A problem of criminal reform

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

I grew up in a stage red environment and over the years I've had a lot of criminal friends. I used that as a way to get a better understanding of the criminal mind. I've looked at ways I can help these people and my limits in helping them. I've looked at what motivates change and at motivates diminishes it.

In trying to help them I've learned a couple of things. One of the most important lessons is that you can't help such a person if your intention is to put them into a different box. So you have one box of people that society deems to be good and valuable people and one box of people that are deemed to be savage and degenerate filth, and a lot of rehabilitation programs are built on the idea that bad people are stupid children that simply have got it all wrong and now need the far more intelligent adults to step in for them and show them how life is REALLY down. They subtly assert themselves over the criminal by trying to "fix" them. This can still work, people do need help sometimes and that little bit of extra help can actually be sufficient to get them to start solving their problems, but for most criminals this isn't the case.

Their criminal activities are deeply intertwined with their personality and how their minds function. A lot of them averse authority. A few of my friends have told me stories of getting beat unconscious by their fathers and uncles, thrown down stairs and things like that. A lot of criminals have had similar traumatic/negative experiences with authorities (or have been raised by parents that are averse to authority), meaning that they won't loosen up to people trying to help them. Instead of trying to force them form the bad box into the good box, you need to help them understand how they can leave their box in the first place.

Doing that is difficult if you're simultaneously trying to shape them into a specific from, because at this point you should be more focused on having them loose their current form. This requires you still to assert a certain level of authority, as you need to assume that you can actually help them do that because you see things they don't, but there is a balance in here, where you don't go full force (cutting a thieves hand off for example), but rather create some room for them where they can start to inquire into themselves and see the limits of their own actions and ways of thinking.

Being a criminal is a state of mind. That state can be changed, but it's trying to maintain a certain level of homeostasis and thus will fight any change actively. That's how human minds work. If you don't apply enough force, nothing will change. Apply too much force and something breaks, or rather, everything will fling back at you like a rubber band. I think our society will need to integrate this sort of approach into our current approach if we want to start solving crime more effectively. Crime is something that can translate through generations. If you can help one generation, chances are that you're going to help a lot of future generations in doing so.

It's obviously not a perfect solution for crime, but it's an important next step as the different cultures will become more and more developed. At a certain point our current approach will become too unworkable to be used on a larger scale.