Imprisonment is More Effective than Rehabilitation

Thats why some people argue rehabilitation over punishment.Until the mid-1970s, rehabilitation was a key part of U.S. prison policy. Prisoners were encouraged to develop occupational skills and to resolve psychological problems--such as substance abuse or aggression--that might interfere with their reintegration into society. Indeed, many inmates received court sentences that mandated treatment for such problems.In many prison systems, psychologists are the primary mental health care providers, with psychiatrists contracted on a part-time basis. Psychologists provide services ranging from screening new inmates for mental illness to providing group therapy and crisis counseling.They also provide rehabilitative services that are useful even for prisoners without serious mental illnesses, says Fagan. For example, a psychologist might develop special programs for substance abusers or help prisoners prepare for the transition back to the community.Another constraint is the basic philosophical difference between psychology, which is rehabilitative at heart, and corrections, which is currently punishment-oriented.Right now there's such a focus on punishment--most criminal justice or correctional systems are punitive in nature--that it's hard to develop effective rehabilitative programs .(http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab.aspx)

The US Correctional System gives a lot of offenders the chance to change their ways, by helping the rehabilitate them self’s. Rehabilitation is the attempt to reform an offender or also used a rehabilitated meaning the reform of an offender (Schmalleger). Forms of rehabilitation in the correctional system would be court ordered by a judge for an offender that is addicted to drugs or alcohol to be sentence to rehab to kick there addiction. This can be very helpful for repeat offenders that crimes they commit are due to their addiction to drugs/alcohol. There are different kinds of programs to help with the rehabilitation of an offender, programs such as “Office of Program Accountability and Support: This office supports the division by providing support services, and overseeing data collection and analysis of participation within programs offered to inmates and parolees. Office of Offender Services: This office is broken into two separate units. One supports the In-Prison Programs, and the other supports Community and Reentry

The tension between rehabilitation and punishment has been increasing dramatically. This is because there have been sharp rises in the prison population and repeat offender rates. When one area is over emphasized in relation to the other, there is the possibility that imbalances will occur. Over the course of time, these issues can create challenges that will impact the criminal justice system and society at large. (Gadek, 2010) (Clear, 2011) (Gatotch, 2011)

The way the criminal justice system should handle crimes has always been a debated subject. For over the last forty years, ever since the war on drugs, there are more policies made to be “tough on crime”. From then, correctional systems have grown and as people are doing more crimes, there are plenty of punishments for them. In the mid 1970’s, rehabilitation was the main concern for the criminal justice system. It was common that when someone was convicted of a crime, they would be sentenced to prison but there would also be diagnosed treatments to help them as well. Most likely, they would have committed a crime due to psychological problems. When they receive treatment in prison, they can be healed and would not go back to their wrong lifestyle they had lived before. As years have gone by, people thought that it was better to take a more punitive stance in the criminal justice system. As a result of the turnaround of this more punitive criminal justice system, the United States now has more than 2 million people in prisons or jails--the equivalent of one in every 142 U.S. residents--and another four to five million people on probation or parole. The U.S. has a higher percentage of the

As the imprisoned population in the United States grows and American culture changes, rehabilitation is becoming popular among these alternatives to a standard prison system. Rehabilitation when referring to criminal justice are programs and methods used to assist prisoners in reforming themselves in order to avoid the habits that placed them in prison in the first place. These programs are becoming more popular due to the high cost of imprisonment and a change in American culture. Each prisoner costs forty thousand dollars each year to keep in prison(Weissmueller). This is money that is coming out of the taxes paid by United States citizens who aren’t even in the prison system. Alongside this, American culture is changing to be supporting of rehabilitation efforts as Americans see the effectiveness of criminal justice systems that include it. This was seen on a trip to Europe by U.S. prison officials; once they had seen the effectiveness of German and Dutch prison rehabilitation, they wanted to bring similar programs to their prisons (“People, not prisoners”). A rehabilitation based criminal justice system in the United States is gaining popularity, and as it does so it is earning the attention it needs and deserves.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Everyone knows that you can’t help someone unless they want to help themselves. When the prison system was first established, the possibilities in rehabilitation were nothing like they are

I agree that rehabilitation should be the primary goal in sentencing. Rehabilitation teaches a criminal how to interact with the community after being away for a set amount of time. Days in prison and jail can hinder the positive thoughts in one’s mind. Anger and depression can build up, and make the criminals want to act out again. The rehabilitation process can even mend burnt bridges with family and friends.

Rehabilitation, what is rehabilitation? Rehabilitation is the action of restoring someone to a normal life through training and therapy after incarcerated, addiction or illness. Rehabilitation can be used for an offender who has committed a crime and is incarcerated, someone who is struggling with addiction or illness. Rehabilitation was originated in 1779 by the British Government as part of the Penitentiary Act, rehabilitation would consist of punishment along with treatment for the offenders. (Benjamin Disraeli 2004). The purpose of rehabilitation is to treat the offender in order for the offender to return to society and be able to contribute, rehabilitation is also a punishment for breaking a law.

Since World War II through the 1970s, many changes occurred in the United States correctional systems. Rehabilitation Model is a treatment program that was designed to reform the inmates. According to www.copower.org, “This model is similar to the medical model; it regards the person with a disability as in need of services from a rehabilitation professional who can provide training, therapy, counseling or other services to make up for the deficiency caused by the disability. Historically, it gained acceptance after World War II when many disabled veterans needed to be re-introduced into society. The

Q= what types of rehabilitation programs are offered in prisons? What programs are most successful? What are the principles of effective programs?

One major concern is the quality of rehabilitation the inmates receive while they are incarcerated. The question to ask is “Are our prisoners being properly rehabilitated?”

The nuances of his findings were lost, and the research was presented as showing that correctional treatment programs did not work at rehabilitating criminal offenders. The infamous sound bite that emerged from this was that “Nothing Works” when it comes to rehabilitation (para.3).

Cullen and Gendreau (2000). give us some history on the restorative incarceration. The original theory of restorative justice was based on simple human behavior regulated by incentive instead of punishment, which instituted the concept of parole as a means of reward for a prisoner for rehabilitation. Further studies in criminology proved that this idea was too simplistic and married it to the positivist theory of criminology and instituted individual assessment and treatment for each prisoner based on their specific needs for reformation.

I also think that it is possible that rehabilitation and punishment can be effective on offenders. What I don’t think is that probation and parole should be the only means of rehabilitation. In fact, there are more inmates than those being released. In our course book Corrections In America (2014) under The Rehabilitation Ideology topic it states that in our corrections system we can find inmates that are “ mentally ill, the neglected, or the unprivileged” (pg. 55). The system should focus on inmates more because the lucky ones to go on probation or parole will always get some sort of rehabilitation. I don’t think Rehabilitation counterparts punishment. Rehabilitation if more of a necessity and should be mandatory. It will benefit not only

In theory, rehabilitation works, unfortunately as there are objectors to punishment of the corporal kind as there are objectors to the practice of rehabilitation. Most would side on the idea of rehabilitating prisoners, as there is no denying its success in the past, however the question of abandoning or greatly reducing corporal punishment or long term incarceration stands as a highly heated debate. With prison overcrowding and solutions being sought after, rehabilitation does offer a way to braid the inmates back into a successful life inside our communities, but just as corporal punishment does not have a 100% success rate, its friend rehabilitation lacks it as well. As a society we have to find ways to lower the costs of prisons on our fellow man and to be able to have inmates return to society in a productive manner. Rehabilitation seems to be the most modern weapon of choice for our modern and more