During the Vietnam War there was a project called “Project one-hundred-thousand.” The idea was that if you redirected people heading to prison to the military it would save on prison costs and the military would turn these people around. I had a relative in the OSI who spent several years running cases on these guys. They were robbers, rapists, assaulters and a host of other crimes. Lo-and-behold they did the same crimes in the military they had done in civilian guise, but the military had to use the cumbersome military justice system to get rid of them. Some of them it took years to purge out of the system. Social engineering of any sort rarely works. That’s because you actually have to change the culture. So, say, midnight basketball won’t work because the people you’re trying to redirect from killing each other are...killers. Not basketball players.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ― George Orwell, 1984 “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” ― George Orwell, 1984 “Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.” ― George Orwell, 1984 "Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain."― George Orwell, 1984