a change in the way we view felons after they have paid their debt to society.
I do think the prison system should be more rehabilitative than punitive. Some evidence for the system being too focused on punishment is solitary confinement, excessively long sentences, and the death sentence. I think solitary confinement is not an effective method of rehabilitation, it does more mental harm than it helps. The threat of receiving a longer sentence is a problem in criminal cases with misrepresentation or not enough representation for the defendant, and can be threatened from within prison as well. The death sentence is probably the best example, because the message it ultimately delivers is that the system has failed, and the person being executed cannot be rehabilitated. If the goal of the prison system is to rehabilitate, then these methods of dealing with the prison population show how reform to the system is very much needed.
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