A Critique of Philosophical Approaches to Criminal Justice Reform

A Critique of Philosophical Approaches to Criminal Justice Reform

People are arrested every day in the United States. They are put on probation or sent to jail, and sometimes they are let out on parole; there are millions of people affected. In 1995 alone there were over five million people under some form of correctional supervision, and the number is steadily increasing. The incarceration rate is skyrocketing: the number of prison inmates per 100,000 people has risen from 139 in 1980 to 411 in 1995. This is an immense financial burden on the country. Federal expenditure for correctional institutions alone increased 248% from 1982 to 1992. Obviously something has to be changed in the justice system. If the crime rate is rising this much, the correctional justice system isn't functioning properly, and needs to be reformed. Many people have offered theories as to what should be done with the prison system, the extremes being retributivism and the therapeutic model, but what they all seem to have overlooked is that there is no single system that works for everyone. Blanket generalizations as to the nature of the criminal mind cannot be made. Every criminal is different, with different motivations and different psychological characteristics so that different things are required to make them repent or deter them from further criminal activity, and I believe that the solutions offered are not enough to lower the crime rate and prison population. Something needs to be done on a more fundamental level so that fewer people turn to crime in the first place, thereby providing the prison system with the freedom to improve the attention it gives to the people that do become criminals; my solution is a combination of economic reform and...

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... would take a long time to take effect on the prison populations, but I think it makes more sense than trying to attack the prison itself. No one solution will work for every prisoner; if we assume that it will, crime rates will still continue to climb exponentially as they have in recent years, and prisons will continue to overcrowd and to drain millions of our tax dollars that could be better spent on education and other things. The trend can only be reversed by attacking the root of the problem. As the old saying goes, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and this rings true for inmates as well as dogs. Train them while they're puppies, so to speak. A well brought up child will be no more inclined to commit a crime than a well-trained dog will be to urinate on the rug. And if the crime rate is so drastically reduced, society as a whole will be greatly improved.