However, you can't force a person to change, and disrespect and toxic guilt arouses self-preservation measures, including defensiveness—meaning a person who feels threatened begins guarding his or her beliefs and closes out all potential positive influences. Love and acceptance on the other hand tends to open a person to the possibility of changing beliefs and thus behavior.
The philosophy that calls for punishment, being derogatory, is naive, and simply doesn't work. For the criminal that can't change his or her anti-social attitudes, unfortunately “severe” measures may be necessary. But what about the criminal who may change his or her misanthropy to philanthropy, the overly charged, the innocent, and those that are guilty but only due to a mistake or slip, possibly caused by a personal weakness or intoxication? When we do not accept them as being good people, in an act of self-preservation they begin to defend their philosophical position. Those in these categories represent the majority. What happens when we send the mistaken message that they are bad people—which is what we do when we punish them?
When a state does this to one person, besides destroying that person—their entire life and whatever goodness is still obvious within them—incarceration strains his or her dependents, family, employees or employer, state and society (emotionally, spiritually, culturally, economically, etc.). The social fabric is torn, setting in motion a significant and highly destructive ripple effect that hurts more than one generation. It is actually a crime against children.
Those within society who are motivated by anger or frustration want to punish and restrict. The problem with this approach is that the individual so treated is damaged. Hatred begets hatred so that ultimately he or she returns the favor, figuratively speaking, becoming criminal if he wasn't before, or if he was, becoming more entrenched in his ways. A snowballing effect may occur in the individual. The majority, which includes those who slipped, are overly charged, or are innocent, are usually infected with a very destructive attitude or misanthropy by the degrading treatment and frustration due to restrictions. When this happens, and it often does, the CJS has itself planted the seed of criminal mentality. To do this to those who are of low or marginal social status, or who have issues of a severe nature, is highly dangerous because of the repercussions likely.
The criminal mind is empowered (grows) by mistreatment or perceived mistreatment. Prison environments cultivate this attitude and then send inmates back into society. Theoretically such an attitude could be so infectious as to spread like a disease through society until everyone would be mistreating everyone else. Each person would feel completely justified due to their own mistreatment.
Put yourself in the shoes of an excessively charged individual. What would your reaction be to someone telling you that you were a bad person and subsequently restricting you to the hilt? Benjamin Franklin, in his pseudonymous essay wrote, “I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country; and the least appearance of an encroachment on those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil exceedingly.”
There are good people in prisons everywhere. Many are falsely accused or wrongfully judged as being untrustworthy or bad persons. Some are even philanthropists at heart and are trying to contribute to the social good and a better world, and most are inadvertently being prevented from doing so by expensive warehousing of human beings.
As humanity evolves, increasing numbers of individuals recognize the power and goodness of the human spirit, that deep inside we are altruistic beings, irregardless of faults we may have, and therefore should be treated accordingly, with certain privileges and standards always upheld. This is in no way different a concept than Thomas Jefferson's assertion of individual rights and enacted protections in the Declaration of Independence. The philosophy behind such a treatise is positive in that it grants human beings virtue and value. Negative ideas regarding human nature, on the other hand, produce philosophies that tend to take rights away, justify or demand mistreatment (punishment), control, restriction, and even death.
Those working in the CJS have chosen an occupation in which the primary activity involves taking rights away, restricting and punishing. As the Declaration of Independence tells us a lot about the high ideals, beliefs and values of those who authored it, the role chosen by those who take away rights tells us a light about their beliefs. You will usually find within them a very low assessment of some or all of humanity.
The poorest beliefs about human nature focus attention on corruption, violence, prejudice, unworthiness, perceived perversion, perceived sin, and how all of these characteristics pose a threat to good people—to those who make an effort to do what's right. Those who police, control or protect other people often have these beliefs. This can include agents of law enforcement, prosecutors, corrections and judicial officers, and some attorneys. Simply because of the screening, filtering and focusing effect of these beliefs, and the focus their occupations requires, protectors can't help but feel that their role of protecting society is justified, valued and appreciated more.
Criminals often hold the same core beliefs about human nature as protectors do. Many see themselves as being victims of society. Anyone of a negative-type disposition tends to vilify. This kind of thinking is not uncommon, even in the general public. Distrust of human nature is an affliction, which at its worst spreads like a plague when fears are aroused in the population.
If you inadvertently become the subject of such focusing you will understand its extremely destructive effects personally. If you have been intimidated or manipulated by someone in a position to do so, or wrongfully incarcerated, then you understand how it is done. First of all, such a person reads all kinds of negatives into your behavior—sometimes actually causing you to respond negatively—and then justifies social ridicule, punishment, control and restriction as a required prescription. The authority in the position to do this will rely on popular negative cultural ideas and profiles to justify what's being done, especially in the eyes of others. This is also what bullies do—it's their tactic.