Many of those in prisons come from the most socially excluded groups in society. Many had grown up in backgrounds where serious violence, drug and alcohol abuse are common experience. Few of them have a chance to get educated in school or have secure homes. Crime is the way they live and a survival strategy for them. They were born in poverty and chaos, and some of them may even mentally scarred by violence and sexual abuse. The treatment that these criminals really need is getting educated, having a job, a stable home and family that help them connect to the society instead of severe punishment and treatment from prisons that ban and isolate them from the rest of the world. Now days, prisons just support the criminals life inside prison without teaching them social skills and social norms, and when they get out, they will most likely end up in prison again. .
In Wilbert Rideau's argument, he also points out "rehabilitation can work"; however, prisons "don't do more to rehabilitate those confined in them." The convict may want to change; but their environment is not any better than what they used to live. Like what Rideau says in his article:" Prisoners kept too long tend to embrace the criminal culture, its distorted values and beliefs; they have little choice – prison is their life." Prisons become places that control bodies, which are usually black, brown and young bodies, in order to "address" social problems and provide public safety. Some people believe that the prison system should "get tougher" (Rideau) and just put everyone arrested for drug offenses in treatment. The vast majority of those people do not even have an addiction and many people who do have a problem cannot even get any help. Is the society waiting for them to commit crimes to get themselves locked up in treatment? Prisons today are founded on the premises of isolation and separation.