How Does Prison Work

Within this essay, the statement ‘prison works’ will be discussed, with the focus of how effective prison is and is not on punishing young offenders and achieving the aim of offenders to reoffend. This debate shall be expressed/presented through the use of research, statistics and theory. A method of punishment is prison, which is referred to as ‘a building for the confinement of criminals of those awaiting trial.’(Soanes, Stevenson, and Dictionaries 2009). The modern prison has fulfilled a number of publicly-specified, overt roles which include incapacitation, punishment, deterrence, reform and rehabilitation. (Muncie and Wilson 2004). In modern society the role of punishment is to been seen as a complex and intricate process. “Punishment

When rehabilitating offenders, “they can be required to do things that may inconvenience them and which they would not do want to do voluntarily (McLaughlin and Muncie 2001: 204). Based on statistics, over two thirds of children reoffend within 12 months of release from secure institutions. Reoffending rates are also substantially higher amongst young adults in the criminal justice system than older adult offenders. (The Ministry of Justice statistics). Hence it can be argued that punishment in prison is not as effective for many young offenders, this may because of the experience they may of had in prison was not that harsh or severe for them to be put off reoffending. In addition to the points discussed about rehabilitation within prisons, not all prisons may offer this due to A criticism of the rational choice theory is that, it has limiting policy implications on how crime could be reduced. This is because rational choice theorist are mainly interested in situational dynamics, which affect the decisions that offenders make. Therefore they ignore the evidence of how effective rehabilitation programs are. (Lilly, Cullen and Ball 2011:

This is because of the various programs prisons offer to offenders, to help them with rehabilitation, having an aim of offenders not to reoffend. Such as spoken about in the beginning of the essay with the example of the education classes which are provided to offenders within the prison. This aim of rehabilitation which prisons have is for the wellbeing of society and offenders themselves. In addition because prison acts a deterrent, this helps offenders to make the choice of not reoffending as they are aware of the consequences and may be put off from offending again. However it can be argued that, prison are not as effective as they seem, due to the poor reoffending rates presented by statistics from the Ministry of Justice, that over two thirds of children are known to reoffend within 12 months of release from secure institutions. (MoJ). Therefore it can be suggested that prison does not work as well to rehabilitate their prisoners. In addition when talking about prison, other issues arise such as the legitimacy and inequality which is present in the criminal justice system, including prisons. It has been identified that these issues are not visible to the mainstream of society as ‘incarceration is concentrated and segregated.’ Meaning that prisons are seen to be intense and divided, from the public. (Western and Pettit, 2010). As a result prisons can work, if they had