The United States Correctional System

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United States Correctional System
The United States correctional system is put in place for the time after a conviction to punish the convicted as well as get them ready to reenter society as a productive member. Unfortunately, Langan and Levin (2002), statisticians with the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 67.5% of prisoners released from prison are arrested again within three years time. Obviously, there is some sort of breakdown in the correction area of the criminal justice matrix. Even though there is overcrowding in the current prison systems, the public needs to look at options to remove criminals from the system and give them every opportunity to remain productive members of society once they are released. The correctional system is in place to both punish and rehabilitate offenders. In the fight to reduce crime, rehabilitation is the most effective.
The current correctional system punishes offenders by restricting their lives and make living on the inside uncomfortable. While people on the inside are given meals, running water, beds, climate control, physical activity and entertainment, everything that would be considered needed, much of which law abiding citizens do not have access to, incarceration is not meant to be fun. The convicted have to live under a strict set of rules. Tonry reported (as cited in Weisberg, 2012) that the bigger the population in prison, them more society is committed to reform. This is not always the case, in more recent time the nation is getting tough on crime and is in no way looking for criminal to have an easy way out or even the treatments necessary.
The reasons that punishing offenders is a good deterrent of crime that by taking away the freedom of an individual makes them re...

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...ys to change the system to meet the needs. The system works today for the way the United States is today and will continue to change to meet the new waves of criminal activity.

Works Cited

Benson, E. (2003). Rehabilitate of punish? Monitor on Psychology, 34(7), 46.
Langan, P. A., & Levin, D. J. (2002). Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994. Retrieved from http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpr94.pdf
Schmalleger, F. J. (2011). Criminal justice today: An introductory text for the 21st century (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall.
Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation. (2006). Oversight of federal assistance for prisoner rehabilitation and reentry in our states. (Serial No. J-109-114). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Weisberg, R. (2012). Reality-challenged philosophies of punishment. Marquette Law Review, 95(4), 1203-1252.

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