Topic and Position: Prison Reform: Punishment vs. Rehabilitation
Retribution and punishment are still important, but so are rehabilitation, treatment, education, and support for those caught up in the criminal justice system. In recent years, despite an emerging bipartisan consensus around the need for criminal justice reform, there has been insufficient action to address people serving lengthy sentences who no longer pose a serious risk to public safety. Likewise, America’s prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education.
