Earlier reflections in this column have explored how violence often emerges from unaddressed emotional pain, trauma, and the slow erosion of empathy long before a crime is committed. Those discussions show how dangerous minds are formed through silence, neglect, and unmet psychological needs rather than sudden moral collapse. The question that follows naturally is what happens when those minds enter the criminal justice system. More precisely, what kind of psychological change does incarceration actually produce when so many people leave prison only to return?

Recidivism forces an uncomfortable pause. When individuals cycle in and out of prison, the issue cannot be reduced to personal failure or lack of will. High rates of reoffending suggest that something essential remains untouched during confinement. Psychology asks not only whether punishment occurred, but whether any meaningful internal transformation was made possible.

What Prison Is Expected to Do

Courts sentence with multiple goals in mind: accountability, deterrence, public safety, and rehabilitation. Prison is expected to remove immediate risk while creating conditions for behavioral change. This expectation rests on a widely held belief that time, structure, and consequence will correct what went wrong. From a legal perspective, the logic appears coherent.

From a psychological perspective, however, behavior does not change simply because it is restricted. Internal regulation, identity formation, and emotional processing determine whether a person can respond differently once released. Without addressing these dimensions, incarceration risks managing behavior temporarily rather than transforming........

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