Comment by haswell

I think there are two independent issues here.

Getting out and going straight back to dealing drugs is obviously a bad move.

But it’s a move that is far more likely to happen because of the abysmal state of the system and the kinds of “opportunities” it affords to people trying to transition back to normal life. It’s a system that is predisposed to getting people stuck in the same patterns.

“He had his chance to be productive” is stretching the word productive pretty far.

“The system” is made up of individuals. People who have offended and their tendencies. People who think they know how an offender must live their life and the limits that must be placed on them post-incarceration. And if the system leads to recidivism, that is a reflection of the whole system, not just the individuals re-offending.

So while I agree that going back to dealing drugs is not a winning move, it should give us pause that people regularly end up doing exactly this despite the consequences.

If the goal is to transform criminals into functioning members of society, then from a purely utilitarian perspective, the system is broken. And the “opportunities” one is given and told they should be grateful for are often laughably insufficient.

To draw an overly simplistic analogy: people stopped pirating music and started paying for it as soon as it was reasonable to do so. I don’t condone piracy, but I certainly understand why people did it.

Selling drugs that can kill people obviously puts this in a different category. But the overarching ideas are similar.