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Editorial: Negative Attitude Towards Prisoners Hurts Rehabilitation Efforts

By the Editorial Board of The Daily Campus

Recently, Eric Bolling of “The Five,” a Fox News program, was under well-deserved attack by the illustrious Stephen Colbert for the former’s comments regarding the suicide of Ariel Castro, convicted for 937 criminal charges among which included rape, kidnapping, and aggravated murder. While this article isn’t quite a defense of Castro, it is an attack on Bolling’s statements which posited that taxpayers saved $780,000 by his suicide. Bolling’s argument here is insensitive, even when one considers the magnitude of Castro’s crimes, and is indicative of the negative attitude towards criminals and their opportunity for reform. America wholly believes once a criminal always a criminal, and this social stigma prevents them from re-entering society successfully.  Image courtesy twitter.com

With this in mind, it’s clear why recidivism, or the term to describe former felons re-entering prisons or re-arrested for similar previously committed crimes, is so high in this country and why rehabilitation programs struggle to take effect. When one in thirty-two Americans is on probation, parole or in prison and America has that largest population of criminals (you know, that popular statistic, 5 percent of the global population, 25 percent of its prisoners), one would think that the public attitude towards criminals would be more supportive. Instead, America has collectively decided to abandon these people with the idea that they are a lost cause and deserve the barest of dregs we can throw at them, leaving them to struggle both in and out of the prison system.

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FBOP Announces Annual Inmate Perception of Care Survey

By Christopher Zoukis

 While an odd thought to present, ever since the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) implemented the TRULINCS computer system — and followed it with the MP3 player program — the FBOP has appeared to be on the right track in terms of communicating with the federal inmate population.  This idea has presented itself through more frequent announcements to the prison population (via the TRULINCS Electronic Bulletin Board), inmate institutional perception/character surveys, and now the instant Inmate Perception of Care Survey.  It’s the latter which will be presented publicly today.

In an effort to make federal incarceration more transparent, the Prison Law Blog has obtained a document entitled “Note to the Inmate Population: English and Spanish Informed Consent.”  This document explains what the Inmate Perception of Care Survey is, how it can be participated in, and other components of this study.  The English information contained therein is presented below for the Prison Law Blog readership’s perusal:

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Notice to the Inmate Population

English and Spanish Informed Consent

The Annual Inmate Perception of Care Survey will be available by region and you will receive local notice when the survey will be turned on for your institution.  Please read over the following disclosure statement and consider taking the survey when it becomes available.

NCR [North Central Region] and NER [North East Region] August 19-September 1, 2013

MXR [Mid-Atlantic Region] and SCR [South Central Region] September 2-15, 2013

SER [South East Region] and WXR [Western Region] September 16-29, 2013

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