Rideau, Wilbert. “Why Prisons Don’t Work.”
Seeing the Pattern: Readings for Successful
Writing. Ed. Kathleen McWhorter. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2006. 493-495. Print.
In this essay, Rideau argues that harsh prison sentences are not effective for deterring crime or for rehabilitating prisoners. He points out that Louisiana, the state with the toughest sentencing laws when his essay was written, also has the highest murder rate. He also points out that few of the inmates in Angola have the opportunity to get vocational or academic training, and that prison culture makes inmates more dangerous to society since it become all they know.
Rideau thinks that the way to keep crime rates low is prevention before a crime is committed and rehabilitation after, not harsh sentences.
This essay will be a useful source for me because it talks about the lack of educational opportunities for prisoners, which is the focus of my essay. Also, it talks about how the prison system dehumanizes its inmates, which will help me in using pathos to build sympathy for these people and make my point that they are often forgotten by society. Since the author is a former inmate himself, I think this essay will add credibility to my paper and provide a point of view my readers may not have ever read before.