My Response to the question: Are the stories that we’ve heard from Spoon and Rick influential enough to change the way that the American prison system handles the idea of rehabilitation? Should there be more arts in prison? Should a sentencing be reevaluated if the prisoner exhibits obvious rehabilitation?

This was the same version of prison i've known about for years, the movie definitely shed more light on some of the more positive ideals of prison and how people handle being locked away. The truth is it's a business, that makes profit of locking people away and utilizing them for cheap labor. It's a never ending cycle that fuels more prisoners and thus more profit. This version of prison showed how prison can be successful at rehabilitation and not just being a cage, but sadly, the people that have been rehabilitated are the same ones that have life and will never be able to come back out and benefit society. If prisons were more focused on rehabilitation there would be more stories like spoon, rick, and marty.

These men could tell their future selves what they've learned by going down this road. Some people need to learn things for themselves and may find their way there anyways but chances are some would learn from their lessons. I have heard of stories like Spoon, Marty, and Ricks before. Sadly there are are hundreds of men like these in prisons around the country. Men that were once uneducated and uncivilized but, and with no help of the system I may add, have managed to shatter the realities of life and alter the fabric of their minds and drastically change the people that they are. In my review of the prison industry I think the system is created against them, I am biased in my views as I am firm believer the government does more to hurt us than to help, I do think in a legitimate democracy the prison industry would be much different, you would have more arts music and writing incorporated.

As far as altering someone's sentence on if they've been rehabilitated, again as a skeptic, who is the ultimate judge of this? Am I all knowing? Am I able to be the one to make this decision? If I did make the decision to release him back to society and rick murdered again would I be to blame? Would the family whose child was murdered really care if the man has changed? These are interesting and extremely deep things to ponder and it seems this is how life really is, does anyone even think about things like this, or is life a 9 to 5 where you zone out on mindless tedious tasks?