This paper examines the multiple, often competing purposes of prisons in the United States justice system — incapacitation, punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation — tracing their historical evolution from colonial-era jails through the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems to modern privatized facilities. It surveys current conditions in American prisons, including overcrowding, violence, and abuse, before reviewing evidence-based programs designed to reduce recidivism, such as education, vocational training, substance abuse treatment, and creative therapies. The paper also evaluates prisoner reentry and reintroduction initiatives, assesses community policing strategies for protecting the public after release, and concludes with proposals for comprehensive, multi-pronged reform including creative sentencing and community-level intervention.
The corrections system in America has historically fluctuated between being dedicated to incapacitation, rehabilitation, and punishment. It can serve all three of these functions simultaneously. Current trends in criminal justice remain focused on punitive justice that fosters prison environments lacking rehabilitative services, but recent scholarship and public policy have indicated a slight shift toward the root concept of corrections as a rehabilitative process that simultaneously protects the public.
Prisons serve multiple, and potentially convergent, purposes: to rehabilitate the prisoner, to punish the prisoner by restricting liberties, and to protect public safety. Deterrence is an indirect purpose of prisons. Ancillary purposes of prisons in the United States justice system include profitability, as prison privatization has proved lucrative for companies with a vested interest. Halfway houses, which can be broadly considered part of the rehabilitation segment of the criminal justice system, are usually privately run facilities (Dolnick, 2013).
During the colonial American era, the purpose of prisons was more like what jails do now: places to incapacitate a suspect until he or she awaited trial or punishment. Prisoners were not held as part of their punishments. Prisons were "among the first public buildings erected in the New World" and were considered as essential as a cemetery in every town (Lynch, n.d.). However, colonial American prisons were not "houses of punishment," as they would later evolve to be (Lynch, n.d.). The concept of the prison as a locus of punishment and a place to segregate criminals from society is an idea that emerged after the American Revolution. The Revolution caused Americans to question the power of the state over the lives of individuals, including those accused of breaking the law. Due process and criminal justice models emerged that questioned the salience of the death penalty, which had been widely used during pre-Revolutionary times (Lynch, n.d.). Values, social norms, and political philosophies related to criminality also changed, and so too did the demographics of the nation. The transformations in American society during the early modern and modern eras led to a transformation of the physical form of prisons and also "their function and their place in American consciousness" (Lynch, n.d.).
The Pennsylvania System and the Auburn System reveal the conflicting purposes of prisons in American society. The Pennsylvania System entailed mainly solitary confinement and evolved as a means to encourage personal guilt and repentance. It was called the Pennsylvania System because regional Quakers, who cultivated interest in the rehabilitative model of justice, supported this penal model. However, the Pennsylvania System was considered too costly to maintain in the long run (Abadinsky, 2008). This model continues to influence the American prison system, even if its methods have been called into question.
The Auburn System emerged as a response to the Pennsylvania System. The Auburn System "attempted to break the spirit of the inmate and utilized hard labor" (Abadinsky, 2008). Chain gangs are examples of the Auburn prison model. Auburn prisons were "cheaper to construct and maintain" than Pennsylvania-style prisons (Abadinsky, 2008). These were the predecessors of modern privatized prisons because Auburn-style prisons used prisoner labor for profit (Abadinsky, 2008). From the Auburn System emerged the Big House model, which remains the template for many American prisons. Big House prisons did not necessarily use prison labor, but they were likewise not developed to promote rehabilitation.
The philosophy of behavioral "correction" as the prime goal of American prisons emerged during the middle of the twentieth century, but it failed due to policies that included "indeterminate sentencing" — designed with the notion that the prisoner would be released when he was "corrected" (Abadinsky, 2008). This model has also fallen out of favor with policymakers. Because of the failure of the corrections model, there was a strong backlash against the rehabilitative model of justice entirely. As Abadinsky (2008) points out, the American prison system reverted to the Pennsylvania model, in which strict lockups, solitary confinement, and a "just deserts" policy reigned supreme. This "just deserts" system prevails today, coupled with an increasing trend toward privatization.
Conditions in American prisons are grim. The United States incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other nation on the planet and has the highest overall incarceration rate in the world. There are currently about 7.2 million persons in prison in the United States (Tecco, 2009). Prisons are overcrowded. Gangs and violence flourish inside them. Corrections officers have frequently been implicated in prisoner abuse (ACLU, 2013). Human Rights Watch (2013) reports "abusive, degrading, and dangerous" conditions in American prisons. Prison privatization has been framed as a form of modern slavery, due to the fact that prisoner labor is contracted to privately owned firms without the express consent of prisoners (ACLU, 2013).
Programs that seek to reduce recidivism in modern prisons include prisoner reentry programs. Reentry programs are critical for reducing recidivism because they provide a structured means whereby former inmates can find work and social networks that prevent poverty and some of the social strains that could lead one to return to criminal behavior. Prisoner reentry programs include transitional housing, vocational development, and substance abuse counseling.
Dolnick (2013) points out that traditional halfway house services are failing to reduce rates of recidivism and may in fact be increasing them: "inmates who spent time in these facilities were more likely to return to crime than inmates who were released directly to the street" (Dolnick, 2013). Research from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections shows that 67% of halfway house residents, versus 60% of those who did not spend time in a halfway house, reoffended (Dolnick, 2013). Many halfway houses are "as large as prisons" and foster drug use, drug dealing, and a host of illegal activities and violence (Dolnick, 2013). With a greater emphasis on filling beds than on actual programs to help reintegrate former inmates into the community, the halfway house model is being called into question and needs to be reformed.
Because a third of all inmates "were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time they committed the crime for which they were convicted," drug rehabilitation programs are critical to reduced recidivism rates (Morris, 2010). Drug rehabilitation programs can lead to an estimated 31% reduction in recidivism (Morris, 2010). However, such programs are underdeveloped and underused by the criminal justice system in general. Likewise, educational and employment programs designed to help former inmates transition back to the community are underdeveloped. There are few systematic social networking measures to help prisoners become reintegrated with family and community.
"Florida DOC results and creative therapy approaches"
"Inconsistent reentry programs and community challenges"
"Community policing strategies for post-release safety"
"Creative sentencing and comprehensive reform proposals"
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