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Rehabilitation In The Criminal Justice System Essay

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The Use of Rehabilitation in Criminal Justice System
Subtitle: In the scale of whole society, is rehabilitation better than retribution for the criminals?

Living in a highly developed society, people now care about not only their basic living standard, but also their living quality. For example, many people are not just satisfied with having basic food but with tastier food. Similarly, even criminal incarceration method has developed from simple retribution to a new one -- rehabilitation.

Let us first make an identification. Rehabilitation, as a way of incarceration, is a treatment or treatments designed to facilitate the process of recovery from injury, illness, or disease to …show more content…

Retribution spurs up deterrence effects which not only reduces recidivism but also lowers down first-degree offense. According to Dr. Larry Siegel, Ph.D. in Criminal Justice of State University of New York (2009), deterrence theory implies a psychological process whereby individuals are deterred from committing criminal acts if they perceive legal sanctions as severe. In other word, deterrence effect can be seen as a natural psychological action after committing a crime. Given the opportunity to commit a criminal act, the person presumably weighs the costs and rewards of doing so in comparison to other behavioral options. The more the individual perceives legal sanctions as severe, the greater is the perceived cost of crime and thus the probability of deterrence (Dr. Kirk Williams, Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Arizona, 1987). What is more, incapacitation directly proves the rationality of retribution. According to Dr. David Green, Ph.D. in Economics at University of Newcastle, (2006), crime levels fall when more offenders have been sent to prison. Statistics show the average inmate committed 140 crimes in the 12 months before his admission into custody. If we locked up 10,000 more offenders a year, we could prevent 1.4 million offenses, saving a fortune and reducing aggravation for citizens. To sum up, retribution can substantially improve citizen safety, and reduces harm of crime beard by the

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Ponder this: should prisons be designed for rehabilitation, retribution, or both? Many people might say rehabilitation, as the goal of many prisoners is to make it out of prison alive and free. However, not all prisons are designed for rehabilitation, and not all officials attempt to prepare prisoners for the world outside the prison walls. According to many films, brute officers are often the cause for prisoner escape attempts. Rather than help the prisoners leave freely, they employ strict and harsh punishment and attempt to make good prisoners rather than good people out of inmates.

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Donness Johnson was held captive for the joint between his two fingers. Homeless since the age of seven, Johnson state 's “ ...Prison was like the home I never received… three meals a day..a bed...shower... personal gym… [man] prison was luxury... the only reason I looked forward to going back on those streets where because of that one thing that got me here in the first place..” Three years and twenty-five weeks later since his release, Donness found himself back in luxury with an account of statutory rape of a thirteen year old girl.

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The consequences of this means that when inmates are released back into society, they are unable to function as productive citizens and are more likely to be repeat offenders. In essence, the emphasis on retribution within prisons actually makes society more dangerous by releasing mentally and emotionally damaged inmates without a support of system or medical treatment. Angela Davis addresses this specific issue within her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? In her effort to analyze the harmful effects of incarceration, she recognizes that many people within prison suffer emotional and mental illnesses but are not helped or treated for them. In addition, solitary confinement, which can cause people severe and lasting mental distress after only 15 days, breaks individuals down and leaves them with lasting negative ramifications.

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The main issue with punishment is recidivism which is a term that describes the rate at which a criminal chooses to return to a life of crime after being punished for it. As rehabilitation policies have been implemented into multiple justice systems around the world, many officials and analysts have been able to draw multiple correlations between rehabilitation and a decrease in recidivism. In fact, many studies have indicated “that a carefully implemented rehabilitation program could reduce recidivism” meaning that in many cases after a criminal has been put through a form of rehabilitation, their will to commit a crime after the original decreases greatly rather than if they were incarcerated. Not only does rehabilitation work to reduce recidivism but it also provides a more humane option than punishment. Rehabilitation focuses on the efforts that the justice system takes to change the person’s behavior.

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Therefore, barring this invalid study, no research, to date, has managed to yield findings of the death penalty having more of a deterrent effect than life imprisonment. This fact has also been corroborated by Amnesty International in their report Death Sentences and Executions 2014, where they claim that, “there is no evidence that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect on crime than terms of imprisonment” (Lancet, 2015, p. 1262). This is due to the fact that many variables out of our control may as well be responsible for the fluctuations in crime rates. However, as many abolitionists emphasize, deterrence is best achieved by the assurance of retribution rather than the harshness of the penalty (Henderson, 2006, p. 15). Fear incited by the capital punishment is reduced by the time lag between conviction and administration of punishment, in addition to the fact that most executions take place behind closed doors, as mentioned in Henderson (2006, p. 15).

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However, crimes are committed whilst in prison, such as drugs and assaults. Some critics say the ‘three strikes and you are out’ law where repeat offenders get a longer sentence are wrong, as the third strike could be a lesser crime such as public disorder. Nevertheless, if just incapacitation and no rehabilitation some critics say will be costlier to society as they will go out and reoffend and, they are not employed and pay taxes. Rehabilitation is also a punishment which should improve the offender's behaviour and stop them committing crimes. Advocates of rehabilitation state prison does not work; however, critics of rehabilitation state prison does work as the criminal cannot commit a crime against the public while incarcerated (Cavadino, 2007 p 36/56).

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