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Rehabilitation of Prisoners
Prison like any other institution plays a correctional role in society. They offer correctional services to inmates to make them better members of the society. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate the inmate and ensure that they leave prison as corrected members of the society as law-abiding citizens. This is the role of prison and the reason prisons were set up.
However, rehabilitation of prisoners is the biggest burden that the society has experienced from history. Prison is a hard life for inmates since they are segregated from the society and forced to lead a life that they have never led before. Prison is not just buildings but is an institution with facilities that help the prisoner to change their lives and lead a normal life.
According to the Crime Museum (2015), rehabilitation should make the prisoner not to admire crime or anything that can lead them to prison. However shows that the time prisoners spend in prison does not help the inmates to change but rather they acquire new skills in crime.
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Lack of prisoners non-complying to the resources offered
Without proper rehabilitation strategy, the prisoners may be easily pushed back to crime due to the kind of life they lead while in prison. This has led to the increasing number of criminals with some prisoners being second or third offenders. To analysts, this only challenges the role that rehabilitation is playing to the general society.
Prisons of today are characterised by strict sentences limited resources and punishments that make prison life a nightmare to all the prisoners who live in. The prisoners face hard life in prison and adjusting back to society when they are released becomes almost impossible to them. To improve rehabilitation, many prisons are currently recruiting professionals in particular fields that can help improve the rehabilitation process (Crime Museum, 2010).
These professionals offer specific rehabilitation services to prisoners during their life in prison. However despite this many prisons are faced with rehabilitation challenges that appear when the prisoners are released. The challenges range from lack of Substance abuse recovery, lack of inmates none complying to the resources offered and lack of support system of individual prisoner when released back
into society.
Lack of Substance Abuse Rehabilitation
According to the department of correctional services of South, Australia research has shown that use of appropriate programs that have effective methods that help to bring change in prisoners by changing their perception of society may lower the rate of crime in society. These services are called offense specific programs are offered to prisoners together with other interventions increase the rehabilitation rate of the prisoner. Further the departments suggest that the rehabilitation programs should be integrated with case related services to give a cohesive service to the prisoner.
Hammond (2013) argues that drug and substance abuse fight is the role of the criminal justice and public health. It is a battle between different factions of the society from those who are pro-imprisonment conservatives to progressive sentiments that insist on finding solutions that will provide a permanent solution to the menace. In America, this has been a fight between the conservative politicians and the Congress.
Substance abuse is one of the reasons why people get arrested or go to jail. Some people are either drug traffickers or they are either user of the same substances. When these people are detained and taken to prison, life becomes so unbearable to them since they are not like any other normal criminal. Apart from the disciplinary process that every prisoner goes through. There is a need to provide substance rehabilitation to prisoners who were on drugs before the arrest.
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According to WHO dependence on drugs is a disorder that can be treated effectively by governments. However many states have not made an effort to ensure that they put in place structures that can help rehabilitate people. For prisoners, it is worse since they a thrown in prison and left to survive on their own. This does not change the prisoner’s habits but rather drives them deeper into drugs. This is because the prison does not adequately rehabilitate the prisoners but rather they are released back to the society with the same substance abuse problem.
Many prisons lack rehabilitation services due to inadequate personnel to handle the prisoners. This makes the prison administration to appear to be doing nothing to address the issues (Siegel, 2011). Further the challenge of rehabilitating the prisoners are linked to the resource burden that it brings to society. Many countries fail to have appropriate rehabilitation programmes because of the cost of rehabilitation.
In US residential substance abuse treatment for state prisoner programmes have been established to help solve the substance abuse problem. The role is to help the governments’ agencies to come with up substance abuse strategies that are used in local facilities to help solve substance abuse. The services are supposed to extend further to community-based after care services that are used by the probation department. The approach is based on the module of “thinking for change” Which is a balanced curriculum that is integrated to provide solutions to social problems.
McNeill (2012) argues that due to the cost of substance rehab in prisons and the poor segregation of prisoners according to their needs the government can come up with community-based centres that can treat the addicts. Diverting the drug users to community centres rather than prison could reduce the rate of crime. The government can resort to different approaches to forming of cognitive groups that apply empirical approaches to problem solving.
Therefore, we need to treat the causes of substance abuse through the use of community interventions that can help to reduce the problem. Countries are supposed to develop a drug rehabilitation programme that is based on the government policy and strategic pans so that they fit in the national drug policy o the country
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Lack of prisoners non-complying to the resources offered
Some prisoners do not comply with the resources offered to them. A prison is a place where freedom and guaranteed right of the prisoner are denied while other restricted are injected into the life the prisoner. This is supposed to ensure that the individual accepts the mistakes they made and were ready to move on to a changed life. According to the United Nations, this should end up with a rehabilitated individual
Some prisoners fail to comply with the resources offered to them since they are victims of an inefficient justice system that is full of untrained officers who are extremely corrupt. This makes the prisoner feel uncomfortable making rehabilitation ineffective to them. In many instances, peoples have been incarcerated due to the mistakes of others. The prisoner ends up being mentally disturbed since they are suffering from the mistakes of another person (Fitzpatrick, 2011).
To such a prisoner life becomes so unbearable by realizing that their rights have been grabbed and replaced with new strict conditions that the prisoner has to adapt to. No amount of resources in a correction facility can make such an individual to comply.
Furthermore, many of the staff employed in the prison are underpaid by the government and end up extending their frustrations to the prisoners. Other staff may be poorly trained or lack specific training in prison management. The staffs are only trained in paramilitary and lack knowledge in prison management. This makes the managers incompetent and unable to run the prison guidelines.
This makes the prison difficult and the resources channelled by the government to these facilities to be wasted. Furthermore many governments have made no effort in training those employed in prisons on specific prison rehabilitation approaches.
Further, the prisoners are mistreated by officials who are supposed to help them to adjust to better members of the society. In many cases, abusive authorities will intimidate or abuse prisoners as a way of gaining control over them. Mostly these are occasioned by the lack of relevant tools and capacity by the police to investigate cases. The police, therefore, resort torture as the only way of ensuring that they get information from the prisoners.
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Lack of support system of individual prisoner when released back into society
Rehabilitation has also been ineffective due to lack of support system of an individual prisoner when released back into society. Life after prison is the worst nightmare that every prisoner thinks of before being released (Shapland & Bottoms, 2011). Despite the joy that comes with the freedom, the burden of life after prison haunts every prisoner. Some prisoners have been jailed for over thirty years and have spent all their adulthood in prison.
What happens when such an individual leaves prison? How or where does such a person start from in the outside world? Life becomes unbearable and pushes such an individual to extreme ends where they are left with very little options.
According to the United Nations prison management handbook Prison, life affects people and when they are released to the society they face so many problems. Majority suffers from not only psychological but also physical health due to the conditions that they have been exposed to while some of them abuse substances in prison.
On the other hand, some prisoners find it difficult to get employment and housing. Some of them will depend on relatives while others will live on the streets as beggars until they can find a job that can pay for accommodation. With this, many temptations can make the prisoner fall back to crime and find themselves in prison again. This has become the major reason there are many second offenders in prison.
The way the prisoner leaves the prison and settles into the society depends on how long they have been behind bars. Some have been in for long to the extent that when they come out the whole society has changed, and they have to learn life and new skills a fresh. This is disturbing since detention offers several factors to prisoners apart from just being a correctional facility. It helps them to practise restraint from drugs and thus part of rehabilitation.
Drug addiction for abuse offenders depends on how the life of a prisoner unfolds after their release from prison. When the prisoner is exposed to situations of drug related substances, then the person can easily fall back to drug addiction.
In many cases, prisoners are released into the society with no support centres that they can attach themselves as they try to settle in society. The prisoners are left to struggle for themselves and to find a way of integrating into the society. However, factors like employment, family support, stabilization of mental illness and financial stability help the individual to integrate easily into the society. These factors, therefore, focus on psychological, social and material support f the offender when out of prison.
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Recommendations
Governments and communities should develop effective ways of reintegrating these offenders into the society. The offenders need to find something constructive that they can do in their lives which make them desist from crime. The offenders need to find social groups that they can attach themselves to as they try to make their live meaningful. According to Peters (2011), these groups range from work, family and peer influences. Helping the individual understand influences that can make their life meaningful that makes them desist from crime and falling back.
Support groups will accept the individual and help the individual to feel appreciated and give a chance for a second life. Social and structural features of the community that the prisoners find themselves in after release affect each and every individual. In most cases the released offenders find themselves in towns or cities where the neighbourhood is concentrated with other released offenders may make the individual to fall back to crime.
However, the most important factor that makes people to either fall back to crime or stays off is the ability to get a source of income. The majority of the offenders who are in prison were engaged in an activity that was supposed to add an extra coin to their pocket. Thus, the financial hardship that the prisoner goes through may increase their chances of engaging in a similar crime or a different crime. From the above arguments the recommendations that the state needs to adopt is to develop adequate policies that ensure prison is made a correctional facility and not just an institution.
Many prisons need to be rehabilitated before they can be used to rehabilitate people. The government has to invest enough resources in prisons by training the staff and having adequate resources that can be used to segregate prisoners and deal with them according to their needs prisoners should be treated depending on the class or category of the crime committed. . Therefore, each case has to be treated as unique, and the individual assisted through the rehabilitation process.
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Further the society needs to be empowered to be able to combat crime and fight crime related elements through different groups. Support groups within the society reduce crime by providing a social association to the members of the society. Furthermore, the community needs to play a centre role in reintegrating and accepting released offenders into the society. Stigma and discrimination push crime gangs to regroup and commit further crimes.
Finally, the prison has to be like a second home to offender where they get to know their mistakes and accept to change. It is important for the staff who work in prisons to ensure that they help the prisoners to be able to accept change and desist crime. Desisting from crime is a psychological and exemplary process that the prisoner needs to be taken through and given time to change.
Conclusion
Government policy is the most important factor that can help in rehabilitating any criminal. The transition of an individual from the prison to the community is a process that the prisoner needs to be prepared in advance before they leave the society. The governments need to develop policies that give room for correctional centres to develop and support the prisoners morally as they prepare themselves for the outside world. People are jailed or imprisoned because the state has passed that law. Therefore, the state needs t have recommendations that will ensure prison is a correctional facility and not punishment centre.
On the other hand support centres need to exist in a society that focuses on preventing crime and delinquency among the citizens. The role of fighting crime should not a state issue but rather a community problem. The communities need to be empowered and have appropriate support centres that can take people who have committed a minor crime on parole or probation. When the offenders are doing community work, they need to be supported and taken through therapy that will help them realise the need to desist from crime (Ekunwe, Jones & Mullin, 2010).
When the whole community fights crimes, then prison will not be relevant to the offenders since crime will be reduced. However the need to empower the community with alternatives to livelihood will contribute to reducing poverty among the members and decrease the rate of crime proportionally. Poverty is the biggest problem affecting many people. Hardcore criminals engage in crime to make a living and not to terrorize the society. What happens to these people when they leave prison and stay in the society determines the kind of person they become in future?
Furthermore, some criminal activities have been characterized as inborn and thus passed down from generation to generation. What support is given to the family both moral and psychological to ensure the young ones in the family do not pick up those traits? The family of the offender is left desperate in trying t find an alternative to livelihood.
This may force them to engage in crime and thus the culture of crime revolving in the family. Therefore, the society has to support the offenders in ensuring that they can adapt and integrate into the society. Rehabilitation is not fighting crime but crime can be combated within the community and outside prison.
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Annotated bibliography
Crime Museum (2015) Rehabilitative Effects of Imprisonment. http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/rehabilitative-effects-of-imprisonment
The crime museum offers a variety services that range from rehabilitation to training of inmates. It’s a resource centre for training and correctional facilities to government
Ekunwe, I., Jones, R. S., & Mullin, K. (2010). Public attitudes toward crime and incarceration in Finland. Researcher: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23(1), 1-21.
The researchers are scholars of criminology with a passion in crime related activities. The article focuses on how the public perceives crime and incarceration and whether people who have committed crimes can be integrated and taken back into the society. The research involved the prisoners and the public in determining their perception.
Fitzpatrick, C. (2011) what is the Difference between ‘Desistance’ and ‘Resilience’? Exploring the Relationship between Two Key Concepts. Youth Justice 11 (3)
The article analyses resistance and resilience as a way of rehabilitation by an individual. Each under rehabilitation is faced with the two choices and if the offender does not fall for any. Then the individual ends up falling back to crime or becoming a second offender.
Glaze, L.E.; and Herberman, E.J. Correctional Populations in the United States, 2012. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013. Available at Office of National Drug Control Policy. Answers to frequently asked questions about marijuana. WhiteHouse.gov. Accessed 20 April 2014. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/frequently-asked-questions-and-facts-about-marijuana#prison
The article is a government document from the department of justice the National Drug Control Policy office. The study entailed the study focussed mostly on marijuana and the questions that were asked by visitors to the website. The document is a research document on the use of marijuana and how it relates to crime within the country. Its main focus was on how the correction process of rehabilitating prisoners works and why some of them fall back to crime.
Lisa M. Hammond (2011) Drug War Policy and The Prison Industrial Complex
Hammond is a researcher and scholar of criminology. The document is based on the study of drug abuse in the society and how the policies that exist can be used to fight the problem. It focussed on how government policies are not effective in the drug war and why there is need to change and improve on the correctional laws.
McNeill, F. (2012) Four forms of ‘offender’ rehabilitation: Towards an interdisciplinary perspective. Legal and Criminological Psychology 17(1): 18–36.
The article studies the four types of offenses that criminal will engage in that can lead them to prison. These offenses characterise the level that the criminal is and will determine the kind of punishment that may be judged upon the offender. It shows how individuals get into crime and the level and magnitude of the offence they commit.
Peters, C. (2011) Social Work and Juvenile Probation: Historical Tensions and Contemporary Convergences. Social Work.
Peters writes on the role that professionals play in rehabilitation. The book looks at the history of crime and probation and the contemporary convergences that have developed since then. Since the onset of probation, many scholars have advanced different methodologies and therapies that can be used to correct juveniles and prisoners.
Siegel, L. (2011) Criminology. Theories, Patterns & Typologies. USA: Wadsworth.
These are theories of crime involvement on how people engage in criminal activities. The theories explain how the individual falls back to crime by lacking social and moral support from the society. Through lack of support, the criminal gangs regroup and start new criminal activities. Individuals also learn new crimes from their fellow inmates which they may practise when released.
Shapland, J., & Bottoms, A. (2011) Reflections on social values, offending and resistance among young adult recidivists. Punishment & Society 13(3): 256–282.
The article is about the social value in a society that supports the activities done by the young people. It looks at how punishment in society can help the young to avoid crime or continue with a crime. It highlights the pitfalls of society that contribute to crime and how these crimes can be tackled.
United Nations (2013) Prison Management Handbook. New York.
The handbook by the UN is a management guide that is a toolkit used internationally according to the UN standards. It shows the basics managing the prison and prisoners. Prison involves both the prisoners and the facilities within the institution. Each element in the prison plays a correctional role that helps in ensuring that the whole system runs.
United Nations (2010). Handbook for prison leaders. A basic training tool and curriculum for prison managers based on international standards and norms.
This is a tool kit for prison managers that can be used for training staff within the prison. It contains international standards and norms that are applied internationally and the way the prisons should be run.
References
Crime Museum (2015) Rehabilitative Effects of Imprisonment. http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/rehabilitative-effects-of-imprisonment
Ekunwe, I., Jones, R. S., & Mullin, K. (2010). Public attitudes toward crime and incarceration in Finland. Researcher: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23(1), 1-21.
Fitzpatrick, C. (2011) what is the Difference between ‘Desistance’ and ‘Resilience’? Exploring the Relationship between Two Key Concepts. Youth Justice 11 (3)
Glaze, L.E.; and Herberman, E.J. Correctional Populations in the United States, 2012. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013. Available at Office of National Drug Control Policy. Answers to frequently asked questions about marijuana. WhiteHouse.gov. Accessed 20 April 2014. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/frequently-asked-questions-and-facts-about-marijuana#prison
Lisa M. Hammond (2011) Drug War Policy and The Prison Industrial Complex
McNeill, F. (2012) Four forms of ‘offender’ rehabilitation: Towards an interdisciplinary perspective. Legal and Criminological Psychology 17(1): 18–36.
Peters, C. (2011) Social Work and Juvenile Probation: Historical Tensions and Contemporary Convergences. Social Work.
Siegel, L. (2011) Criminology. Theories, Patterns & Typologies. USA: Wadsworth.Shapland, J., & Bottoms, A. (2011) Reflections on social values, offending and desistance among young adult recidivists. Punishment & Society 13(3): 256–282.
United Nations (2013) Prison Management Hand book. New York.
United Nations (2010). Handbook for prison leaders. A basic training tool and curriculum for prison managers based on international standards and norms.
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