Socialization in Prisons To re-socialize is to changes ones beliefs, values, norms and behavior through a long process that often takes place in an institution or facility with many others who are going through the same process. One of the goals of re socialization is to change the behavior of an individual in order to make them behave a certain way or to see the wrongfulness of their previous lives. The basis of socialization is to unlearn and re-learn the common goal in places such as schools, boot camps, rehabilitation facilities and prisons. Today we will analyze re socialization in prisons. Jails, prisons, and criminal institutions are defined as their own society. They all have an order that the inmates must abide to in order to survive their sentences no matter how long they are. In their society they have individual social groups, activities, limitations and theories. Rather than being an institution within society, it is a society within itself, the only contrast between the society that we live in and the society that convicts live in is that they are deprived of their freedom and they strive to fill the time that they have to spend behind bars. (Lucas, 1996) When a person’s actions are deemed as unfit by a dominant institution they are judged and put through a process that determines whether or not they are fit to …show more content…
As prisons began to proliferate in the United States, prison administrators increasingly argued that prison labor was the pathway to both inmate reformation and prison discipline. With the decline of prison labor and the birth of the progressive era, prison officials began instead to talk about rehabilitation as the process of transforming inmates into (white and male) ideal citizens who were able to govern themselves (McLennan
Throughout his novel, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, author and professor Robert Perkinson outlines the three current dominant purposes of prison. The first, punishment, is the act of disciplining offenders in an effort to prevent them from recommitting a particular crime. Harsh punishment encourages prisoners to behave because many will not want to face the consequences of further incarceration. While the purpose of punishment is often denounced, many do agree that prison should continue to be used as a means of protecting law-abiding citizens from violent offenders. The isolation of inmates, prison’s second purpose, exists to protect the public. Rehabilitation is currently the third purpose of prison. Rehabilitation is considered successful when a prisoner does n...
The authors begin the book by providing advice on how a convict can prepare for release from prison. Throughout the book, the authors utilize two fictional characters, Joe and Jill Convict, as examples of prisoners reentering society. These fictional characters are representative of America’s prisoners. Prison is an artificial world with a very different social system than the real world beyond bars. Convicts follow the same daily schedule and are shaped by the different society that is prison. Prisoners therefore forget many of the obl...
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
Prisons have dated back to the twentieth century when the United States had almost two million people confined in prisons or jails. Prisons have been a form of government punishment that has shaped our nation to what it is today. The first jail was established in Philadelphia, in 1970. It was called the Walnut Street Jail and was recorded as the first use of imprisonment through solitary confinement. The basic principles of the new system were to reform those in prison, and to segregate those according to age, sex, and type of offenses charged against them (Schoenherr). The second prison was called Sing-Sing a...
Incarceration has been the center of the United States justice system ever since the opening of the nation’s first prison. In order to understand how the aspects of the first corrections institutions correlate to later correctional practices seen today. Whether it was temporary or permanent, there has always been some form of detainment for offenders, and they were always held against their will. Imprisonment of offenders in earlier times was done primarily to hold the accused until the authorities determined the offender’s actual punishment. Jails and prisons create a vicious and expensive cycle of crime that usually just end up overcrowding correctional facilities.
During the early half of the 19th century, there were two new models of prisons being built in the United States. Along with the new styles of prisons being constructed, two new styles of correctional systems were developed, the Pennsylvania system, and the Auburn, New York system (Mays & Winfree, 2009). Although the designs of the actual prisons were dramatically different, both systems shared similar ideals, with regards to how inmates should spend their days. Ultimately, the Auburn system prevailed as the more popular system of corrections in the United States, with some of the system’s correctional philosophies being used well into the 20th century (Mays & Winfree, 2009). Before discussing the actual philosophies, which were used to manage the inmates in each system, we should first look at the difference in the design of the prisons used in each system.
The overall goal of correctional facilities can be broken down into three main functions which are retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation of the inmates. Today, there is much debate on rather private or public prison admiration is best to suit those goals. In a private prison the inmates are contracted out to a third party from either local, state, or federal government agencies (Smith 2012). Public prisons are where the government themselves house and supply the inmate’s basic needs with no third party involved. However, a large portion of the argument of private verses public prisons is over, which is best in achieving those goals more efficiently.
Many changes are made inside the justice system, but very few have damaged the integrity of the system and the futures of citizens and prisoners. Although the story seems to focus more on lockdown, Hopkins clearly identifies the damaging change from rehabilitation in prisons to a strategy of locking up and containing the prisoners. To the writer, and furthermore the reader, the adjustment represented a failure to value lives. “More than 600,000- about 3 times what it was when I entered prison, sixteen years ago. In the resulting expansion of the nation’s prison systems, authorities have tended to dispense with much of the rehabilitative programming once prevalent in America’s penal institutions” (Hopkins 157). The new blueprint to lock every offender in prison for extended sentencing leads to an influx in incarcerated people. With each new person
As the current prison structures and sentencing process continues to neglect the issues that current offenders have no change will accrue to prevent recidivism. The issue with the current structure of the prison sentencing process is it does not deal with the “why” the individual is an social deviant but only looks at the punishment process to remove the deviant from society. This method does not allow an offender to return back to society without continuing where they left off. As an offender is punished they are sentenced (removal from society) they continue in an isolated environment (prison) after their punishment time is completed and are released back to society they are now an outsider to the rapidly changing social environment. These individuals are returned to society without any coping skills, job training, or transitional training which will prevent them from continuing down th...
Prisons are institutionalized systems that hold people hostage against their will. Many believe that these institutions are fundamental to keep balance within society. Although prison systems are meant to seclude troubled individuals, it should go beyond just containing criminals. The judicial system is responsible for correcting and eliminating future delinquent behavior before they can be effectively situated back into society. In saying this, the court system does not implement these actions within prison systems, failing to fulfil the goals and the function of the prison overall. The U.S elots millions of dollars toward funding for our correctional system, but are unable to reform the basic natural rights and maltreatment within the prison system.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the nation, sky-rocketed to 708 percent between 1972 and 2008. Today, there are about 145,000 inmates occupying areas only designed for 80,000 (Posner). Peter Mosko, “an assistant professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice” (Frazier) stated, “America, with 2.3 million people behind bars, has more prisoners than soldiers” (Frazier). There have been studies that have shown “there are more men and women in prison than ever before. The number of inmates grew by an average of 1,600 a week. The U. S. has the highest rate of crime in the world” (Clark). Because of this influx in inmates, many prisoners’ rights groups have filed lawsuits charging that “overcrowded prisons violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment” (Clark). It is clear that the United States corrections system needs to be reformed in order to eliminate this problem. Prison overcrowding is a serious issue in society due to the fact it affects prison ...
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.
“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime control model.
Prison within the society in America has sharply veered towards the idea of mass incarceration. The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) is a criminal research group that reports on the quantity of people in the United States that are in the prison system, and in 2014 “PPI reckons the United States has roughly 2.4m people locked up, with most of those (1.36m) in state prisons” (J.F. 1). This number is cause for concern when compared to a study of recidivism released among thirty states in 2005 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) According to BJS, “About two-thirds (67.8%) of released prisoners were arrested for a new crime within 3 years, and three quarters (76.6%) were arrested within 5 years” (BJS 1). The concern is that rehabilitation programs in the United States are not effectively working to introduce an inmate into the general population. The reason inmates are typically repeat offenders is because the United States focuses more on punishment than rehabilitation. While rehabilitation methods do exist, they are not the focus within American prison systems, the ones that do exist are more geared toward manual labor and teaching trades. While this an effective means to teach a skill, this style of rehabilitation fails to address the ideas of empathy, accountability, and effective social interaction. The main focus of prisons in the United States is to maintain order in an inherently hostile environment so that inmates may ‘serve their time.’ The focus should be placed on educating inmates instead of strictly punishing those who are incarcerated.
... overcome the obstacles that once held them back and had led them to prison in the first place The experiences of prison are enough to make a former inmate “do whatever it takes to avoid a second term” (“Rehabilitative Effects”) This being said, the many religious, therapeutic, and educational proceedings have also given prisoners an initiative to stay out of prison The religious aspect gives inmates hope and courage The therapeutic provides inmates with a safe environment to share their issues and to receive positive encouragement And finally, the educational offers a way to acquire a GED and or occupational skills that will enable the previously incarcerated with skills that will give them an advantage to obtaining a job. The negative side of prisons has become the face of prisons, blinding the public to all of the good that incarceration offers the incarcerated.