It has not failed, because it is not, and has never been, in any meaningful sense, the goal of any of the American criminal justice systems.
Specifically, none of them have been in any substantive way been designed around any evidence of what does or does not work in terms of rehabilitation.
The US criminal justice systems focus on retribution and demonstration of moral outrage, not rehabilitation.
This is a blanket statement and not realistic. I've been through the system and knew a lot of guys who abhorred becoming institutional criminals.
Please cite sources to support your claim.
Not really true:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/
Totally comparable to the US, Norway being an exception (as usual).
> They blow the US out of the water on every metric.
The US is a very large and diverse country and it's not structurally comparable to Germany, Netherlands and much less Norway (with 22% of GDP being oil exports). That would be cherry-picking. To draw any conclusions on the effectiveness of incarceration would require more careful analysis.
> I can't fathom what gave you a different idea.
Crime statistics and crime aren't the same thing. The point of prison sentences is no just punishment, it's deterrence. If you rarely convict anybody, your prisoner's rate is low, but the criminals are out on the street knowing they have nothing to fear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradis...
Let's fact-check some of their numbers.
Spoiler Alert: Their cited sources have completely different numbers.
EDIT: I removed some examples that are probably correct according to their definition of recidivism (they only looked at prisoners -> offenders).
Table 2.
Germany 35% (them) vs 23% (source)
They may have linked the wrong source here, since the source they provided is specific to people with psychotic disorders.
So let's assume this is their source (the one they linked for Germany in Table 1): https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehr...
According to them the re-imprisonment rate is 35%, though the source says it's 23% (page 9, first paragraph).
The re-imprisonment rate for juvenile offenders is 35% though and mentioned in the same paragraph. It's likely they just confused that.
> Netherlands 48% (them) vs 27.6% (source): Fact Check Failed
They picked the number of "ex-prisoners" that become prisoners again (i.e. actual reconviction), you picked the number of "adult offenders" that become prisoners for the first time. You literally just picked the lowest number in the table without comprehending it. The correct number (48.5%) was right above.
> Germany 48% (them) vs 35% (source): Fact Check Failed
35% is the average including fines (recidivism: 29%) which make up for the vast majority of sentences. For adult prison sentences the recidivism rate is 45%/39% and for youth prison sentences it is 64%/62% (without/with parole).
Though I added something I previously excluded for Table 2, which I'm still unable to find in their sources.
About your reading of the sources though:
> They picked the number of "ex-prisoners" that become prisoners again (i.e. actual reconviction)
No that would be Table 2, not Table 1. Table 1 is about "ex-prisoners" that got convicted of any offense again, not necessarily a prison sentence.
> you picked the number of "adult offenders" that become prisoners for the first time.
That's not what Table 5.1 [1] is at all: "Reconvictions as a result of any crime, not disposed of through an acquittal, a dismissal by reason of unlikelihood of conviction, or any other technical decision."
> 35% is the average including fines (recidivism: 29%) which make up for the vast majority of sentences. For adult prison sentences the recidivism rate is 45%/39% and for youth prison sentences it is 64%/62% (without/with parole).
Yes. This is where I messed up. Though note that that recidivism rate (45%) is "ex-prisoner" -> any conviction (incl. fines). Which likely fits what they wanted to show in Table 1.
[1]: https://www.wodc.nl/binaries/factsheet-2011-5a-def-4apr2012-...
The source given indeed seems to be incorrect.
> No that would be Table 2, not Table 1. Table 1 is about "ex-prisoners" that got convicted of any offense again, not necessarily a prison sentence.
Fair enough but that was my mistaken wording, the table in the source still correctly differentiates between conviction and re-imprisonment.
In any event, I remain unconvinced that these rates are substantially better compared to the rates in the US, especially considering how difficult these numbers are to compare.
WHAT!
> Rehabilitation sounds societally useful, but the failures have been overwhelming. Justice? Deterrence?
WHAT! Mind sharing some sources?
IMHO you have it completely backwards.
I can point to plenty of European countries (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) that focus on rehabilitation, not punishment.
Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US and their prisons don't look like 3rd world shitholes.
They blow the US out of the water on every metric. If anything has failed (and spectacularly so), it's the idea that focusing your prison system on punishment works.
I can't fathom what gave you a different idea.