Wilbert Rideau's Article: Why Prisons Don T Work

Prisons have been around for many decades. The American people have normally thought that prisons are a good place to send criminals away. However, many people have proven that this might not be the case. In Wilbert Rideau’s “Why Prisons Don’t Work” he talks about how prisons aren’t as good as they might seem. They don’t help out the criminal to become a better person. I agree Rideau in this case. Prisons need to be a place where criminals can be helped to become a better individual. Prisons aren’t the best place for a criminal to be rehabilitated. These places often don’t help criminals become any better at all. “Prison, like the police and the courts, has a minimal impact on crime because it is a response after the fact, a mop-up …show more content…
These young people commit horrible crimes when they are young and end up getting very long sentences (Rideau). A person who commits a crime in their twenties doesn’t need to be in jail for the rest of their lives. This won’t help the person at all, and it obviously hasn’t reduced crime at all. It does no good for our society to exile a young person for the rest of their lives. As I stated before, it would be more beneficial if prisons could help educate these criminals in making better judgements. This also doesn’t mean judges should give criminals extremely light sentences. They still need to give them a fair punishment. I am saying that someone who commits a crime at twenty shouldn’t have to being in prison for sixty years. It would also be a solution for the overpopulation of the prisons. “Rather than pay for new prisons, society would be well served by releasing some of its older prisoners who pose no threat and using the money to catch young street thugs” (Rideau). This points out how our prisons don’t focus on the future. Instead of going out stopping the more violent young criminals, the justice system decides to waste space and money keeping people who have served forty to fifty years in prison. It makes more sense to have criminals serve slightly less sentences, but have them rehabilitated while in prison. If we can have people serve for a shorter time, and not commit another crime, then society will benefit as a whole. That is the biggest point prisons need to make. It should be a place to fix how criminals think, and to show them there are other options. It shouldn’t be a place for young people to sit for many decades. This just reinforces the idea that they are alone, and that nobody wants them to