1. Risk management: Imposing a sanction that holds the individual accountable and incapacitates those who pose a threat to public safety.

2. Risk reduction: Reducing recidivism by addressing the individual’s specific needs through rehabilitation, education and treatment programs.

3. Restitution: Repayment of financial or personal damages to the victims and community impacted.

The reality is the punishment never stops for most people being incarcerated.

Rehabilitation remains a talking point, a brochure. Treatment programs are only offered to limited individuals and seeking treatment become weaponized. Education and programming are stripped of you for following rules. Restitution accrues interest for years, and the 40 cents an hour you’re paid if they allow you to work while incarcerated never makes a noticeable difference.

The system tells the public it wants people to succeed after release. It talks about rehabilitation, reentry and second chances. But its incentives tell a different story, a story where failure is not flaw but feature.

A truly rehabilitating system would reduce incarceration numbers. It would shift power away from punishment because if people succeed after prison, the system would have to admit something uncomfortable. It was never about rehabilitation in the first place; it’s about managing bodies, not rebuilding lives or offering treatment.

The promise the public was told by Gov. Spencer Cox with the new prison build has yet to uphold the “highest standards of modern prison reform or emphasize on rehabilitation.” Those that get the chance to walk out of prison have limited housing, no drug treatment, no social or digital reorientation, little to no access to employment pipelines, and inmates in Utah frequently leave prison with significant debt.

If rehabilitation were the goal, reentry wouldn’t feel like a trap door. Failure is baked into the system. When people struggle, relapse or reoffend, it’s framed as personal weakness and not structural abandonment. The system points to opportunity offered while ignoring opportunity denied.

Every human being deserves the chance to heal and to be a better member of society. You see addicts and criminals, while I see a human being that is trying to do better but constantly denied.

Misty Spell is a resident of Ogden.