“The day I was sent to prison, I learned how to steal cars”, these were the words of Ben, a UK prisoner who had written in the yearly writing competition for prisoners. These lines support my opinion on prisons, ie. That prisons don’t really help in making a certain “criminal” mend their ways or change for the better, especially those prisons which don’t consider law offenders human. Recently I watched a documentary on the worst prisons around the world and the conditions those people went through were beyond imaginable. Every offender, people who have committed petty crimes to the ones who committed the gravest of the grave were huddled together in one room, with no proper sanitation and food. Prison’s main purpose is to prevent a person who has committed a crime before from doing it again. But this is not exactly attained. In fact, some experts state that prisons are “crime schools”.

 Imagine this, people who have committed a variety of crimes are put together, now what exactly prevents them from hatching a masterplan for a crime, when they get released, what stops discussions among prisoners, which in turn is a learning opportunity of how to master and skill crimes without getting caught. This is basically a breeding ground for crimes. Another thing to be noted is that in the United States 70% of the people who have been released from prison commit crimes again and they get caught again. So this basically goes round and round in circles and it further proves my point. Now what exactly can be done to properly incarcerate criminals and prevent them from committing crimes further, what if I say, the answer is not severing away the basic human rights from people like they do in most prisons. So this may seem a bit unfair because there are people who might have committed horrible crimes, but they technically are human too and have basic human needs, which don’t just disappear when they are put into jail.

When criminals who are already have, some mental problems are put threw worse conditions in prisons it doesn’t help the mental health of the person, it makes it worse, which eventually when they are released will make them commit more crimes. Now, one country that has the lowest prison population and lowest percentage of crime reoffenders, mainly because of its unique and very well working rehabilitation system is Norway. Here there is this prison , known as HALDEN prison. This prison is quite different from others, the jails where the criminals stay are not congested areas which give you claustrophobia, these are medium sized rooms which have a bed a desk, windows which open to greenery and proper lighting for the rooms. Not only this but prisoner are allowed to move outside in the prison compound and learn different skills so that it can help them in the real world. Normally prisoners in other parts of the world are denied jobs because of their “past”, which if you think about it, makes people commit crimes. The Norway government on the other hand gives plenty of job opportunities to these law offenders and even give them pension. There aernt any prison escape missions by the prisoners here, because they aren’t stripped of their basic human needs.

So, in conclusion, the old method of rehabilitation where humans are stripped of their basic human rights doesn’t “rehabilitate”, people instead why don’t we just treat them as humans and give them a second chance? Afterall everyone deserves a second chance.