What a mockery of justice. Can't wait until the bleeding hearts in the usa implement this policy stateside. Seeing as we are getting rid of bail because reality is racist why not just eliminate prisons entirely.
Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
11–20 of 87 posts
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#12At school we had a teacher who tried to make us read 10 books a year. You could choose whatever book you wanted, and you had to write a small summary. So every one headed to the school library and looked for the smallest books available. The most popular book that every one read was called something like: "Collection of letters from from my Grandfather" and had around 50 to 70 pages and was very boring. Many also che…
> Many also cheated by watching movie adaptations of books. This sounds risky as movie adaptations sometimes wildly differ from the original material.
Now you can search online for the differences between the movie adaptation and the book.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#13This is such a condescending understanding of why most crime happens. Especially in a country with as much wealth disparity as Brazil.
I think it came across wrong, I have lived in LATAM (not the safe tourism trips, lived and engaged in society).
The reasons for the crimes are economic desperation for the most part. Wasn't discriminating, just saying that prisoners are more likely to be analphabetic.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not even attempting to describe why crimes happen. It’s just offering people an incentive to read because literacy is strongly correlated with job prospects. I can’t see a downside to this pilot program. I hope they expand it to include technical/practical training.
The program is called "Redemption through Reading” and the officials statements are in similar vain. The implications are pretty clear. It's only made worse by how only select people can participate. That is on top of Brazil's history of using literacy tests for racial discriminatation. As well as their current, ineffective mass-incarceration policy (now 3rd largest in the world), which as in the US hits indigenous a…
That is part of the solution, two solutions can co-exist that take different angles. A quick Google search showed that Brazil's literacy rate is roughly 92% and I would like to believe it's something similar in the prison. This program sounds like it can help people make good use of their time while serving their sentence. They should expand this sort of incentive to other forms of education and technical programs.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#15If anyone is interested in the wider topic, this subject is called bibliotherapy, and has a long history. This specific program was popularized in the early 1990s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth as an alternative probation sentencing program, and it was so successful it later branched out around the world. Key advocates include Robert Waxler, Jean Trounstine, and Mary Stephenson, and researchers Roger Jarjoura and Susan T. Krumholz.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#16At school we had a teacher who tried to make us read 10 books a year. You could choose whatever book you wanted, and you had to write a small summary. So every one headed to the school library and looked for the smallest books available. The most popular book that every one read was called something like: "Collection of letters from from my Grandfather" and had around 50 to 70 pages and was very boring. Many also che…
This exact phenomenon is discussed in "Punished by Rewards." It's probably one of the best possible ways to train kids that reading is no fun, of no benefit to them, and should only be done if promised some kind of prize.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#17I expect it'll create an illicit trade of essay plans and verbal story tellers
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not even attempting to describe why crimes happen. It’s just offering people an incentive to read because literacy is strongly correlated with job prospects. I can’t see a downside to this pilot program. I hope they expand it to include technical/practical training.
The program is called "Redemption through Reading” and the officials statements are in similar vain. The implications are pretty clear. It's only made worse by how only select people can participate. That is on top of Brazil's history of using literacy tests for racial discriminatation. As well as their current, ineffective mass-incarceration policy (now 3rd largest in the world), which as in the US hits indigenous a…
“Using literacy tests for racial discrimination”.
Look, this is what bothers me with current “wokeism” trends. With this reasoning, literally any test/course/initiative/whatever will statistically have a slight racial/cultural/religious bias because the world and its population have such biases. So any positive initiative (like this one) which aims at improving lives of everyone (including people of color) will be taken down by a community or another because it’s statistical implication, interpreted in a certain way, will mean it will have a bias.
But the measure itself is NOT racist! It’s discrimination based on literacy, not based on race! I understand race and literacy have some amount of correlation, but unless this correlation is 100%, it means that there are people of color which are literate, and white people which are illiterate. This measure will benefit people of color in a massive way, so why oppose it ?? This makes no sense.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#19I am very confused at how it is expected that books are likely to reduce crime – we have a very well-read set of criminals operating in our world today; they are called white-collar criminals, they have gone to the top institutions, they have read plenty of books and it does not seemed to have improved the virtue of their moral character beyond making their plots more audacious.
Re: Brazil prisoners reading books to shorten their sentences (2020)
#20I am very confused at how it is expected that books are likely to reduce crime – we have a very well-read set of criminals operating in our world today; they are called white-collar criminals, they have gone to the top institutions, they have read plenty of books and it does not seemed to have improved the virtue of their moral character beyond making their plots more audacious.
Why it might not prevent white collar crimes, I have personally seen first hand that people from the lowest classes can easily break out of the mold and make a good living if they communicate and behave well (at least in my country in Eastern Europe).
People are much more likely to trust you with any kind of work.