In the United States, misdemeanor jail time ought to be replaced with significant rehabilitation

To my esteemed BNesiba, Hello and good luck. I would like to thank my judges, specifically Burningpuppies101 and LakevilleNorthJT. I hope this to be a good debate and wish my opponent the best of luck. With that, I shall begin. Because this is a value debate, I shall begin by stating the value and criteria that I believe this debate should be weighed upon. The value of this debate should be an individual's right to success. And the criteria should be an individual's quality of life. This means that as adjudicators, you should vote for the debater who best supports the idea of an individual's quality of life (QoL) through their right to success. My value and criteria are both fair and unbiased because they grant ample ground to both my opponent and myself, while being beneath the intent of the resolution. Now I will state my case. Misdemeanor jail time typically ranges anywhere from thirty days to nine months. There are some severe exceptions, but for the sake of debate we should limit ourselves to what typically occurs. When charged and found guilty of a misdemeanor, there are some other penalties that go along with just jail time, some of which can have very devastating effects on a person's life including the inability to obtain certain jobs, qualify for bonding, or receive governmental aid such as school loans. These other penalties are much worse than the jailtime served. Often times a person recieves a misdemeanor charge when they are relatively young. In fact, according to the national criminal justice reference service, more than fifty percent of all misdemeanor charges are for people under the age of thirty. This means that as people age, they begin to decrease the number of misdemeanors they commit. This can mean one of two things. 1. They begin to commit felonies. If this is true, then we can see that the current system of putting them in jail isn't working. If they begin to commit felonies, then they haven't been rehabilitated from their stint in jail, but have been hardened past the point of misdemeanor. So in this case, it actually makes these people worse. Rehabilitiation wouldn't cause this. If they were to be rehabilitated, they would be significantly less likely to commit misdemeanors, and virtually completely unlikely to commit felonies. They would have been reformed into succesful members of the community, and therefore would have a much better quality of life. 2. They mature and no longer commit wrongdoings. If this is the case, then it doesn't matter what their punishment is, they will just grow out of it later on in life. As the old cliche goes...boys will be boys. But putting them in jail for this misdemeanor doesn't help them mature. If they stop committing these acts when they mature...why not help them mature? As a child, I didn't know the stove was hot until I was told the stove was hot or I touched the stove. It took a life lesson to teach me the stove was hot. The entire purpose of rehabilitation is to teach them the life lesson "committing misdemeanors is wrong." Often times young people are just doing it to have some fun. I'm sure most of us have egged a car, or tp'd someones yard. In fact, that's what most misdemeanor charges are...destruction of property. Not only is jail time a pretty harsh punishment for egging someones car, it doesn't work. Rehabilitation is the only way to actually ensure their stopping. Once again, rehabilitation helps them mature faster, which means they will become succesful members of their community faster, and therefore increases their quality of life sooner. For those reasons, I urge the judges to vote for the proposition, or The_Devils_Advocate. Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy this debate as much as I will.