# Prisons vs. schools **URL:** \ **Category:** CSG1998\ **Created:** [May 15, 1998, 8:36pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/prisons-vs-schools/9123 "1998-05-15T20:36:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1

**Author:** ![Acree\_Mike](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@Acree\_Mike](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Acree_Mike)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 1998, 8:36pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/prisons-vs-schools/9123/1 "1998-05-15T20:36:31Z")

[From Mike Acree (980515.1329 PDT)] Bruce Gregory (980514.1142)-- > many people would see RTP > as way to enhance the students' ability to accomplish their goals. Prisons > are also coercive, but they are not designed to enhance the ability of > inmates to control their perceptions. Calling both prisons and RTP > "coercive" seems to miss something very important. I don't mean to imply that I'd have to think about it for more than, say, 15 minutes if I were offered the choice of going back to school or going to prison for 12 years. (I don't remember the author, but there was a popular book a few years ago called "The 12-Year Sentence." It evidently struck a chord with a pretty wide readership.) But it may be worth remembering that prisons have also been justified, on liberal, rehabilitationist grounds, as "enhancing the ability of prisoners to accomplish their goals." That rationale has become pretty much of a joke by now, and not a very funny one, in relation to prisons. Constraining people's choices, even just to the extent of confining them in a prescribed physical space (a desk, a cell) for such prolonged periods, is an implausible approach to helping them reach their own goals. I suspect a Test would reveal that it was the goals of the constrainers, either in schools or prisons, that were more consistently being implemented. Basically the issue of honesty again. I'm habitually suspicious when the master presumes to speak for the slave. Mike