It depends on where the institute you look at is. When looking at the North American institutes, I feel they fail in their goal of resocialization. Many offenders are products of their traumas or past history. I feel as a society as a whole, prior to imprisonment, we have failed these individuals. I feel if there were more mental health supports, more available counselling and programing for addictions, etc. we would not have as many people failing in society that ended them in prison to begin with. No one grows up dreaming of that life. This goes the same for inside our institutes. Once you offend, you are put into a system that treats you like an animal with little to no supports on the inside either. I feel if we utilized their time with the appropriate supports needed and potentially even training they did not have access to on the outside, this could potentially assist in resocializing these offenders once released.
Other parts of the world have figured this out and have great success with offenders rejoining society as a contributing member. Otaga Corrections Facility in New Zealand holds classes in Engineering, fairy farming and cooking among other things. Champ-Dollon Prison in Switzerland, treat their inmates more like students then prisoners with a high rehabilitation rate. These are just a few examples but these types of prisons are found all around the world.
I feel if North America were to change a few of their protocols and improved their idea on rehabilitation with these types of supports, we would have a much higher success rate, rather than the very high reoffending number we see.
