The purpose of this paper is to research the whole subject of criminals and their rehabilitation. A discussion of what is society's responsibility in this matter and how the "reform versus punishment" philosophies approach the growing problem of increased prison populations and crime rates will also be included. In addition, an analysis of the alternatives to incarceration will be provided.
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 Joan Petersilia says: "that if the country spends $10 billion on new prisons during the next decade, 'prisons will still be more than twenty percent over capacity in the year 2000'" (Prison versus probation, 1987, May/June 1987, p. 3).
One of the explanations for this is the increasing crime rate. But, in reality, that factor is just a symptom of other underlying problems with the criminal justice system in America. Those who study the prison-population ...