The sad thing is, that sort of excellent rehabilitation does exist in other countries, it's just now an endangered species in the USA.

The only "rehabilitation services" I received in prison was the day before my release they asked if I wanted to sign up for Medicaid lol.

After prison you'll often be shipped to a halfway house, and this was an even bigger eye-opener because I got to spend a couple of months in very close quarters to newly-released parolees to see what happens next. (I was only there a very short time because I was about 8 or 9 years past the end of my sentence when they finally did the paperwork to release me and so they cut my parole very short)

I think 90% of the people I was with at the halfway house with were returned to prison within three months. Many of them were put on a track that locks them up for two years until they can apply for parole again.

Of the ten percent left, I would say nine percent were homeless and with warrants out that the police didn't have the time to execute on. So my anecdotal data is that about 1% stayed out for a year. Of that 1% I know two of the guys I was with as they live nearby and are now indentured slaves. They work 7 days a week for zero money, just for a roof over their heads, and if they try to take a breather at all their boss picks up his cell phone and starts to call their parole agent to have them returned to prison.

I wonder what was different in the 20s? There were definitely drugs, but I don't know what the addiction rate was back then? Was there only opium? Drug addiction is by far the greatest reason for recidivism in my experience. Community and family support might have been stronger? Sentences were likely a lot shorter too, so less likely to lose touch with your support network. Probably a criminal record mattered less. Manual labor was more prevalent. The only place I saw parolees getting jobs was at the local abattoir.

> (Personal note: Qingcharles, I really appreciate your comments on this site. Thank you for being here.)

Haha, thank you. I don't know how much help I am. I'm just a loser who got to see the criminal justice system from the inside :)

> I wonder what was different in the 20s?

I genuinely don't know. I have a history degree, but have mostly read European early-modern, not American or 20th c. history. I think you're right about manual / un-trained labor jobs being more prevalent / available. The 20s were a decade of full employment, too, so that had to have had an effect. To your list I'll add a few speculative ideas:

1) Housing was easier to come by. Not nice housing, mind you, but there were boarding houses and "SRO" accommodation, at achievable prices, more available than there are today. There were also (this goes to your social support suggestion) nation-wide organizations, like the YMCA and the Salvation Army, who were committed to sheltering people living on the margins of society. They were more successful, and more economical, than localized "homeless shelters" seem to be today. Many people start using substances because they're on the street, and I'd guess that many of them wouldn't if they were in more comfortable circumstances. You'd know more about this than I: what do you think?

2) Along the same lines: drugs, as we have them now certainly weren't the same thing - no fentanyl, no crack; marginal weed, opium, cocaine; all of them relatively more expensive than they are today. People can, however, just as surely ruin their lives just with alcohol. Maybe the fact that booze was illegal during the 20s made it enough harder to get fucked up that that had a marginal effect?

3) The surveillance state wasn't a thing. If you didn't choose to disclose it there was no way for a prospective employer to know that you were a felon and disqualify you for a job on that basis. Heck, if you wanted to change your name and move somewhere else to start an entirely new life there were many fewer obstacles to that than there are today.

4) Mental hospitals. For all of their much-publicized abuses, they kept obviously unstable people off the streets and out of the penal system. I don't know what to think about them overall, but there's nothing like that anymore.

But, we should be wary of overstating our case. The US in the 1920s was a much poorer country, and in general its penal system was harsher than it is today. We shouldn't be eager bring back chain gangs, or early 20th c. execution rates. They did, however, have an enthusiastic constituency for reform, and at least local successes, like the system with which my relative was involved. I don't see either today, when even "Progressives" seem to propose only modest, marginal reforms.