Criminals and Rehabilitation

Prisons were originally constructed as a humane alternative to the public floggings and executions that were originally used to punish criminals. They were designed to be havens where prisoners could do hard labor and repent their crimes in solitude. Well, times have changed and, every week, the nation's overcrowded prisons must find room for 1,000 more inmates (Prison versus probation, 1987, May/June, p. 3). The U.S. Government Accounting Office estimates that by 1990 the national prison population (currently 450,000) will increase to more than one-half million. Ten years ago, the population of "America's prisons was about 300,000 (Rocawich, 1987, August, p. 16). At the tine, critics of the judicial system said that only the Soviet Union and South Africa, among industrialized countries, imprisoned more of it population (16). That may no longer be true as the rate of U.S. incarcerations increases. In fact, America's black imprisonment rate is the highest in the world.

In "Prison versus Probation in California: Implications for Crime and Offer Recidivism," Rand criminologist

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ogram are daily reporting to probation officers, random drug tests, electronic monitoring, house arrest and performance of community services. However, offenders in such program usually must have jobs and must pay for all or part of the cost of their own supervision, which makes the programs economically attractive to government since the cost is higher than traditional probation supervision (Prison versus probation, 1987, May/June, 3). The absence of credible sanctions short of incarceration to deal with criminals is one of the most crucial limitations of modern criminal justice in America. Both the community and the offenders often need something to happen other than the futile formality of an appearance in court; but neither is well served by putting less dangerous people behind bars. Our current practice is generally to let someone go until he/she does something bad enough or often enough to justify imprisoning them. Then, once they are behind bars, little or nothing is done with them before they get out. What is most needed are alternative sanctions providing tangible a consequences for offenders both that let them know their actions are unacceptable and that efforts will be made to integrate them back into the communi
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Approximate Word count = 4518
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)