Aside from the other problems that have been pointed out, this would provide an incentive for prisons to favor groups that have been statistically linked to lower recidism rates -- not only could it create some kind of favoritism, it would also probably favor those who perpetrated more serious crimes (thieves have by far the highest recidivism rates, much higher than, say, murderers [1]).

The American penitentiary system is fundamentally flawed and is in need of a deep reform; the real shocker to me is that stuff like this can happen before trial:

> Nazario first went to Rikers at 16, after an arrest on an assault charge. Before leaving at 19, he says, he had spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement — all before being convicted of a crime.

(on a side note, I was surprised to learn Rikers is actually a jail and not a prison)

[1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1134

Your proposed solution ignores the reality of the situation, where private corporation's goals are misaligned with the goals of the society.

Until there is a fundamental change in how much influence special interest/private corps carry in deciding law & regulations of industries, with little regards to best interest for the society, such tragedies will continue to unfold.

The only (well not the only) problem with that is then they would have an incentive to just get people out as quickly as possible to get paid. We would have to set up some sort of standards for what it meant to be "rehabilitated" and that would be pretty difficult.

Difficult indeed. As they say "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Still, we could do better than paying by prisoners housed. Perhaps prison profits should be based on the income of released inmates.

If the person re-commits a crime, then the prison must re-pay the government back. Perhaps we can do away with mandatory sentencing as well! Let the prison decide when a person has paid their debt to society.

Then you are going to get a lot of "accidental" prison deaths. Because the prisons won't house an inmate that they don't think they can make money off of.

Prisons could choose which inmates they take in. That is, prisons wouldn't be forced to house inmates who they don't believe have rehabilitation potential.

Yes, I can't see that being abused.

I like the way you're thinking, but that's a little too easy to game unfortunately.

Here is my proposal:

1. Require something like 40% of the prison guards to have four-year degrees from accredited institutions, preferably in the humanities and the science.

2. Offer the prison a bonus for the academic achievements of each inmate.

3. Tie the bonus to the magnitude of the educational achievement so that going from, say, a GED to a bachelor's is much greater than going from a bachelor's to another bachelor's or even a master's. Also, publication in academic journals is eligible for the bonus, as are patent awards.

Or we could make torturing inmates illegal. Solitary confinement is torture.

Wow, that is a great idea.

I wonder how such a thing could ever get started. Perhaps as an experiment in one of the smaller states?

If only there was some sort of business incubator to pair moon-shot ideas, ambitious young professionals and the funding needed to succeed... hmmm, if only...

But the hard parts are all political.

How about making law which would compensate prisoners not prisons?

You are assuming a substantial fraction of prisoners are rehabilitatable. That's probably not true. We're talking about a lot of borderline retarded and very unhinged folks. You aren't going to run them through a class and find them jobs. I dare say you're naive about what the criminal underclass is really like.

You are assuming these prisoners should be prisoners in the first place.

In Norway, there are 71 prisoners per 100,000 population. In the US there are 716. This means that if the US had the same incarceration rate as Norway, 90% of the current prison population wouldn't even be there, never mind the need for rehabilitation.

I'm not Norwegian, but I've spent about a year living there and I can tell you that it doesn't feel at all like there are criminals roaming the street. On the contrary, it felt very, very safe over there.

Here is an interesting article on what prison looks like in Norway: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091017/norway-open...

Norway is for the most part full of Norwegians. I've been there and seen that. America is not full of Norwegians. If you failed to notice that in your year there or upon your return to America, I'm not sure what to say to you.

Are you implying that Americans are, by nature, more criminally inclined than Norwegians?

I'm not American either, by the way.

It's rather blatantly obvious, isn't it? Again, if you never noticed that I don't even know what to say.

I'm confused too. What do you mean? Surely their are 3 options here. America has worse behaved citizens, the system in the US is trying to imprison people, or a combination of both (most likely imho).

You are suggesting forgetting about people, real people, instead locking them up and throwing away the key. You are justifying it with some bullshit quip about them never changing since they're part of some TV psychology "criminal underclass". I am not going to suggest that you are locked up as a danger to society (as part of the "bit-twiddling overclass") since I believe you can change to recognize the errors in your ways. You should offer others the chance to reform after their mistakes, too. Let's not forget that the most important thing when growing in a new direction is environment.