With the exception of certain Scandanavian countries (which I’ll get to in a minute), most justice systems around the world do more harm than good, especially when it comes to imprisoning criminal offenders.

Statistically speaking, putting a man in prison increases his risk of re-offending by 50%. It makes his children 4x more likely than other children to end up in prison themselves. This varies around the world but it’s a fairly accurate average. That means when we punish someone for committing a crime, we make it more likely that he will not only commit more frequent crimes, but that he’ll commit worse crimes, and we breed another generation of criminals to replace him.

Prison often turns car thieves into bank robbers; molesters into full blow rapists; and one-time domestic violence offenders into repeat abusers. As many of the criminals I used to work with said, prison is “Crime University”.

The fundamental problem is our selfish need to inflict vengeance on people who cause harm; an eye for an eye, the ancient religious model of justice. We still swear on a Bible in court, symbolizing our commitment to barbarism rather than a transition to enlightenment.

The problem with a religious method of justice (apart from the fact that it clearly doesn’t reduce crime), is it relies on the belief of “free will”. We punish individuals from the belief that they freely chose to be harmful, and that they had a choice to do otherwise.

We hold a criminal offender solely accountable for his choices and the harm he caused, as if he’s the only person involved. As a society who raised him, conditioned him, programmed him, and abandoned him every day of his life, we reject any responsibility for the way he turned out, as if he raised himself in a vacuum.

Yet we also reduce sentencing and sometimes don’t even convict someone if they’re proven to be psychologically impaired. If someone is intellectually disabled or severely mentally ill, somehow we’re OK with the idea that they don’t have free will, and therefore can’t be held to account for their actions.

This makes no sense. Free will cannot be a spectrum. People are either consciously in control of their behaviour, or no one is. If you admit that brain damage or mental illness affects free will, then you’re admitting that the function of the brain affects free will… which means no one has free will, because everyone’s choices are affected by the functioning of their brain.

Criminal offenders often act in ways that hurt their own best interests. Hell, if they were that smart they wouldn’t get caught! How can we say their brain is functioning well when they do such stupid things that land them in prison and harm their lives in other ways?

Joining a gang is clearly a dumb decision compared with getting a decent job, so why would a well functioning brain pick gangs as it’s first choice? Driving sober is smarter than driving drunk. Hiring a sex worker is smarter than raping someone. If these options are available to criminals, and yet they don’t choose them, then their brains must be malfunctioning.

If someone really knew better, then they would do better.

People commit crimes for one reason only: their brain doesn’t function well enough to make decisions that serve their best long term interests. They harm others because they don’t have a brain that is capable of making better decisions.

Punishing these people is pointless. It certainly doesn’t enhance their brain function. It may satisfy our egotistical urge for revenge, but it simply leads to more crime, meaning that we are willing to harm others to punish the guy who harmed us. We shoot ourselves in the foot.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything about crime, of course. Some people must be locked up, at least temporarily, to protect society. And there are a small few who are so evil and insane that there is no option but to remove them from society indefinitely, simply because we lack the technology to fix them (for now).

But there is a better way.

If you visit a standard prison in Denmark or Sweden, you’ll be shocked. It looks more like a university dorm than a dungeon. The “inmates” are constantly being rehabilitated, educated, and trained in practical skills, and many receive expert therapy. They do yoga and meditation, with lots of time outdoors in nature.

In Scandanavian countries, crime is treated as a symptom of mental dysfunction, meaning that the logical solution is to reduce the dysfunction and then return the individual to society so he can contribute in a valuable way.

They’ve let go of the outdated, barbaric and misguided need for vengeance, and realised that “justice” should mean whatever response to crime that will reduce overall harm to society. As one philosopher (who’s name escapes me) once said, “You can judge how civilised a country is by how it treats it’s prisoners.”

If someone’s brain doesn’t function well enough for them to act in a way that is cooperative, respectful, and harmonious to everyone else’s quality of life, that’s the fault of the society they were raised in. We’ve let them down. Criminal offenders are a symptom of our failure to raise, medicate, protect, nurture and educate children effectively.

This is not some soppy left-wing political perspective; it’s the logical scientific perspective, based on how the brain functions, what actually works to reduce crime and harm overall, and proof of how societies clearly benefit from a rational approach to managing crime over an emotional approach.

If punishment worked, there would be hardly any crime. And yet in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, “modern” countries still using an ancient approach to justice, crime is still rampant. Yet in Scandanavian countries, re-offending rates are at record low levels.

We must decide: go with our emotions, or do what actually works?