Introduction:
Prisons were initially created to deter criminals from committing crimes and with the hope that one would learn to reflect on his/her mistakes during incarceration. Since the 1900s, the incarceration rate of the United States has outnumbered that of every other nation in the world, with rates being as many as four to eight times that of other nations (Haney, 2001; Visher, 2013). In the past, prisons focused on rehabilitation, which is a place to prepare convicts for proper reentry; support such as education, vocational, and counseling programs were readily given to those that needed it. However, today, there has been a large de-emphasis placed on reintegration, and the focus shifted from rehabilitation to incapacitation. And because of a society who has opted for the incapacitation of offenders, alongside reduced funding, there is a lack of “willingness to assist ex-offenders” (Seiter & Kadela, 2003). Moreover, not much has been put into place to address issues offenders face post-release, with only a scattered few numbers of rehabilitation programs to aid them (Petersilia, 2001). At the same time, not only are ex-offenders not being helped, but during the inmate’s incarceration, families take on more burdens especially if they are already struggling. Extended lengths of incarceration are leaving ex-offenders with traumatic psychological effects that follow them into post imprisonment and without the right skills necessary upon their return to society. As they reintegrate into society, ex-offenders must learn to cope with the complications that they will experience in their daily lives.
Psychological Effects as a Result of Incarceration
Previously, about 70% of prisons utilized indeterminate sentencing along with a ...
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... as a parole board, who will help facilitate reentry, inmates will be taught essential skills, such as learning to count and read (Petersilia, 2001), needed to be successful. Support groups lshould also be made available to any ex-offender in need.
One discrepancy founded in the research was the substantial lack of research done on the effects of long term effects of incarceration on female inmates and how that affects their lives post-incarceration. With the purpose of trying to fully understand how long-term incarceration affects reintegration, researchers must first conduct more studies on female inmates and how incarceration has affected their being as well as their life beyond prison walls. Another aspect that researchers should further investigate, is how the incarceration affects those who are mentally ill and how they have to deal with post incarceration.
Many changes are made inside the justice system, but very few have damaged the integrity of the system and the futures of citizens and prisoners. Although the story seems to focus more on lockdown, Hopkins clearly identifies the damaging change from rehabilitation in prisons to a strategy of locking up and containing the prisoners. To the writer, and furthermore the reader, the adjustment represented a failure to value lives. “More than 600,000- about 3 times what it was when I entered prison, sixteen years ago. In the resulting expansion of the nation’s prison systems, authorities have tended to dispense with much of the rehabilitative programming once prevalent in America’s penal institutions” (Hopkins 157). The new blueprint to lock every offender in prison for extended sentencing leads to an influx in incarcerated people. With each new person
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
Wormith, J. S., Althouse, R., Simpson, M., Reitzel, L. R., Fagan, T. J., & Morgan, R. D. (2007). The rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders: The current landscape and some future directions for correctional psychology. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34(7), 879-892.
In America millions of offenders including men and women leave imprisonment in hope to return to their family and friends. On an article Prisoners and Reentry: Facts and Figures by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, in the year 2001 1.5 million children were reunited with their parents as they were released from prison. Also in 2005 the number of that passed prison gates were 698,499 and the number of prisoners that were released was approximated at about 9 million. Parole and Prison reentry has been a topic that really interests not only a lot of the communities around the world but is a topic that interest me. Recidivism is not only the topic that interests people but the offenders that get off on parole and how they cope with society after they
In-prison and post-release vocational training and work programs evaluations have shown that they are considered to be most effective, as they greatly reduce the rate of recidivism. Steady employment and educational services are some of the main factors in delaying or preventing an individual from re-offending in the first three years following release. More reentry programs are using the comprehensive strategy in response to what research and evaluations have found. Comprehensive strategies are applied in the state and local levels of government, mainly relying on community-based groups to coordinate and provide services for those re-entering society. These programs usually start before a prisoners release and provide assistance in receiving employment, housing, substance abuse, and mental health
The book titled Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison offers invaluable lessons of how both men and women may successfully depart prison and return to society. The book was written by Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards, both of whom are college professors and criminal justice experts. The population of prisons across the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades despite overall crime rates decreasing during the same time period. Approximately seven million American people are in some form of correctional custody. Between the years1980 and 2000, America’s prison population increased by 500 percent. During the same time period, the number of prisons grew by 300 percent (Ross and Richards, xii). Close to 50 percent of people admitted to confinement have previously served time, exemplifying that the criminal justice system “recycles” inmates through the system again and again (Ross and Richards, xi). Unfortunately, many convicts simply do not remember how to or are ill-equipped to return to society once their sentence ends. Ross and Richards, through their valuable lessons within their book, seek to lessen the problems that ex-prisoners may face when released from prison.
Prisons and correctional facilities in the United States have changed from rehabilitating people to housing inmates and creating breeding grounds for more violence. Many local, state, and federal prisons and correctional facilities are becoming more and more overcrowded each year. If the Department of Corrections (DOC) wants to stop having repeat offenders and decrease the volume of inmates entering the criminal justice system, current regulations and programs need to undergo alteration. Actions pushed by attorneys and judges, in conjunction current prison life (including solitary confinement), have intertwined to result in mass incarceration. However, prisoner reentry programs haven’t fully impacted positively to help the inmate assimilate back into society. These alterations can help save the Department of Corrections (DOC) money, decrease the inmate population, and most of all, help rehabilitate them. After inmates are charged with a crime, they go through the judicial system (Due Process) and meet with the prosecutor to discuss sentencing.
In recent decades, violent crimes in the United States of America have been on a steady decline, however, the number of people in the United States under some form of correctional control is reaching towering heights and reaching record proportions. In the last thirty years, the incarceration rates in the United States has skyrocketed; the numbers roughly quadrupled from around five hundred thousand to more than 2 million people. (NAACP)In a speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton notes that, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40
Upon release, previously incarceration individuals find themselves subject to what is known as collateral consequences. Societal and policy consequences that extend beyond the criminal justice system and long after incarceration. With consequences touching every aspect of their life from; housing, family composition, education and employment opportunities. As one becomes incarcerated they better understand racial, economic and behavioral-health barriers within yet at the time of parole many do not have an awareness of the negative and disproportionate treatments associated with life post-conviction and incarceration (Pettus-Davis, Epperson and Grier, 2017).
Reentry programs have been developed nationwide to address offender needs and smooth the transition from prison into the community. Reentry programs are initiatives taken to ensure that ex-offenders successfully transition into law-abiding members of their communities. Studies have revealed that ex-offender reentry is a process that all individuals transitioning from prison to the community experience. Ex-offender reentry program is a precursor to successful community reintegration, hoewever, there are few interventions that have demonstrated success to meet the overwhelming needs of individuals leaving correctional facilities during their
It is undeniable that mass incarceration devastates families, and disproportionately affects those which are poor. When examining the crimes that bring individuals into the prison system, it is clear that there is often a pre-existing pattern of hardship, addiction, or mental illness in offenders’ lives. The children of the incarcerated are then victimized by the removal of those who care for them and a system which plants more obstacles than imaginable on the path to responsible rehabilitation. Sometimes, those returned to the community are “worse off” after a period of confinement than when they entered. For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism are exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives(Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66).
There are many problems that exist when it comes to prisoner reentry. The first being the prison experience itself. Siegel (2017) writes, the psychological and economic problems that lead offenders to recidivism are rarely addressed by a stay in prison. Despite rehabilitation efforts, the typical ex-convict is still the same undereducated, unemployed, substance-abusing, lower-socioeconomic-status male he was when arrested. The point Siegel is trying to make is that the prison experience actually worsens the chances of an ex-inmates’ success during reentry. Another reason Siegel points out is the lack of supervision once a prisoner is released back into the community.
Rehabilitation also involves programs in prisons that have the goal of helping offenders return back to society (Goff, 2014, p.20). Prisons have also put in place programs to assist inmates, “the goal of these release programs are to ease the transition of offenders from the institution into the community while simultaneously promoting stable employment after release” (Cullen & Jonson, 2011, p.309). If a person has been in an institution for a long period of time it is often hard to adjust to life outside, which is why these programs are important in the justice
Sung, L. G.-e. (2011). Rethinking Corrections: Rehabilitation, Reentry, and Reintegration. Thousand Oaks : SAGE Publications.
Many people idealized the relevancy of living in a civilized world, where those who break the law are reprimanded in a less traditional sense of punishment in today’s standard. Instead of just doing hard time, programs and services could and should be provided to reform and rehabilitate prisoner. Despite standard beliefs, many individuals in prison are not harden criminals and violent offenders, many of these people suffer mental illness and substance abuse Hoke