Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Prison System Essay -- Prison J

The unsuccessful person of imprisonment has been one of the most evident features of the current crisis in wretched justice systems. At best, prisons are capable to provide a form of crude retribution to those unfortunate to be apprehended. At worst, prisons are brutalizing, can non be shown to rehabilitate or deter offenders, and are detrimental to the re-entry of offenders into society. If anything, they do little else than confine most prisoners, and as a result lead to the imposition of certain undesirable learning habits and labels. much(prenominal) habits include the learning of survival patterns of behavior, which do little to help the prisoner to be reintegrated as a useful and productive member of the community. It has been conventional that prison work or training experiences all too frequently fail to impart skills that can be usefully applied at once the prisoner is released. The prison experience also acts as a stigmatising one, so t hat the prisoner finds that society labels them as an undesirable or untrustworthy person, disdain the fact that he/she has ostensibly been rehabilitated (Bartollas, 1985). Both ideological and socioeconomic pressures scarper an important role in bringing about changes to the concept of penalty and the methods of dealing with the criminal deviant. To date, however, there has been an increasing pressure for the avoidance and the minimisation of the penal servitude. The general consensus of much criminological opinion is that imprisonment as a corrective and punitive method has failed. What has emerged in response to this failure is the notion of community-based corrections, a movement that has received both intellect... ...e. The prison creative activity is only a phenomenon of relatively recent times in the muniment of man, it is by no means true that society is unable to pacify other means of loving control (Andenaes, 1974). What needs to be re viewed is not so much the methods of correction but the basic doctrines of punishment themselves. The base of all these new schemes may only serve the purpose of extending social control, instead of defeating, many social problems. In fact, community-based corrections may be seen as undermining, not assisting, movement towards fundamental change in the criminal justice system. Alternatives, therefore, need to be clearly and completely separated and high-and-mighty from the traditional prison system and the culture of imprisonment if they are to move over any greater hope of being successful.