Purpose Of Prison Reform

Throughout history, there has been debate as to whether the true purpose of prison is to punish an offender for their wrongdoings, or to focus more on rehabilitation (Burlingame, 2012). In today’s society, there are generally four agreed upon purposes of prison, being incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation (Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, n.d.). However, this begs the question as to whether prisons today are effectively meeting these aims, or if they are in need of serious reform. The purpose of this essay will be to discuss whether prisons in their current form are meeting the aims of incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence, or if they are in need of drastic reform. Discussion of this

Secondly, this essay will then explore the aim of retribution, and if prisons are effectively providing a satisfying outcome for victims, or if there are other ways to provide retribution for victims. Additionally, this essay will then review the rehabilitative capabilities of prison, and discuss whether there is a more effective way to rehabilitate offenders. Finally, this essay will then explore the deterrent capabilities of prison, and whether it is truly able to act as a deterrent to both offenders and the general public. Overall, this essay will seek to argue that prisons today meet their intended aims to an extent, however, there are ways in which they can be reformed to make them even more

The idea of allowing the victim to ‘get even’ with the offender through their imprisonment is a fundamental idea behind prison, going back as far as its establishment (Prison Laws, 2016). This is based off the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’, which states that someone who has injured another person should be punished to a similar degree (Eye for an Eye, 2017). Current prisons seek to uphold this idea by applying a punishment to an offender that is deemed to fit the crime, as a way to make them give up something in return for committing an offence (The Law Dictionary, n.d.). By isolating offenders from the community and depriving them of their freedom, prisons seek to make offenders pay their debts to society, while simultaneously granting the victim a sense that they’ve ‘gotten even’ with the offender (Blakely, 2007). However, while prisons may fulfil this aspect of retribution, they struggle when attempting to deal with the needs of a victim. As reported by Strang (2002), more and more victims of crime are feeling dismayed with their experience of the punishment of ‘their’ offender. Victims stated that their needs are often seen as secondary during the process, and that this leads them to feel that they have not obtained justice (Strang, 2002). This flaw can be resolved with the introduction of restorative justice into prison systems. Restorative justice sees crime as being conflict which