The purpose of this paper is to analyze art as a possible rehabilitation tool to help prisoners reintegrate effectively into society. One of the reasons America has career criminals is that they lack compassion or empathy for other people. Many of these individuals may have had home lives devoid of any moral training. Teaching compassion or empathy is not something emphasized in schools; consequently, these individuals may never have learned compassion or how to find their own passion and use it in a healthy way. Instead, we put them behind bars with other criminals similar to them or worse and the revolving door pattern continues.
The stigma of incarceration for a convict is a barrier for reintegration into society, obtaining employment, or educational opportunities. We as a society should strive to rehabilitate an offender to be a contributing member of society, once their debt to society is paid. One way to teach criminals drive, motivation, and empathy could be through studio art. These inmates could analyze themselves and the reasons that brought them to this point in time and gain some personal understanding in the process in order to change behavior and destructive thinking patterns.
Having a group art session could also benefit by helping them develop positive interpersonal relationships between inmates and the staff. The therapist is there to assist them to learn how to behave in social settings. One example is critiquing each other’s work in a productive and supportive way. They can learn that comments are not a personal attack on the art work but what the art represents to each inmate and their interpretation. Learning how to accept this kind of feedback is a very mature process. Prisoners learn to express themselves...
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...n of inmates. What we as a country are doing is not working to rehabilitate offenders. This seems to be a low cost option to the very expensive vocational skills that are offered to inmates, but they cannot seem to get jobs even with the training because of the “you just got out of prison” attitude of society. Mobile has a wonderful program called “Project H.O.P.E” that helps ex-offenders get jobs and all the help they will need to put them on the road to a new life. It does not include Art therapy because it works after inmates have paid their debt to society. It just changes the attitude among employers.
It also rally’s the support of the entire community. Right now I have a friend that works in the Prison System in California and asked her about it this kind of program and she said they only hire therapist’s. They don’t have a program like the one I researched.
Rehabilitation also involves programs in prisons that have the goal of helping offenders return back to society (Goff, 2014, p.20). Prisons have also put in place programs to assist inmates, “the goal of these release programs are to ease the transition of offenders from the institution into the community while simultaneously promoting stable employment after release” (Cullen & Jonson, 2011, p.309). If a person has been in an institution for a long period of time it is often hard to adjust to life outside, which is why these programs are important in the justice
Without these men getting to work and becoming productive members of society, they are barred from this opportunity and the economy suffers (Appelbaum, 2015). Devah Pager, who conducted the famous study “Mark of a Criminal Recod,” which unveiled apparent discrimination against ex-offenders in the job market, weighed in on the issue: “Prior to the prison boom, when convictions were restricted to a smaller fraction of the population, it wasn’t great for their rehab potential but it wasn’t having a huge impact… Now such a large fraction of the population is affected that is has really significant implication, not just for those people, but for the labor market as a whole (Appelbaum,
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
Instead of prisoners just sitting in a cell doing nothing, why not put them to work, "Every inmate that works saves taxpayers $5,000 a year"(Smith). There are prisoners that work in greenhouses, that generated $57 million in revenue. As budget cuts rise working prisoners become more and more valuable. Inmates are finding ways to save money by recycling there old mattress, that would of end up in landfills. Some prisons even have their inmates help clean up dirty parks around them. While the prisoners are doing this they are learning skills , that will help them with different jobs. Prisoners that do a good job get rewarded with money bonuses. Prisoners learning how to be more responsible and understand how to become a better person will help them in the up coming future. With the prisoners getting paid for bonuses for good work this will make it feel as if it’s a real job. The experience that the inmates are receiving will help them with jobs once they are released from prison. Prisoners will strive to do better with the bonuses they are receiving, and will understand again what its like work. Now with this happening this will ensure the prisoners will have a better and healthier
ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION Valerie Hinton It is undeniable that mass incarceration devastates families, and disproportionately affects those who are poor. When examining the crimes that bring individuals into the prison system, it is clear that there is often a pre-existing pattern of hardship, addiction, or mental illness in offenders’ lives. The children of the incarcerated are then victimized by the removal of those who care for them and a system which plants more obstacles than imaginable on the path to responsible rehabilitation. Sometimes, those returned to the community are “worse off” after a period of confinement than when they entered.
The basic concept of educating prisoners while they are in prison is logical and simple. It makes sense to make convicts' time in prison productive. This leads to a person that, when he leaves prison, knows a better way of life than committing crimes which would inevitably send him back to prison. While making perfect sense, this solution drastically changes the concept of prison. The effects of social programs integrated with prisons start with helping direct the taxpayers money to more prolific uses, and expand to making people in America smarter, more educated, less dangerous.
Problems with crime have always been a concern to society. There are many different ideas about what causes it and even more ideas about how to stop it. Dr. Karl Menninger believes that our current prison system is not adequately addressing the motivation behind crime. In his article "Therapy, Not Punishment", Menninger says of the old prison system, "In its place should go a quiet, dignified, therapeutic programÉ" (544). He sets forth the claim of policy that criminals need to be treated with professional therapy. I don't think an introduction could be more clear than this.
For much of society prison is viewed as a facility that segregates and imprisons individuals who commit acts of crimes considered deviant from accepted social behaviors, to ensure the safety and security of the overall community. These individuals are thus handed down a mandated sentence, stripped of their individual freedoms, and are told to reflect on their actions as a means of punishment. However, this method fails to recognize the notion that a majority of these people will one day be allowed back into society, and as a result those who are released tend to fall back into old habits contributing to the rising recidivism rate that currently plagues our prisons. In recent years there has been a gradual push for the implementation of rehabilitation
The “Tough on Crime” and “War on Drugs” policies of the 1970s – 1980s have caused an over populated prison system where incarceration is policy and assistance for prevention was placed on the back burner. As of 2005, a little fewer than 2,000 prisoners are being released every day. These individuals have not gone through treatment or been properly assisted in reentering society. This has caused individuals to reenter the prison system after only a year of being release and this problem will not go away, but will get worst if current thinking does not change. This change must be bigger than putting in place some under funded programs that do not provide support. As the current cost of incarceration is around $30,000 a year per inmate, change to the system/procedure must prevent recidivism and the current problem of over-crowed prisons.
With few offenders in jail, there is less of a need for employment in the jail system. In twenty-four years the crime rate has drop in New York, below a hundred thousand for the first time since 1987 (Roberts). Many jailer are being laid off. Offering jobs and training programs that keep tracks of offenders out in the communities, would be a great opportunity. Job requirements would consist of giving advices and resources of way offenders can find lawyers or services that can help their
For many years, there have been a huge debate on the ideal of reform versus punishment. Many of these debates consist of the treatment and conditioning of individuals serving time in prison. Should prison facilities be a place solely to derogate freewill and punish prisoners as a design ideology of deterrence? Should prison facilities be design for rehabilitation and conditioning, aim to educate prisoners to integrate back into society.
The prison systems went as far as to do a study that was extremely eye opening it was put out in 2016 regarding 51 men who participated in a prison based art program. Consequently, they had bona fide positive results and progress. Progress was made, there was more time in between their arrests upon release. The key here is giving the prisoners skills and coping mechanisms that in builds their self-confidence. The result of this study showed 40% of the participants were less likely to offend. (Bharma, 2017)
Recidivism directly impacts the safety of all American citizens. Through trials and tribulations we know what does not work. We know that simply locking up an offender for a period of time followed by releasing them to fend for themselves is ineffective. We can capitalize on their desire to change while they are incarcerated by supporting them and giving them the tools and skills they need to hold on to that desire. In 2009 it cost an average of $47,000 to incarcerate an inmate in California. That is money that can better be used elsewhere. By investing in life skill programs you reduce the amount of inmates who re-offend and clog up the system. You get help to those who really need and want the help. You lower the overcrowding of jails and prisons and you get the system back to what it was designed to do….rehabilitate.
Incarceration has not always been the main form of “punishment” when it comes to doing an injustice to society. In fact, in the early 1600’s common forms of punishments for doing wrong in society included social rejection, corporal punishment, forced labor etc. (“Prison History.”). It had not been until the 18th century where it had been determined that incarceration could actually be a form of punishment correlating with a set amount of time in which an individual had to serve dependent on the severity of his actions. The logic behind incarceration is to restrict a person of his liberty as retribution for the crime he has committed (Prison History.”) Prisons that were created in the 18th century gained their recognition because of their high goals in perfecting society. But, the truth is as people were focusing on perfecting society prisons soon became overcrowded, dirty, and most of all dangerous. By the late 19th century many more people had become aware of the poor prison conditions which had led to a “reformatory” movement. The reformatory movement was put into place as a means of rehabilitation for inmates (“Prison History.”) Prisons would now offer programs to reform inmates into model citizens by offering counseling, education, and opportunities to gain skills needed for working in a civilian world. However, with the growing amount of inmates each year prisons are still becoming overcrowded. Because prisons are so overcrowded there are not enough resources being spent on achieving the rehabilitation of inmates and reintegrating them into society in order for them to survive in the civilian world once released from prison (“Prison History.”)