The reality is that other systems in the world have much, much lower recidivism rates (20% in Norway, where they actually treat people humanely [1] the trope goes). The incarceration rates in the US are off the charts [2] and the recidivism rates are too. So either the people born in the US are overwhelmingly more likely to "just be scum who belong in prison for some reason" or there's more at play here, institutionally speaking. And furthermore, what happened in 1980 [3] that made huge portions of the population (3X more) suddenly "become scum"?
You absolutely can change peoples behavior. People don't want to be bad people. Some don't know how, and the evidence shows if you show them a better way, they grow and respond. Giving people room to live up to your expectations works, whether in your day job in management or in prisoner rehabilitation. The data bears that out. Yeah, definitely not everyone, but it's fair to say that we can do better.
On a joking note, I do wish you luck in your testing career ;)
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is...
[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_r...
There's a lot of people who literally believe this, and most of their reasoning boils down to "Norway is all white". Have you ever heard "America is different, X can't work here because America is so diverse"?
Regarding incarceration rates specifically, the next 3 leading jailers behind the US (Russia, the Ukraine and Poland) are unbelievably homogeneous. I believe Poland is almost 97% white [1]. They're my people, so I think I can safely say, they consider a mild tan to represent diversity. There are homogenous countries that lock people up, and there are homogenous countries that don't. There are also diverse countries that lock people up, and diverse countries that don't.
I was trying to be very careful in not comparing Norway's incarceration rate (which is, itself, 1/10th of the US) but rather their substantially lower recidivism rate which I think one can more easily treat as an apples-to-apples comparison, meaning that there is room to improve on the process.
[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-10-16-051015...
If you wrote an algorithm, then some tests, and your tests showed it failed 76% of the time, do you really think you'd look at that and think: "great, it's working, so let's do more of that?" If so, I doubt you'd be long for the world of paid employment. Yet that's exactly what you're advocating here. Assuming, that is, your goal is to reduce crime.
Let's re-frame the conversation. If 76% of high school students failed to graduate, would you point at that and say the kids are scum, failures, it's their fault they couldn't hack it? Clearly the system works. Here's a pick-axe and a hard hat, good luck with your future in the coal mines. Or would you say hmm, clearly there's room for improvement in the way we teach people or the things we teach? Let's figure out how to fix this.
Now if you just want an institutionalized way to abuse people, it definitely fits the bill.
[1] https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/recidivism-am...