Your solution is deal with them on a case by case basis? How do you do that? The guy who just got out of administrative segregation a couple days ago for assault, who just again assaulted another person but can't be moved because various activist groups fought that moving him back up is inhumane for example. What is your solution for him? The guys who are late every single day for programs that start the same time every single day, what is your way to deal with them? Should we kick them out of the programs? Then they aren't getting any tools for success. Should we just let them go when they please? Sure doesn't sound like teaching them responsibility or structure to me. We can't drag them out of bed, that would be inhumane. What do you do about the fact that, never mind us treating people like humans, what about the fact that they can't treat each other like humans?

It's all well and good to say deal with it on a case by case basis. It's all fine to say that they need to learn the difference between short term gratification and long term accomplishment. How rewarding it is, etc. Putting any of that into practice in a system like the US prison system is vastly more difficult than just giving them responsibility and programs and treating them like humans and shit. It's not just a matter of our prison systems being different from other countries. It's also a matter of our culture in America, and the type of culture that goes to prison. You need to change a lot more than just the prison system for the recidivism rate to significantly drop. You need to raise a whole culture of people to think differently. You're looking at probably a century worth of progress to change things substantially. Even ignoring the social aspect, probably every single prison in America would have to be completely rebuilt. At an absolute best situation, that would take decades if we started right now.