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When a person commits a crime, it is usually caused by some kind of negative emotion. Fear of having to go without something, fear of not fitting in, hatred, frustration, boredom, anger, revenge, spite, and so on. If the criminal is not of sound mind, then there is also mental problems to consider. To reform the criminal, the negative emotions and mental health issues need to be resolved.

When a person is put into prison, they are not helped with their negative emotions. They are put into an environment with other people who are also plagued by negative emotions and they are excluded from normal interactions with the rest of society. This does not help to remove the negative emotions, it simply incubates and increases them.

Prisoners have normal rights and choices taken away from them. They can no longer choose where to go, what to do, or even what time to go to bed, things we as free adults take for granted. Doing without these things doesn't encourage these people to want to interact positively with society, it simply embitters them against the system in which they are stuck.

People who have been in prison for a long period of time become dependent on the institutionalism and are often scared when faced with having to live in the outside world again. Having to make their own choices and being able to do things without permission seems alien to them. This is clearly not helpful if the goal is to reform them.

Prison does not reform criminals. Instead, it increases their negative feelings towards society. These negative feelings are what caused them to act criminally in the first place. Increasing the person's negativity simply increases the problem. It does however remove the criminal from society, minimising the damage they can cause to other people's lives, and I think this is the reason that we continue to put criminals in prisons even though they are very ineffective at reforming them.

An alternative solution would be to help the criminal see the positive side of society, possibly via community service. Give them a way to contribute in a positive way, and to get something positive in return. Help them and guide them into enjoying their lives and feeling good about the world.

This wouldn't be suitable in all cases, for example when the criminal poses a threat to other people. In these cases, it would probably be more sensible to separate the criminal from society in the way that prisons do now, however there should be much more of a focus on helping the person recover from their negative feelings so that they can be reintroduced to society and helped to fit back in with normal life.

Of course, any system has it's faults and no one solution would be suitable for every case. I realise that my suggestions wouldn't suit everyone, but at least it might help a lot of people who might otherwise spend their lives in and out of jail. Putting everyone who doesn't behave as expected into prison is a very flawed system and there could certainly be some improvements if the powers that be took a better attitude towards the people in the system.

Learn more about this author, Kate Hudson.
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