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Add to FavoritesAre you willing to guess what country has the highest per capita prison population in the world? Go ahead, take a wild stab at it. If you answered the United States, you are smarter than a fifth grader, and probably most other Americans as well.
According to a June, 2007 ABC News report, one in every 133 Americans is behind bars, and the New York Times, in April of this year, put the U.S. prison population at 2.3 million. A June 2006 study, by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, concluded that 67% of ex-prisoners are rearrested within three years of their releases, and 52% return to prison.
By American standards, these figures are unacceptable.
How can a nation, which trumpets itself as the leader of the free world, and has such vast societal resources at hand, have the greatest percentage of its population locked up behind bars, and fail so miserably at changing such a deplorable scenario?
Let's examine a few factors that might contribute to these inexcusable and frightening statistics. Half of the prison beds in America are being occupied by non-violent drug offenders. Since 1970, the Drug Enforcement Agency has spent billions of dollars fighting a so called, "War on Drugs." Even the agency itself will admit it hasn't put a dent in the illicit drug trade.
Right or wrong, the tortured and addicted will always have some type of access to those illegal substances they are seeking, These people aren't human abnormalities. They are self-medicating verifiable behavioral issues, for which our society offers them little, if any, access to appropriate medical diagnoses and care. When are we truly going to see the addicted as the genuinely sick people they are? The medical community defines addiction as an illness. Treat the addicted with legitimate medical protocols and the black marketers disappear. Illegal drug crime no longer serves any gainful purpose and, subsequently, one in two American prison beds becomes vacant, virtually overnight.
American prisons merely warehouse the convicted, and give them nothing more to do with their time then to learn how to become better criminals, once released into society. Do prisons have work programs? Absolutely, but the only problem is there isn't any employment demand for prison cooks, launderers or automobile license makers, outside the walls of any American institution of incarceration.
Despite the aforementioned, there are prison inmates that change their attitudes and behaviors, prior to completing their sentences and rejoining society. However, the change in thinking has to come from within them, and is rarely, if ever, the result of some comprehensive reformation effort, made on the part of our system of prisons.
We can easily appropriate a trillion dollars to fight a war on the other side of the world that, to date, has accomplished little, other then make defense contractors like Haliburton obscenely rich. However, by comparison, we refuse to spend mere pennies medically treating the addicted and offering criminal inmates meaningful job skill training. If properly trained, needy domestic employers would desperately offer well schooled ex-convicts gainful employment, upon their return to society. Meanwhile the lives of all Americans would benefit from the reintroduction of former legal offenders offering job skills that are actually marketable. Would some choose to re-offend? Without a doubt, but is anyone naive enough to believe that all former prisoners would rather risk returning to prison than earning a livable wage, once no longer incarcerated?
Don't you find the aforementioned circumstances horribly misguided and lacking any thoroughly logical reasoning? Aren't we a more intelligent society than what our present methods of changing criminal behaviors indicate?
Learn more about this author, Tim Gray.
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Yes
Through the objective piecing together of previous research on the area recidivism, it can be determined whether or not rehabilitation works. By looking at the vast amount and statistical nature of the research, certain methods can be looked at empirically. Looking at the totality of the evidence it is safe to say that "yes" rehabilitation does indeed work. In fact, according to research out of the University of Cincinnati there is no evidence that offenders cannot be rehabilitated by using proven interventions or correctional rehabilitation programs which reduce recidivism. Now, that is not to say that all rehabilitation programs work equally well, or that these programs work uniformly with all offender groups, because they most certainly do not. However, rehabilitation works when it focuses on the areas in an offender's life which precipitates criminal behavior: Criminogenic needs. Criminogenic needs are those which lead to criminal activity, such as alcoholism or drug usage.
The implementation of rehabilitation programs are only as good as those who run these programs and only as good as the guiding principles of interventions. In other words, if the rehabilitative principles of interventions focus on non criminogenic needs, the likely hood of the program being doomed to failure is quite high. The focus must be on effective intervention strategies. There are four intervention strategies, that if followed are shown to reduce recidivism.
The first principle is that there must be an assumption that correctional treatment is based on the known predictors of crime. The predictors of crime are separated into two categories, static and dynamic predictors. Static predictors do not change over time. Things like past criminal history or a person's basic personality. Dynamic predictors, such as antisocial behaviors, do change and this is what treatment strategies must focus on. The second principle is that treatment services should be behavioral in nature. Programs that make use of techniques of modeling, role playing, and extinction are most effective. These programs need to be positive and intensive, lasting three to nine months occupying a majority of the offender's time while in prison. Third, treatment interventions should focus on higher risk offenders targeting criminogenic needs. It is argued that lower risk offenders are less likely to recidivate and therefore any time and money spent on programs for this group of offenders could be better spent on higher risk offenders. Finally, a range of other considerations, if addressed, will increase treatment effectiveness. Things like intervention setting, training of staff, effective aftercare, and most importantly specific responsivity. That is, tailoring the treatment plan to the individual learning style of the offender.According to the data, programs that employ cognitive behavioral treatments and conform to the principles of intervention reduce recidivism rates 20 to 25 percent. It's kind of hard to argue with those results.
Learn more about this author, Matt Hofer.
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