behind bars

Prison is a really bad place, obviously. Since I was younger I was always told how bad prison was but I had never known what it actually was like until we watched 30 days in class this week. Basically, I still would never want to be there. I was most surprised with how much the prison could actually affect your emotional well being. Living in small quarters like that can be very traumatizing. I can understand how the prisoners repeatedly say that they are never going to come back to the place again. Its surprising that very many of them do. We discussed in class that its because of the environment they live in outside of prison. The rougher neighborhoods they live in give them nothing to look forward to in the future. The people who are born in these neighborhoods typically live in them for the rest of their lives. I know that by making prisons more like the correctional facilities they are supposed to be it can help save people from repeatedly being filtered into and out of the prison system, but there is also the matter that people have to be willing to make the change work. They may say they are willing to do the program but they also have to stick with it when no one is watching them. I'm for the whole more humane prisons because prisoners with such low offenses don't deserve the torture treatment, but how do we be sure the more hands on prisons produce results outside of the cells?