Rehabilitation In Standford Prison

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

“In 2007, one percent of American adults were in prison, which is by far the highest incarceration rate in the world.”( Trachtenberg, B., 2009). Why? Trachtenberg believes it’s because prisons do not rehabilitate people. A violent criminal is sent to prison because he is a threat to society. He is supposed to serve a lengthy term so that he will learn his lesson and become a productive member of society. During his time there he is supposed to learn to appreciate work by cooking, doing laundry, or some other prison job. While he is there he can receive his GED so that he can get a job when he gets out. This plan has good intentions but it has been proven to be ineffective.

A 2014 U.S. National Research Council reports discovered that in 2012, around one-fourth of the world's whole detained populace was housed in the United States. On a normal, 1 in every 100 Americans are in detainment facilities (Freudenberg, Daniels, Crum, Perkins, & Richie, 2005). One correctional facility practice has come under contemplation in recent years because of the separation of prisoners into special management for the purposes of severe punishment. It is commonly known as solitary confinement, segregation, isolation, and special management. This practice frequently involves sending prisoners in small, confined (precisely a box) for months, or even years. Long-haul detainment as an option apparently is more sympathetic sentence for detainees who have carried out terrible wrongdoings, and may not be considerably more caring than capital punishment. Turns out that keeping prisoners imprisoned in isolation for long-haul sentences can have genuinely harmful impacts on prisoners.

While there are many arguments from supporters for why long term confinement is expectable punishment for the inmates in prison, most popular reason is that it allows prisoner to reflect back on their crime and their victim, which in turn is supposed to aid in the rehabilitation process. But multiple studies and long term data collected across the country have proven that it’s simply not true. Based on information collected by the state of Connecticut (Tsui. 2), inmates who spend time in solitary confinement during their prison sentence were 92% more likely to be rearrested within three years compared to 66% of inmate who were not subjected to such treatment, while information from Texas shows that inmates who were housed in isolation units

Many people believe that solitary confinement is justified given the magnitude of certain crimes. Utilitarianism, an ideology most commonly used by policymakers to defend solitary confinement, rationalizes isolation by suggesting that the purpose of all legislation “is to augment the total happiness of the community; and therefore, in the first place, to exclude, as far as may be, every thing that tends to subtract from that happiness: in other words, to exclude mischief...”; however, the same principles of utility also suggest that “...if [punishment] ought at all to be admitted, it ought only to be admitted in so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil” (qtd. in Isdale). Solitary confinement, however, proves to be so unnecessarily

In this society it is easy to dismiss people as crazy, lazy, or violent without knowing a person’s full background. We all come from different walks of the life and we have a tendency to turn a blind eye to that fact. I look at our prison system and see an array of people incarcerated for many different reasons. The background and upbringing of a person plays a vital role in the type of person someone is going be when they grow up. A person who grew up in a home of violence will have to make a decision about their future. The things seen as a child will either cause a person to break mentally or they will have the determination to do better for their family and themselves. In some cases, a person will have to seek help in order to obtain

When someone commits a crime, prisoners cannot just be lock them in prisons without letting them have a chance to learn anything. This just makes them hate society more and more because they gain more anger in the time that they stay in prisons. Prisons should provide an education to let them stay busy learning and give them advice so they can decide what they can do once they are released. If prisons do not provide any education for them, they will have nothing to show for the time that they stay in prisons except for making friends with other criminals. If we do not focus on those things, once they get out they will be more likely to commit another crime, which can cause a serious problem for the whole society.

Department of Justice (DOJ) reports 2.2 million people are in our nation's jails and prisons and another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the U.S., totaling 6.8 million people, one of every 35 adults (Vallas and Detrich 4). To me, that is completely ludicrous and harrowing to have that many human beings in jail. I sense that most of the people in their either need counseling, rehab, or a better education because the probability of them being in their is due to their past of being raised in an unsupportive environment with neglectful and/or abusive families. There is a crisis in our nation of rising mental illnesses, like our current opioid addiction happening in the US. We are managing with people who have co-occurring disorders that can lead them to unlawful actions, addiction and mental illness. Those individuals usually get sent to the jail system and don’t get the proper attention they need. Changing the jail system by implanting a stronger educational system that works on improving their behavior, giving them the resources they need, and skills can help build a successful citizen. To support my belief, a study published by RAND Corporation found that inmates who participated in correctional education programs had a 43% lowers odd of recidivism than inmates who did not, a 5% decrease on tax dollars spent per student, and inmates who participated in the study were likely to obtain employment after being released than those who did

In this world we live in many feel that prisons exist to punish, not counsel, offenders. That may be true that Prisons exist for punishment, but they also have an important contribution to make to reducing re-offending by engaging prisoners in rehabilitation programs and purposeful work. Society is flawed in its thinking that by putting criminals in a place away from society we would be better off. To make it worse I am sure that more that 60 percent of Americans are against social reform because they have made up their mind that once a crook, always a crook. This is flawed mainly because it seems to assume that showing people that what they've done is wrong will always accomplish something, that punishing those who commit crimes

     The idea of sentencing a criminal for a period of time in a prison isn't working, so prisons should focus more on changing their rehabilitation programs. Life in prison should be like the outside world as much as possible, given the fact of imprisonment. Prisoners would be less prepared if the prison environment is artificial and abnormal compared to the outside world they will have to encounter later on. A prisoner also needs to keep family ties. Research in

I’ve found some ideas and thoughts that I agree with and they also seem correct to me. From what I’ve learnt a year ago from a psychology class, the United States has the highest criminal rate among the developed countries, and a very high rat of poverty as well. Most people do think that the solution to reduce criminal actions is to punish those criminals and separate them from the society. I agree that the use of incarceration isn't the solution. I remember a short film from my abnormal psychology class discussing about those people who had mental issue being locked up in a jail instead of being treated with any proper medical or psychological care. After being released from the jail, they did the same thing that violated the laws simply because they were not educated, helped, and cared during the time in jail, and they

Our criminal justice system benefit’s our country by allowing residents to know that crime is taken seriously. Prisons work to discourage people from committing crimes, or at least to not get caught. It is accurate to seek punishment to prevent people from doing bad things. It is necessary that everyone can feel safe. Humans need consequences for their actions. In the interest of all people, this has been the original intention of our justice system. Although, as a result of this approach, it is understood that in the United States of America, we have the highest percentage of incarceration in the world. The fact is, there is no proof that this is helping society by ending or preventing crime. The protection society needs is dependent upon rehabilitation.

Prisons provide criminal offenders with a great opportunity to mend their minds and behaviors. Criminals in prison may receive some basic educations and labor reforms, which have a positive impact on their ideology. For example, when offenders are exposed to laws and regulations, they may realize significance and meaning of laws, and have an impressive introspection to their criminal behaviors.

"Prisons are closed institutions. They are established and funded by governments to hold people against their will", but why punish (Zyl Smit, 2010)? What is the purpose of prison? This fundamental question stirs up a significant amount of debate. The government, citizens, educators, and even prisoners are divided about the right answers. There is disagreement in the US about the purpose of the prison system. On the one hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek deterrence, incapacitation, or retribution to avoid appearing too soft on criminals (Zyl Smit, 2010; Rossum, 2003). On the other hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek to opportunities to resocialize prisoners or to effect changes in the character, attitudes, or behavior of the convicted offender (Zyl Smit, 2010; Harvard Law Review, 2010). Which approach is the most effective for a society that decides to punish?

This is the case in almost every prison; prisoners join gangs and resort to violence for protection. Without teaching prisoners how to live a moral and ethical lifestyle, all they learn from prison is how to cheat, lie, manipulate and steal. When their sentence comes to an end and they are released back into society, they often find themselves jobless and homeless because most employers refuse to hire someone with a criminal record. Without a job, they resort to the only thing they know how to do, crime. Do we really want to be releasing these people back into society? Of course not. We need to invest in rehabilitation and correction for criminals if we want to keep our society safe. Incarceration alone only keeps the criminal away from society for the duration of their sentence, and without rehabilitation, they are bound to repeat their past mistakes.