Crime
To understand why a belief in criminological positivism and a faith inrehabilitation and a welfare characterized crime control has formed in themodern era, there are two major issues to consider. One is the lack ofhumane conditions that are presently provided in prison systems and theother is the degree of rehabilitation that prisons can and shouldfacilitate to cope with prison populations that are swelling beyondcontrol. Rehabilitation to avoid incarceration in the first place or toreduce the likelihood that inmates will return to prison after theirrelease is the best possible solution. According to Human Rights Watch (Human rights watch prison project),prisoners suffer from physical mistreatment, excessive disciplinarymeasures, intolerable physical conditions and inadequate medical and mentalhealth care. Prisons are severely overcrowded and do not have adequatestaffing. Many local jails are unsafe, vermin-infested and lack areaswhere inmates can get exercise or fresh air. Violence by inmates andguards is common. Mentally ill inmates who comprise between six andfourteen percent of the incarcerated population do not receive adequatemonitoring and treatment. Private prisons opera
Community-based supervision and prison rehabilitationprograms such as the Oregon and Kansas programs represent excellentexamples of how rehabilitation can control prison populations. There has alsobeen a sixty percent reduction since 1995 in major disciplinary problems. Given the number of nonviolent offenders and substance abusers inprison, rehabilitation rather than prison can be a more effective and lesscostly solution in many cases. Many forms of inhumane treatment of prisoners is against the law andprisoners need to increase their staff and resources, train their staff,and hire more women to deal with the growing female inmate population. If avoiding incarceration in the first place is not an option, prisonsthemselves should contribute to the rehabilitation process. Inaddition to the treatment of prisoners in general, the special concerns ofnon-violent offenders and women should be addressed. Amnestyreported an undetermined number of cases of prison guards who grope womenduring daily searches and who rape women. Amnesty International reports that the women's prison populationhas tripled since 1985, but prison facilities have not kept pace by hiringmore women to guard the female population (Ruggiero, 1999). But, manyof them will only wind up in jail again. It costs more than $60 a day to house an inmate ina state prison. Since the prison boom began in 1980, the number of inmates in jailsand prisons has risen to two million with ninety-seven percent of theseinmates facing eventual release from prison (Butterfield, 2001). So, we'retaking non-violent offenders and placing them in very violent environments,almost ensuring that this exposure will negatively impact their futurebehavior. TheOregon program has turned from historical vocational training for low-paying jobs to comprehensive inmate training for jobs that companies haveopen, like telemarketing and using computers to map water and tax districtsfrom aerial photographs. The Bureau of Justice Statisticsestimated that about 614,000 people will be released from state and federalprisons 2001 and that within three years sixty-two percent of them would bearrested again, and forty-one percent would return to prison.
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Acceptance Essays
