Prison to punish or rehabilitate?

Question

I have to prepare a speech on this topic for school. I have become very interested by it and was wondering what everyone elses opinions and points are. Anyone care to suggest a few thoughts?

Personally i feel as if it is vital for a prison to rehabilitate. the prisoners will eventually be let back into the community and if the person has not realised what they did is wrong, of course they are going to recommit. if a prisoner is punished they are left with anger and will seek revenge, this time the crime they commit will be worse as now they are seeking revenge on society, not simply an individual.

Answer 1

You obviously don't have a clue on this topic.

I won;t suggest any thoughts because it doesn;t worth the time/

In short, the studies show that 85% return to prison because they can't obtain an employment and place to live due to their record, not because of all that BS that you mentioned.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Lets be honest, nobody really cares whether these guys change their lives or not unless we are directly affected by them. Most of us are never in a situation where crime is constantly around us and most of us have the luxory of never dealing with these individuals. What it comes down to is money. Do we want to spend the money to keep them away from society or do we want to spend the money to train them to get along with society? If you look at the figures, most incarcerated individuals will end up coming back to prison and costing the tax payers a lot of money. This is a concern no matter which jail or prison you look at. No modern day jail or prison is designed to "punish" inmates. They are built to accomodate and rehabilitate inmates because it is the most cost effective way of running a prison. Those on the outside have no idea how many resources prisoners have access to. I used to believe that it was BS and we should throw them into a cell and loose the key, but now i see the benefits of focusing the attention else where. Your report should focus on the financial aspect and you will find that it will be extremely easy to support your thesis in favor of rehabilitation. Good luck.

Answer 4

I beleive that prisons should be use as rehabilitation. I am writing a paper on this also and through my research I have found that prisons that have rehabilitation programs such as college degree programs,and programs that enables these men and women to have a chance once they are released have a lower recidivism rate than other prisons who don't. This is why prisons are so overcrowded, because its filled with second and third time offenders. Its because while these people are in prison they become worse because nobody is there trying to guide them into living a better life. So I believe we should spend our tax dollars on rehabilitating these inmates because in the end it affects all of us. If a prisoner is released back out into society, and he was the same as when he was placed in prison or worse, then he can hurt the same person again, or another person. Maybe even you. And to the idiot who said most of us don't have to deal with these individuals, must be living in a fantasy America. Because the reality of it is that most of America have to live with these individuals, especially in the ghettos and low income areas. So you're basically saying that if it doesn't affect you don't worry about it. If you're that selfish then thats you. But the answer to your question is yes we should be rehabilitating these men and women because if we don't then this never ending cycle of crime in America will continue. And sons and daughters will continue to grow up without fathers because they are filling these prisons. And it will be economically sound because you will end up spending more money on building more prisons than you will on rehabilitating these men and women to keep them out of prison so maybe one day we can have more colleges than prisons.

Answer 5

Rehabilitation is a nice concept, but that has more to do with the prisoner than with the prison. If the prisoner wants to be rehabilitated, he can. On the other hand, if the prisoner does not wish to be rehabilitated he will not be. He will serve out his prison term and leave and go back to the streets where he came from and pick up his life where he left off. Rehabilitation is up to the prisoner and cannot be forced on him by a prison system.

Prison is therefore to punish. But offers should be made to rehabilitate, and teach skills as prisoners near the ends of their terms.

Answer 6

I think for your speech, you could make this like a debate topic. Prison could be for both reasons. If you think about it, it depends on the type of criminal that was sent there. The law says that going to jail is a punishment, and for the type of criminal that thinks of it as punishment, it can be, because I've seen that it can get extremely rough in there. But the same person could realize this time as rehabilitation because they never want to go through those experiences again, so they won't make the same mistake they did before. Others could care less about what happened in prison and get right back to what they were doing before.

Answer 7

relies upon on the crime. To rehabilitate a tax cheater is one and to punish a murderer is yet another in situations of the dying penalty, actually there is not any rehabilitation. genuinely state prisons purpose to rehabilitate with academic classes etc. besides the fact that, the Federal gadget would not supply such classes. they only concern extra time for crimes which may well be under any given state and the inmates in basic terms stay and might artwork there. there is not any GED application or college for the reason that there is not any state to concern a GED or college degree.

Answer 8

Prisons are for punishment. Over half of those who were supposedly rehabilitated went right out and committed a crime. Most people that get paroled are violated in the first year.

Answer 9

Prison is first a way for society to control aberrant behavior by acting as a deterrent to crime. Second as a way to stop people from committing more crime. Third as a way to punish the offender. Fourth as a way society takes revenge on criminals for the crime. Fifth as a way to offer rehabilitation.

Answer 10

The current model of incarceration is to punish and keep away from society, because they are considered either unfit or a danger to society.

The rehabilitation model was around in corrections during the late 50's and 60's. They found this model didn't work especially with sex offenders. They found that sex offenders could not be rehabilitated so they then moved on to the current model of punishment.

It is trial and error with corrections.

Answer 11

Think of prison as Criminal College:
Breaking and Entering 101
Intro to Assault with a Deadly Weapon
Guns and their Appropriate Applications for the
Beginner
Advanced Drug Dealing

With a curriculum such as this ^ what rehabilitation would be realistic?

Prison is mainly to warehouse convicts AWAY from society for the protection of us all. Sadly enough, it's the reality of it all.

As far as their "learning a lesson" they learn how to be worse. Occasionally they wake up and discover they did wrong, but ask any prison inmate this question :
Did you do it?

Without hesitation almost ALL of them say NO!