Charles
The problem is much deeper that the government and the justice system, the problem lies within the society its self. We hold that we are an advance society. We are caught up with all this fancy, complicated technology and in that sense we have advanced but that its it!
We have not ventured beyond our emotions. As a society we let our emotions, rational decision making takes the back seat in judging others. There are some exceptions, rationality comes to the forefront when the consequence of those decision that directly effect us, for example, the decision to buy an house, car. to move from one area to another, yes we are very rational in our thinking when it comes to "Me" decisions.
Once we go outside of our subjective (the "me" decisions, to the "you" decisions then the emotional thinking kicks in) and judgements are based on our emotion state rather than on our rational state. In other words the rational thinking shifts from the frontal lobes of our brain which is responsible for higher order information processing to the amygdala of the brain which is the core of our emotions.
You ask yourself what does that have to do with the story?
To answer that you need to answer the question is what is deviant behavior? The answer is any human behavior that is outside the socially acceptable behaviors at a specific time.
What makes a person a criminal are the specific behaviors that have been identified in a body of law commonly known as the criminal code. Those behaviors fall under the main umbrella of deviant behavior.
Once a person has been labelled a criminal he/she have are down graded to sub human and are treated as such, those who have been labeled as such, like the blacks pre 70's in the states are discriminated against, they are denied employment and other opportunity, looked upon as a social pariah and be treated as such.
Now here is the contradiction and this is where not transporting a person back to the place of sentencing comes in. At one level we say we must "Rehabilitate the offender", Yet as a society we do everything to set the individual for failure upon release from the provincial jail. By not taking a person to their place of sentencing after release that action puts that person in a high risk of offending.
Not all inmates who are sentence to provincial jails are criminals, but are there because they either refused to pay a fine or can not afford to pay a fine.
If they have been incarcerated because they could not afford the fine, forcing that person who has no financial means to get back to their home places them at higher risk of engaging in criminal behavior as defined in the Criminal code.
Corrections both provincially and federally is an "industry that creates thousands of decent paying jobs" I guess if we were too successful in reintegrating the individual to accept the acceptable social norms that would mean a loss of jobs for many. So it isn't to the best interest of the economy to lower the recidivism rate.
So until social attitude changes, for these inmates who are released, Nancy Sinatra summed it up in the song "These boots are made for walking", 'Are you ready, boots? Start walkin'
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