Rehabilitation vs Incarceration

As we examined in the previous post, it is clear that America is facing high incarceration rates.  With the U.S. holding the largest chunk of the percentage of incarcerated people in the world, it begs the question what our country is doing wrong compared to others.

Let’s first focus on defining the two terms: Rehabilitation and Incarceration.  Rehabilitation, in the Criminal Justice aspect, has a focus on preparing the individual to become a respectful member of society.  This process can occur while still in prison or can be a follow-up to their time.  Incarceration is just whenever an individual is in jail or prison, rather than an alternative punishment by court.

The National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a correlational study comparing the prison system of America and Norway, who has a much larger focus on rehabilitation than the US.  Norway has incarceration rates smaller than an eighth of America’s which leads me to believe we could learn a thing or two from them.

Although some believe incarceration, or ‘putting the bad guys behind bars,’ is the best way to prevent crime, this ritual comes with many other unexpected side effects.  By having so many adults in prison, we are also taking away parents and trusted adults for potentially non-violent and minor crimes.  The backlash this could have on neighborhoods and families seems to be more harm than the actual crimes that have been committed by the individual.  There is also the issue of recidivism, or the likelihood that a criminal who already faced punishment will repeat the same type of criminal behavior.

According to Harvard Politics, two out of three released criminals are rearrested within three years of their release.  So not only are these criminals going back to over-populated prisons, but it also shows that the system is not doing a good enough job at preventing crime or ‘teaching criminals their lessons.’  Rehabilitation, either after prison or incorporated into prisons with more freedoms, should be implemented more often in sentencings in order to better prepare these individuals to their return in society.  Some prisons even offer trade schools within their system so ex-convicts can find a job after they get out.  The Department of Corrections refers to this as ‘community reentry.’ This can be insanely effective in decreasing recidivism since a lot of individuals will repeat deviant behaviors when they don’t know how else to get their life on track or feel as though prison can actually be less stress than the ‘real world.’

Needless to say, our system doesn’t seem to be working incredibly well and there are other places who seem to have a better hold on the issue.  The issue really is one that has many complications but I believe that by implementing rehabilitation in different steps of our criminal justice system, we could greatly reduce crime rates and our incarcerated population.