It's interesting, I often wonder where people who share your mindset get their philosophies and worldview, as if the world were black and white, good and evil, fair and meritocratic. I thought we knew better than that now?

The reality is that other systems in the world have much, much lower recidivism rates (20% in Norway, where they actually treat people humanely [1] the trope goes). The incarceration rates in the US are off the charts [2] and the recidivism rates are too. So either the people born in the US are overwhelmingly more likely to "just be scum who belong in prison for some reason" or there's more at play here, institutionally speaking. And furthermore, what happened in 1980 [3] that made huge portions of the population (3X more) suddenly "become scum"?

You absolutely can change peoples behavior. People don't want to be bad people. Some don't know how, and the evidence shows if you show them a better way, they grow and respond. Giving people room to live up to your expectations works, whether in your day job in management or in prisoner rehabilitation. The data bears that out. Yeah, definitely not everyone, but it's fair to say that we can do better.

On a joking note, I do wish you luck in your testing career ;)

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is...

[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration

[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_r...