Introduction
The immergence of prison industrial complex is one of the main reasons why there are still high rates of crime in the country. This has become like an organization or rather a department in the government, which is also proving to be beneficial to the society. We have been fooled to believe that prisons are established for the sole purpose of reducing the rate of crime in the society. However, since the inception of prisons, the rate of crime is increasing rather than reducing. Furthermore, the country is experiencing even more sophisticated criminals than it was earlier experienced (Flateau 54). This therefore implies that prisons are no longer serving their purpose of correcting criminals but rather providing a home to them. With the realization that no amount of corrective measures will reduce the rate of crimes committed, prisons have been designed to perform other purposes that will ensure are beneficial to the community. In this paper, we shall mainly focus on the changing roles of prisons and the criminal justice system from correcting to rehabilitating criminals.
Crime and crime rates
Numerous studies that were carried out to establish why the rate of crime in the society is increasing rather than decreasing are the discovery of a criminal gene. This therefore means that some children will grow with the urge of wanting to engage in crime even if they find no reason to do. There is also the aspect of living conditions of people and the pressure that comes with life. There will be no efforts that can be put to reduce some of the socio-economic issues that people face which ultimately lead to crime. The more the government feels that the living conditions of the poor are improving, the higher the living standards increase. This hence means that people will still have the pressure of having to survive tough economic times and hence looking for better means of surviving (Weaver & Will 65). There are various reasons why people engage in crime, which the court will never effectively handle. This is also because the reasons keep changing with each passing generation.
It has also been discovered that the very presence of prisons and its efforts to correct criminals is another reason for increasing rate of crime. This is because a prison brings together criminals from different backgrounds. As they interact, they share ideas, which are criminal based. This will hence make them to be even worse when they are released back to the community. After going through what the justice, system refers to us punishment and they survive, the criminals become so much acquainted to the punishment that they are no longer afraid of them. The possibility of the prisoners not finding a convenient source of income after serving their jail term and the stigma they face in the society makes them resort back to crime. Crime hence becomes a vicious circle that criminals get used to.
The best way of treating prisoners is to offer them love and support that they need. Making them realize that they can still be trusted and loved despite their lifestyle is one likely fact that is able to soften their hearts. However, anybody will ever think of giving a convict this treatment. It is assumed that if they are mistreated, they will realize how bad they are and hence changing. On the other hand, the convict believes that they are tool bad and that there is nothing that they can engage in that will make them appear good (Matters 9). They hence accept their state which is that of a criminal and hence finding solace in engaging in more crime. It has become normal for a human being to discover their potential and hence capitalizing on them. When a criminal realizes that the best they can do, which the entire society knows is to steal, he or she will capitalize on the same and find solace in engaging in even more complex crime.
Some of the few people who have succeeded to transform and tame criminals are those who have dared to look at them with a different perspective. One perfect example of such people is Gregory Boyle. In his book, tattoos on the heart, he narrates about how he was able to rehabilitated and train criminals by simply showing them love. Just because he decided to show them, what the society has never shown them, he was able to transform a good number of them. They willingly accepted to change their lives and even engage in meaningful activities. Boyle who was a Christian theologian and pastor realized that such people need to be loved and appreciated before they change their ways. Learning from their life stories, we realize that most of them do not understand what it means to be loved and accepted. They have hence assumed that the society is full of hatred. Taking them to prison only proves to them that they are meant to segregate by the society.
Even though the prison environment gives convicts an opportunity to learn and acquire certain skills, this does not help much to transform them. This is because of the constant supervision and observation they are given. They are confided to prison cells, which acts as a constant reminder that they are prisoners who have to be monitored to ensure that they do not commit crime or escape from prison (Appel 43). The other services they are given that are meant to make them better people in the society are not adequate to change them. Deep within them, they know that nobody trusts them enough to set them free and even allow them to engage in what they will believe is right. Even after they are released from prison and declared clean to interact, they still find themselves imprisoned in their hearts due to the attitude that the society holds against them. Nobody is willing to interact freely with them and hence being cautious around them.
Contrary to the kind of treatment they receive in the prison and what Gregory Boyle gives them, they find an environment that fully trusts and appreciates them. They are told what their hearts yearn to hear the most. They are given a chance to interact freely and even serve without necessarily being looked at as criminals. This tactic served to touch their heats and even convict the hardest of the criminal minds. Knowing that a person can still trust and have faith in you irrespective of how bad you look is enough to transform the person. It really takes a Jesus like heart for one to feel comfortable around convicts and show them love. Being in an environment where there are no police to supervise you, no cameras to observe your every action and no prison wardens to haul abuses at them gives them a chance to reflect on their conduct.
Many a times, the convicts require people who will listen to their stories before judging them by their conducts. Unless their condition is hereditary, most of them have ugly pasts that led them into criminal activity (Elsner 17). Looking at the population of the prisoners, one will notice that most of them are from the minority communities and have faced racial segregation at some point of their lives. Others may be from unstable families either stricken by poverty, drunk and irresponsible parents, single parent’ and mostly mothers who struggled for their upkeep and the likes. With all issues that surrounded them plus negative influence from their peers, most of them could not avoid getting into criminal. With minimal education and the fact that they could not be employed, there was no other way through which to have their needs met rather than engage in crime.
There are certain stages of life that are crucial for child development. It matters a lot on the foundations on which such a child has been brought up in. most of the homies that have been rehabilitated by Gregory Boyle are Latinos whose living conditions are pathetic. They are also born by immigrant parents who came to the United States in search of a better life. Realizing that they could not get good jobs because of discrimination and the fact that they did not have the necessary papers, most of them resorted to doing odd jobs. Some of them had to work even without pay because nobody cared. It was even difficult for them to send their children to school because of fees. Some that struggled to send their children to school were met with challenges such as segregation, which made them drop out of school. The children were also supposed to do odd jobs to supplement their family income and hence not getting the opportunity to study.
Growing with such issues and in such an environment, it must be admitted that a person had to be a superhero in other aspects for them to survive. There is that acceptance that one has been disadvantaged most probably because of their background. However, realizing that they have to survive, they have to get alternative ways of putting food on the table. This is not always a criminal activity as some of them have advanced in other economic activities. There are however those who will result in crime to not only have their needs met but also to pay back on the society for not attending to them or understanding their plight. To such homies, it is either they live or they die (Boyle 60). When they know that their bad situations are not going to change for the better, they resort in actions without the fear of dying. They also know that nobody will hold them accountable for their actions and hence living their lives to even die in crime.
After analyzing such issues, we realize that prisons are here to stay as well as criminals. The fact that the justice system is a permanent arm of the government, it has to be kept a live. This will never be a reality if there are no crime and criminals. The prison industrial complex has currently been designed to ensure that it is more beneficial to the society. This is even being grown into an institution where cheap services could be provided to the community at the expense of prisoners. With the brand of crime they have to live with, they are made to engage in community service where they are not paid. Some with various talents such as carpentry and all kinds of arts are also confided in prisons to provide such services. They never know how much their artifacts cost as they are rewarded with negative prison treatment.
Since most of them are acquainted to the prison walls, which seem friendlier than their communities do, they are never in a hurry to leave. When they are released from prison, they will look for another chance to go back by committing even greater crimes. They become insensitive to the pain they cause the community as long as they find some form of comfort. The prison industrial complex has also provided numerous job opportunities to police officers, prison wardens, criminal investigation officers and many more (Donziger 336). If the society goes without crime, then the livelihood of some people will crumble. With this realization, police officers will always do their best to ensure they do not lose their jobs. If the cells remain empty, they have nothing to do and hence sent home. This is one of the reasons that may explain the harassment that prisoners receive from police officers and why someone has to be arrested whether guilty or not.
It may be difficult for us to admit but the fact remains that the cruelty and discriminatory society around us is one of the leading causes of crime (Davis 84). Once the prisoners are shown love and appreciation like Gregory Boyle did to them, they are able to live meaningful and productive lives. On the other hand, as much as we may wish that we have a society that is crime free, we may not be able to survive due to the other benefits it has to the society. If not us, some of our relatives are employed in the criminal department or are part of the prison industrial complex. This means that if they have to lose their jobs because there is no crime, they will have to look for other alternative ways of surviving which may be crime. This hence implies that crime is part of the society.
Conclusion
The best we can do is therefore not to sit in pretence and claim to be establishing more courts and prisons, training more police officers and encouraging our children to study law just because we want to reduce the rate of crime. The fact is that, if we desire that we have a crime free society, we would reduce the number of prisons and not train more police officers. With this, we will look for alternative ways to deal with crime and criminals. Prisons and policemen have never been and will never be a solution to criminal activity in the society. We probably need more people like Gregory Boyle to put the issue under check. However, since nobody is willing to work solely for others and not money, we will never achieve this. We will still want to have more prisons and most probably, more complicated criminal cases so that we are paid more for serving in the prison industrial complex.
Works cited
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Boyle, Gregory. Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. California: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete? London: Seven Stories Press, 2011
Donziger, Steven R. "The real war on crime: The report of the National Criminal Justice Commission." No.: ISBN 0-06-095165 6 (1996): 336.
Elsner, Alan. Gates of injustice: The crisis in America's prisons. FT Prentice Hall, 2004.
Flateau, John. The Prison Industrial Complex: Race, Crime & Justice in New York. New York: Medgar Evers College Press, 1996.
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Weaver, Chris, and Will Purcell. "Prison Industrial Complex: A Modern Justification for African Enslavement, The." Howard LJ 41 (1997): 349.
