Thirdly, rehabilitation; the use of effective counselling and educational programmes help offenders reform themselves. Finally, deterrence; the purpose here is to deter the rest of the population from committing crime and to also to prevent recidivism (AQA psychology B A2, Sarah Ladbrook). There is strong evidence to suggest that only two out of the four aims work; prisons have an invaluable place in society in terms of punishment of offenders and protection of society but they currently fail in terms of deterrent and rehabilitation. There is a lot of evidence to show that deterrence and rehabilitation does not work, home office figures on recidivism show that 70% of criminals who receive custodial sentences go on to reoffend within two years of release (Homeoffice.gov.uk). This suggests that prison is not the worst place to be, a lot of the prisoners can not provide themselves with the life prison can, the BBC made a series on life inside prison and the reporter Victoria Hicks reported that prison life is “not that bad”.
The second factor that needs to be considered is the routine the inmates faced on a day to day basis and the outcome of the rehabilitation. Prior to Pentonville, prisons were used as holding bays for those on death row and debtors, due to prisons being unfeasible for long term incarceration. Prisons were corrupt environments were ‘prisoners were in the company of criminals of every class and degree’ . Subsequently it can be claimed that having ‘passed time, he returns a greater adept in crime, with a wider acquaintance among criminals’ . During the time of the report the Lords Select Committee had promoted the silent system which had been adopted at Wakefield Goal and Coldbath fields in 1834.
Prisoners are able to have visits, but visits are supervised by staff and this could be stressful for prisoners and also visitors. Children are allowed to visit, but this could be stressful and scary for the children. There are open days in prison so that the prisoner’s children are able to see their parent. It is very important for a parent to keep in touch with the child whilst in prison, because it may lower the risk of them reoffending, so there are systems that can allow parents to keep in touch with their child whilst
Without such activities being available to inmates, their daily routine returns into a monogamous state resulting in boredom. Loomis, a former inmate at Alcatraz Prison, describes the effect of such a lifestyle on inmate behavior: “Life gets so monotonous you feel like bucking the rules to break the monotony,” (Oliver, 66). In addition to idleness repetition, overcrowding also increased the difficulty of imposing discipline, resulting in greater availability of drugs, flourishing gangs, and an increased threat in brutality between prisoners (The Oxford History of the Prison, 237). One of the most fundamental resources of correctional institutions, the correctional officers, are also being vastly outnumbered. The new focus of corrections and society as being “tough on crime” affects the lives in which inmates, officers, and the community must now live by.
The residential community corrections traditionally was to help the inmates who were soon to be on parole reintegrate back into society, by finding jobs, saving money, getting an apartment and getting clothes for the job. It has expanded by now being a direct-sentencing option that judges can give to certain offenders who need an alternative that is between a stay in prison and traditional probation. The effectiveness of this program isn’t that great, with evaluations results that clients were more than likely to be arrested. One reason for the failure was there was an overwhelming amount of inmates were placed in the treatment which meant that many of the clients there were
Psychologist Arnez Hundley stated that the great ability that separates humans from the evolutionary background from lower level species is our ability to adapt socially and physically with our surroundings (Hundley 22). After reading this I began thinking about how humans adapt to their surroundings while being incarcerated. And when you begin to actually think about it a humans ability to adapt is his/her greatest technique as a means of survival. Take for instance an individual who has been incarcerated due to situational circumstances like defending the life of another or suffering from a brief psychotic break and has a temporary lapse in judgement and is now sent to prison for an extended period of time. Without the ability to adapt this person could not survive physically or socially in prison because they would not possess to prison house etiquette to differentiate between right or wrong prison behavior under the context in which they
(CNN News: SuperMax prison is super lax, court cases allege). There are must more but those are the worse that I see at the moment. They can improve their work by proving their supervision. It needs to be more watchful people at the prison. Inmates are pretty much like a child; you always have to watch them.
Community Corrections Paper Community Corrections Paper CJS/230 October, 28th 2011 “Those small relatively inexpensive changes in the right places can do much to increase the likelihood of successful community corrections.” Community Corrections Abstract In this paper, I will be discussing how community correction has an effect on society. I will also give you my hypothesis about community correction and its effectiveness in the criminal justice system. I want to describe prison system in other countries, and also show you how other nations practice imprisonment in their countries. I hope this paper will give you much in insight on Community Corrections. Community Correction also known as probation or
Prison Gangs Dealing with prison gangs is a task that is not easily rectified by prison staff. New and techniques to get messages from gang members inside prison to their counterparts outside prison walls is ever changing. Just when you think you have figured out how they are communicating to each other, gang members come up with new and alternate means to get the message out. This is not only true to gangs with members on the outside, but with gangs that are entirely made up of inmates as well. One possible way to deal with the growing problem of prison gangs and the violence that is often associated with them is to identify members and keep them separated (Demsky, 2009).
The current drug policies of the United States are in great need of revision. Many of the policies demand a mandatory sentence that is often steeper than the actual offense. Because of this many of the prisons are overcrowded by people that should not have been there in the first place. However, before I can state why the laws should be changed I would like to go back to how drug and their laws started. According to the New Batch website, 2001, drugs were not considered a major issue.