Prisons are not Rehabilitation Centers, Which They should be.
Across the United States, thousand of inmates are doing times for crimes ranging from first degree murder to petty robberies. The jails do not care about what the inmates will do when the inmates get out. Their primary job is to make sure that the inmates are kept away from society so they could not do any harm to society. This system is not working out for the United States because when the inmates are put back into society, most of the time they commit the same crime again. What these correctional facilities fail to see is that, when the inmates leave prison, they did not learn their lesson. They go back into their world of crime. They do not change. The jail system in the United States needs to become a rehabilitation center in order to help these inmates. Some people in the government consider these “efforts to rehabilitate inmates as soft-headed and ineffective” (Butterfield 1). Currently prisons in the United States are not rehabilitation center because jails force its inmate to live in strictly structure atmosphere that is untrusting, unsafe, lack of education and it only leads inmates back to their crime life when they leave prison.
For inmates, living in a highly stick structure atmosphere with other inmates will not help prepare them to get back into the world that is outside of prison. The goal of prison is exclusion from society. Their goal is not to make the inmates better people. Within the prison structure, inmates are force to have a cellmate, someone that they do not know, and most of the time they do not trust. Everyone in prison has committed some type of crime, except for the guards that are watching over the inmates. Forcing a group of outlaws to live in the same vicinity is not a very good idea. This makes a person think that what they did was not that bad because other people have done it too. This type of thinking is not the best thing for them if the government wants them to stop committing these crimes. These inmates are living in an environment in which they cannot trust anyone because everyone in there is a criminal.
Another aspect of the environment the inmates are forced to live in is that it is a very untrusting atmosphere. Since everyone in the prison is a criminal, inmates do not trust each other. The prison system does not teach its inmate how to trust everyone around them. Inmates in prison see people around them getting stab and beaten up, the atmosphere in prison in which inmates sees nearly everyday. People who have committed crimes has mental issue that needs to be evaluated and helped, prison is not the place. Prison will only make that person worse off then before. The prison atmosphere truly affects the mental work of inmates. There are stories of prisoner being punished by putting them in solitary confinement. What could be more horrible then a prison within a prison. Statistic has shown that “in 2000, there were roughly 70,000 inmates in some form of isolation, up from about 48,000 in 1995” (Johnson 1). The Bureau of Justice statistic shows that there are more suicides in prison then they are homicides (1). This shows that there inmates in prison are mentally affected by the prison environment they are in.
Having to live in such a cruel environment, most prisoners wants to get on paroled but sadly, getting release on parole is very difficult. First a prison must keep a spotless record in prison and shows sign of rehabilitation in an environment that does not help in rehabilitating. The statistic also are against the inmates. “More than 95% of those who apply are rejected by the parole board, and of the few who actually receive a recommendation of parole, a little more than a third are released by the governor” (Feige 1). By knowing this statistic, gives few if no hope at all to prisoners, causing more mental issue to deal with.
Inside the prison walls, all the inmate could do is do their time. Doing their time is not trying to make themselves a better person, but just trying to survive life in prison. Instead of having inmates keeping up with education, they are force to worry about their own safety. Ray Champagne, a former prisoner, stated that “in prison you don’t truly grow as a human being; you just sort of grow old” (1). The prison system right now are making the time people spent in jail, times that are wasted. Times spend in jail should not be time wasted. The only things that prisoners have are a few old books. Ray Champagne argues that “if we are not able to feed our intellect; to touch, through books social and political issues we can not hope to grow but stunted.” (1). Not only is their lacks of books but lack of education to help inmates back into the world outside of prison.
The transition for inmates from prison to the world outside of prison is a very hard, but unfortunately there are not a lot of help for them out there. There chance of getting a job is slim due to their criminal background. Their mental state is unbalance due to living in the prison environment and now having to adjust to the world outside of prison. Statistics have shown that “Sixty-seven percent of the 630,000 state and federal prison inmates who will be released this year are likely to be rearrested within three years” (Butterfield 2). This is the outcome of the correctional system in the United States. They are very few programs out there that are helping prisoners adjust back to life outside of prison.
Prisons are not the answer to solving the escalating number of crimes in the United States. Putting all the bad people in one room and just leaving them there for a while is not going to help them. Even worse now it is even harder for inmates to get on paroled. Trying to get on paroled is as hard as trying to win a lottery. What the government must do is change the whole correctional system within the United States. The government should at least provide more rehabilitation help within the prison wall and outside of the prison wall to people who were former inmates. Created more prison is the same as created more underground society in which criminals can thrive in and recruit. Prison is too cruel for an average person to survive in without giving up some of their moral, just to survive. That is not an environment that one wants to put oneself in, so no one should ever have to live in such an environment. While the United States are accusing other country of human rights violation, according to Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program “Prisons have become the nation’s primary mental health facilities” (More Mentally… 2).
Work Cited
Butterfield, Fox. “Repaving the Long Road Out of Prison”. The New York Times. NY. 4
May 2004. 29 Nov 2005. ProQuest.
Champagne, Ray. Prison Book Program. 28 July 2004. 29 Nov 2005.
Feige, David. “Commentary; A Prison Without hope is a Dangerous Place”. California
Metro. Calif. 1 Feb 2005. 29 Nov 2005. ProQuest.
Johnson, Keven. “After Years of Solitary, freedom hard to grasp; Ex-con face long odds
on release from isolation”. USA TODAY.com. Va. 9 June, 2005. 29 Nov 2005. ProQuest.
“More Mentally ill in prison than hospitals”. New Pittsburg Courier. PA. 23 Nov 2003.
29 Nov 2005. ProQuest.
Suicide and Homicide Rates in State Prisons and Jail. 21 August 2005. 29 Nov 2005.
United States. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
It’s true the people in prison don’t really change. They should spend their time in prison learning how to become a better person. I’m curious, where did the inspiration for this article come from?
Selene’s last blog post..I’m Too Scared To Drive
It is a rough draft of a research paper. I end up not doing this topic for the final research paper though, I did it on Cambodian American youth in America instead, which covers the issue of Cambodian American youth struggle in growing up in urban America after living the “Killing Field” of Cambodia.
Well, at first what inspired me to look into this issue is because I live in one of the most dangerous city in America and I see everyday, people coming in and out of jail, and they do not change, most of them just become worst as a person.
People should be rehabilitated, but what if they don’t want to be? Are you saying everyone can be, cause I think this a misnomer.
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We should give everyone the chance to get rehabilitated. How do we know that they can’t be until we try?
And yes, if they do not want to then that could be a problem, but you can always give good incentive for them to enter rehabilitation. For example: if they go through the program, then their time serve could be reduced.
Stan, you ask some good questions!
Once upon a time, I taught college English in a men’s maximum security prison.
You’re right, prisons are there to punish, not rehabilitate. One problem is that men who could be rehabilitated are dumped into the same environment as those who are incapable of it, making everyone worse in the long run.
It was common for young men to be there because they’d been caught with enough drugs to be classified as a “dealer,” which is a very small amount in many cases. Young guys who should have been in college were sitting inside my classroom instead. There has to be a better way.
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