Basically we're saying the reasons these people commit crimes can never be changed?
The crime with the lowest recidivist rate is murder. Why? The vast majority of murders are so-called "crimes of passion." The only person that ever had anything to fear from the perpetrator is the now-dead individual. That is why the majority of people who commit murder never go on to commit other serious crimes.
However, "ordinary" violent crime (assault, sexual assault, robbery, uttering threats, etc) isn't so simple. With the exception of sexual assault, all of those crimes are heavily tied to social living conditions - the poorer you are, the more likely to commit those crimes. The same goes for property crimes and crimes like heavy drug use. Now, the problem is that inevitably people get caught, and 8-12 months later when they've finished with the justice system they go serve a prison sentence. While in prison, they are forced into a series of programs and education designed to rehabilitate them and make them productive members of society. They are eventually paroled and the sentence expires. So where's the problem?
The problem is that none of the measures taken in prison address the fundamental problem: social conditions. People turn back to community supports, and the supports offenders are used to are other offenders. They go right back to the people they were involved with before their sentence - which, more often than not, gets them right back into the activities that sent them to prison in the first place.
The best way to reduce recidivism is to reduce the time spent in prison for less-serious offences and dramatically increase the level of social support outside of the prison system. People with positive community ties are much less likely to commit crimes.
There are a million and one reasons why people break the social contract and participate in criminal activity and we're never going to address them all, but the idea of rehabilitation is flawed from the get-go. It assumes the reason the person committed a crime is entirely internal, when most criminal activity has more to do with where the person lives and who they associate with. And yes, there are always going to be the people who stand up and say "I grew up in XYZ and turned out just fine! If I can do it, anyone else can! All they need to do is work hard!". Bull****. The people who manage to escape those social conditions have better supports than the people who don't.
So - the short is no, we're probably not going to change the reasons people commit crimes. Our best strategy is to get the low-risk offenders out of prison and into a healthy social environment as quickly as possible while making sure the high-risk and repeat offenders get locked away for as long as possible.
