Effectiveness of Punishment and Prisons
Studies of the effectiveness of punishments often use reconviction
rates as a measurement of success or failure. According to fairly
recent reports there are currently no real differences between
reconviction rates for custodial and all community penalties (Home
Affairs Committee, 1998, Home Office, 1998). However, there are many
problems associated with the reliability of such data, and much
caution is needed when using such measurements as a criteria for
assessing the effectiveness of punishment. For instance, there is
much disagreement about what reconviction should be counted. For
community penalties the counting began on the date of sentence whereas
for custodial sentences the counting begins on the date of release
(May, 1994). therefore, does not take
into account any offence committed whilst in prison. On the
other hand, there is no way of knowing how far re-offending whilst
serving a community sentence is due to the ineffectiveness of the
punishment or an individuals social circumstance. The 1998 report by
the Home Affairs Committee draws attention to even more concerns
regarding reconviction rates. It is stated that:
“Reconviction rates take any subsequent reconviction as an indication
of failure and do not take into account changes in offence severity or
a reduction in the frequency of offending; Reconviction rates
under-estimate the true level of re-offending since for many types of
offence the clear up rate is very low; Police Forces have varying
clear up rates which reflect differences in the changes of being
arrested and re-convict...
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Joe is a prisoner in a United States penitentiary convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. Johan is a prisoner in a Norwegian Correctional Facility also convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. After eight years of serving their time in custody, they are released back out into society, the world beyond their prison walls. During the following month after their release, Joe has once again been arrested for assault and attempted robbery while Johan has started making a quiet living as a deckhand on the coast for a small fishing company in Kopervik. Now both men have the same background and have come out of the same circumstances but yet only one reverts back to a life a crime, why?
Incarceration has been the center of the United States justice system ever since the opening of the nation’s first prison. In order to understand how the aspects of the first corrections institutions correlate to later correctional practices seen today. Whether it was temporary or permanent, there has always been some form of detainment for offenders, and they were always held against their will. Imprisonment of offenders in earlier times was done primarily to hold the accused until the authorities determined the offender’s actual punishment. Jails and prisons create a vicious and expensive cycle of crime that usually just end up overcrowding correctional facilities.
Three walls. One toilet seat. Bars made of mild steel and a lock only accessible to men who government calls authority figures. Prison systems are known for three things: to protect the people, to punish the criminal and to rehabilitate the prisoner so that a crime will not be further committed. However, it has been causing ongoing controversy on whether or not it has been stripping away the earned rights of citizens or indeed helping them become “better” for society.
In more recent years, numbers of the UK prison population have been on the rise – less serious crimes have been more severely punished - whereas the number of financial penalties issued to offenders have been falling (Cavadino & Dignan, 2013). In 1975, approximately 40.000 people were imprisoned, that number has risen to 83.842 in 2013 (Berman & Dar, 2013). The prison population more than doubled in that time, whereas the overall population merely grew with 14% (World Bank, n.d.), thus, the relative growth of the prison population is significantly disproportional.
Incarceration Versus Alternative Sanctions Incarceration and alternative sanctions are both methods of reducing crime and recidivism. They are meant to be punishments for the offender and deterrents for other possible offenders. Incarceration is when an offender is placed in a jail or prison with time to think and repent of their crime. With incarceration, the offender will suffer several consequences after their time is served, as Skye defines as deprivation of liberty, heterosexual relationships, security, services, and autonomy (Thistlethwaite 2014). “When Patrick Henry addressed the Virginia House of Burgesses and declared, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Seiter, R. P. (2017). Corrections: An introduction (5th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Prentice
Today, our country’s correctional facilities are filled with many people, ranging from juveniles, teenagers, adults and the elderly. To get to where they are, these people committed a crime, if not several crimes and are now incarcerated. Incarceration is a process which is meant to “treat” and to “punish” those who have exhibited criminal behavior. However, in order for a criminal to fully recovery, a behavior modification program may be implemented. Ranging from operant techniques to systematic desensitization, individuals who are incarcerated can shape their criminal behavior into law-abiding and socially accepted behaviors.
If Johnny Cash described the sad daily life of inmates in his classic « Folsom Prison Blues », today it’s all the prison system which is feeling pretty blue. Justice simple definition is the law administration. But inside that definition is the implicit comprehension that the law has to be applied even handedly. The concept of law is made to apply to everybody, but actually in America this main principle can be questioned. It is clearly obvious that the judicial system could be better. It takes a very small effort to « peer under the veneer of blind justice »(Bank) . Some argues that prison system is a necessary solution to make our society safer, I would say that justice system has many failures, its effects are so much negative to not be questioned. The
Imprisonment! Who would like to be imprisoned, especially for so long? Just the name Imprisonment has been so powerful that it brings shame and emotional stress to individual, family and society. The same applies to mental illness. According to USA TODAY in “Cost of not caring: Stigma set in stone,” health care policy has made mental illness a shameful disease by limiting health care coverage that psychiatric patients get. Though imprisonment is outrageous, there is nothing wrong with incarcerating patients with mental illness, but, wrong with the way prison staff and government policies treat them.7
The exact time and location of the world’s first actual prison is unknown, but obviously at some point in time incarceration within a prison system became a common consequence for criminal activities. Schmalleger writes that punitive imprisonment appeared to have been introduced in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for debtors and certain offenders against canon law (Schmalleger, 2009). In those decades penalties for criminal activities dealt more with shaming the offender in hopes of deterring them from future criminal activity. Examples of shaming include the ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding, and the stocks (History of the Prison Systems). In addition to the various forms of shaming and deterring, the death penalty was a common punishment for criminal activity, such as hangings, stoning, or burning. Within these decades, prisons were occasionally used as an alternative to corporal punishment. However, as years went on society’s view of an individual’s liberties and humanity were changing thus changing the views of how criminal acts should be handled changed as well. Schmalleger writes that near the end of the eighteenth century is when the concept of imprisonment as punishment reached its fullest expression. The prisons that had been established and continually altered in the United States eventually become models for European reformers that were in hopes of creating a prison system that would humanize criminal punishment (Schmalleger, 2009). The concept was that restricting a person’s liberty would be retribution enough, and that an exact period of time served in a prison could be assigned depending on the severity of a crime committed (Prison History). Early prisons came in the forms of ...
America is often described as the land of the free, yet to the thousands of inmates that sit in prison this is a luxury they may never experience again. While common sense says that prisons are a necessary part of the world, America’s prison system has been neglected for far too long. Many prisons are on the brink collapsing and the living conditions of the inmate’s borderline on inhumane. In addition America has one of the largest prison systems in the world, and it shows as many prisons are bursting at the seams. As the government struggles to pay the deficient, often the prison system is the last thing on anyone’s mind as money is so tight. Still there must be something that can be done to improve the safety of not only the inmates, but
But there are people who also disagree with changing the way the prison system works right now. As I found in the article called: "Our Money to Educate Minds behind Bars Is a Terrible Thing to Waste" which appeared in the Chicago Now, the author, Masaki Araya, points to reasons why prisons shouldn 't offer educational programs to inmates. "Why should any money, private and public, be wasted on ‘free’ education to those confined behind bars when we already have law abiding citizens, especially families, struggling and barely getting by trying to pay to attend college?" is one of the points Masaki brings up. Masaki believes that these people have no right to be given free education and rehabilitation programs because they have committed crimes
Around a third of those on community sentences and prison-leavers will reoffend within a year, and that figure rises to 58 per cent for those who have served less than a year. It is reported by Civitas’s Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010) that males in comparison to females, have a much higher re-offending rate. Males are less restricted to conform to the society, and therefore once branded a criminal much less likely to make an effort and attempt to correct this label. The Ministry of Justice Guidance is quoted in the same report saying that “Frequency rates by disposal (sentenced type) should not be compared to assess the effectiveness of sentences, as there...
Prison has been around in human society for many millions of years. Having someone who disobeyed the law of that village, town, city or country punished in some form of institution, cutting them off from people, is a common concept – a popular and supposedly “needed” process society has taken to doing for many years now has been put under the spotlight many times by many different figures and people in society. The question remains – do prisons only make people worse? Many articles have been published in many journals and newspapers of the western world (mainly the USA, UK and Australia) saying prison only makes a person worse yet no complaint of the method has come from the less liberal eastern societies; this only proves how in countries where the rights of humans are valued such issues as if prisons only make people worse are important and relevant to keeping fair to all.
The origin of the word prison comes from the Latin word to seize. It is fair to say that the traditionally use of prison correspond well with the origin of the word; as traditionally prison was a place for holding people whilst they were awaiting trail. Now, centuries on and prisons today is used as a very popular, and severe form of punishment offered to those that have been convicted. With the exception however, of the death penalty and corporal punishment that still takes place in some countries. Being that Prison is a very popular form of punishment used in today's society to tackle crime and punish offenders, this essay will then be examining whether prison works, by drawing on relevant sociological factors. Furthermore, it will be looking at whether punishment could be re-imagined, and if so, what would it entail?