The new system costs twice as much as the old, but in the long term the government benefits because fewer inmates end up back behind bars. Ezra Frieser, in a report for Reuters, writes that one striking difference between the traditional Dominican prison system and the new model shows up in the recidivism rates n the number of inmates committing crimes within three years of being released. He quotes officials as saying that under 5% of the inmates released from the model system re-offended, compared to 50% in the traditional system.
Reportedly, Latin American countries are learning from the DR about creating jails where there is 0% illiteracy and university-level courses are offered. Prison overcrowding and privileges for a dozen inmates are things of the past.
“What’s remarkable about the Dominican Republic’s example is that it has taken place in a country that has the same socioeconomic conditions as other Latin American countries,” Elias Carranza, director for the United Nations’ Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, told the journalist.
Frieser reports that 250 of every 100,000 people in the Dominican Republic are locked up, compared to 707 in the United States.
“Before,” said Carranza, “when I would go to a government and say, ‘Look at what they’re doing in Switzerland,’ they’d say, ‘That’s a different world.’ But now I can say, ‘Look at the Dominican Republic,’ and they listen.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/uk-dominican-prison-reform-idUKKBN0E21IR20140522