f recidivism or on the ever increasing volume of crime" (Ohlin, 1973, p. 7). Therefore, it can be argued that by and large, prisons have had little success in rehabilitating or changing criminal behavior. Thus, it seems that the American prison system has, at least so far, worked better as an institution which punishes bad behavior than an institution which reforms and rehabilitates criminals or turns them into law abiding citizens who stop committing crimes.
In addition, some researchers and scholars have adopted the point of view that even if prisons could rehabilitate inmates, that the purpose of our prisons system is not to rehabilitate but to punish people who have committed crimes. The position that prisons were built and should be maintained solely for the purpose of punishing criminals, is supported by the fact that they were "originally constructed as a humane alternative to the public floggings and executions that were originally used to punish criminals" (Murphy, 1984, p. 29). The idea that prisons should be used to punish criminals, and not to rehabilitate them or make their stay in prison pleasurable, comes from the concept that criminals have broken the moral rules of society and that there, the job of the prison system is to punish inm
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