Prisons are perchance the most important instructions, second only to the court, with regards to the judicial system of any nation. Served with the chief duties of rehabilitation and punishment, there are a plethora of programs in use in the prisons to help them meet their mandate. However, it is a common occurrence that a good percentage of released prisoners always get rearrested for similar or variant crimes within three years of release. To this effect, a plethora of programs have always been devised to help in preventing released prisoners from reverting to crime (recidivate) with a good number of measures also taken with the aim of protecting the safety of the general public from the potential threat that might be posed by release prisoners. This paper aims at discussing the functions of U.S. prisons, the conditions of U.S. prisons, some of the programs existent in these prisons that are aimed at averting recidivism as well some of the strategies put in place to ensure public safety with regards to released prisoners. The paper also canvasses the conditions of U.S. prisons besides offering suggestions on some of the strategies that the government can employ to obviate recidivism while at the same time promoting public security.
Functions of Prisons in the U.S.
Implicitly serving as a threat to the breakers of the law, the principal functions of U.S. prisons is the corrections and punishment of law breakers. Most prison programs are focused towards helping prisoners change their previous behaviors through a process that is conventionally known are correction. On the same note, Bushway & Paternister (2009) contention about the condemning policy in the United States is potentially useful in the justification of punishment one of the functions of U.S. prisons. According to Bushway & Paternister (2009), the U.S. Prisons operate under that the guidance of two fundamental punishment philosophies; crime-control and retributive philosophies. The crime-control philosophy purports that the punishment of law offenders does the nation good by averring people for committing crimes. The retributive philosophy, unlike the crime control philosophy, maintains that punishment is a means of nullifying the wrong that one does as a result of committing a crime.
Conditions of Jails
U.S. prisons house the largest population of inmates in the world. By 1989, the U.S. prisons though with a capacity of 367,769 inmates, were holding close to 395,000 inmates. According to a report by A Human Rights Watch, the physical, health and safety conditions of these prisons were overly deficient with some totally operating with nonexistent safety measures. Several reports indicate that the rise in the number prisoners harbored in the U.S. has always been in the increase with only slight decreases of less than 3% of the total population being witnessed in 2008 and 2009. In the same light, there is no any substantial account of improvement in the prison conditions in the recent months.
Admittedly, the conditions of prisons in the United States have always hit headlines for all bad reasons. U.S. prisons are often marked with violence, overcrowding, deteriorated physical conditions and poor health conditions. Most of the U.S. prisons do not house detainees and convicted differently with juvenile offenders also sharing cells with adult offenders. Additionally, the prisons, according to Siegel (2012), lack proper recreational facilities for inmates besides overall lack of medical services and facilities. Even as the U.S. government is making efforts to build new generation jails, it is indubitable, especially in light of the constantly increasing inmate population in the U.S. , that the conditions of the U.S. prisons will incessantly worsen (Siegel, 2012).
Programs for Reducing Recidivism in Modern Prisons
In most cases, the effectiveness of the prisons is judged by their ability to fully transform once law offenders to law abiding community members. Recidivism is the term used to refer to the reversion of an individual to crime after having been presumably corrected following a prior offence. The determination of rates of recidivism is always a standardized process in which a specific period of time is set to institute the number of people being convicted after release relative to the number of people reincarnated individuals back to the society. A high rate of recidivism is a clear indicant of a failed justice system. It is for this reason that several programs have always been initiated in the US to help reduce the rate of recidivism while also promoting the effectiveness of the U.S. judicial system. Again, with reference to the discussion above, the number of U.S.prisoners has been on a constant increase. A high number of prisoners place a heavy financial burden on the Local and Federal governments. This has always necessitated the need for reducing the number of inmates and reduction of the number of recidivists turns out to one of the best method of achieving this.
Prison Education program is one such a program that aims that reducing recidivism. The prison education program, conventionally known as the correctional education, is normally divided into two; vocational training and literacy development (Pollock, 2005). Vocational training aims at imparting life skills that can enable one to live a crime free life after release from prison. Literacy development on the other hand, borrows a lot from the traditional classroom model in which the overarching aim is always the improvement of reading and math skills (Pollock, 2005). It is believed that, prison educations programs impact cognitive skills on the inmates with another majority being given a change to lead a crime free life by engaging in education courses.
The introduction of Conjugal visits in prisons is yet another program devised to ameliorate recidivism. A conjugal visit is a scheduled visit that permits an inmate in a prison to spend a given number of hours in private with a legal spouse during which sexual intercourse might be permitted. The essence of a conjugal visit is to help preserve family bond in a bid to reduce the chances of a former inmate reverting to crime again. As Hensley, Rutland & Gray-Ray (2002) report, Mississippi is believed to have been the first program state to have provisions for conjugal visits in penal institutions. However, in the 1980s several states, inclusive of New York, Washington and California, introduced the conjugal visitation programs in most of their prisons in a bid to promote family stability thereby curbing recidivism.
Just like unstable families, drug and substance abuse also contribute significantly to recidivism. Several prisons, in this regard, have substance abuse programs to help in reducing recidivism by helping convicts quit using drugs. The overarching ideology behind this program is that the treatment of drug addiction is indispensable for a successful reintegration of an inmate into the community (Hensley, Rutland & Gray-Ray, 2002). These programs are normally complemented by community base drug programs. Notably, the program works well in female inmates than male inmates.
Mental health also contributes considerably to high rates of recidivism. To its aversion, prisons have devised mental health programs to help prisoners with mental or behavioral disorders as one of the ways of debarring recidivism. For this purpose several prisons have Psychological services units that identify prisoner with mental or behavioral disorders, referral of serious cases, and delivery of therapy as well as behavioral management.
Rehabilitative Programs in Prisons
The essence of correctional facilities in all parts of the world is to rehabilitate offenders. Confinement and punishment of offenders alone are not enough to ensure that the offenders do not revert to criminal activities again. Consequentially, correctional facilities always have rehabilitative programs to help rehabilitation of offenders. There is a thin line between rehabilitative programs and programs geared towards reducing recidivism. To this effect, virtually all the programs used to forfend recidivism, inclusive of the ones discussed above, fall under that the category of rehabilitative programs. Other rehabilitative programs include; Violent Offender Programs, Sex Offender Programs, Special Groups, Indigenous Offender Programs, and Female Offenders Programs, Among Others. Even though not discussed with programs for reducing recidivism, some of the programs mentioned above inherently help in curbing recidivism.
It has been found out that there is a group of inmates who always score highly in anger tests. Even as Mills, Kroner & Forth (1998) that there is a clear difference between violent offences and angry offences. Violent Offender Programs in most cases do not discriminate between angry and violent offenses under the assumption that violent offenders incessantly have problems with anger. Violent Offender Programs, as rehabilitative programs, address the criminogenic needs of violent offenders by help them manage their anger.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons provides female offenders with appropriate Female Offender Programs that help in meeting the physical, psychological and social needs of female offenders in prisons. Female offenders programs in prisons in the U.S. include; female cognitive skills programs that address cognitive skills as a criminogenic need in female offenders, anger management skills, women’s substance use programs, women anger management programs as well as programs that aim at reducing female dependency. AS highlighted on the BOP website, female offenders programs equip female offenders, specifically females convicted of abortion, with knowledge pertaining to pregnancy, birth control and abortion. Such programs also exist in other countries like Australia. Additionally, the BOP also rehabilitates offenders with the help of religious programs. The religious programs in their basic form, involved the scheduling of religious services and meetings to promote religious faith. This is usually done with the guidance of the prison chaplain, community volunteers and contract spiritual leaders.
Current approaches to protect the public upon a prisoners’ release
Even though a significant number of crimes are usually committed by released prisoners, it should be noted that not all releases prisoners exhibit higher risks of reoffending. All the same, it is always prudent that approaches are steered in an effort to protect the public from released prisoners. The widely used approach in the U.S. and perhaps other parts of the world involves the use of community policing programs.
Community policing conventionally refers to the deployment of police officer to particular areas so that they become acquainted with the local residents of the area. La Vigne, Solomon, Beckman & Dedel (2006) while trying to delineate the indispensableness of community policing strategies for enhancing public security with regards to prisoner reentry assert that the understanding of the aspects of prisoner reentry and public safety is the most important facet in the process of crafting effective responses to the public safety risks posed by reintegrated prisoners. Even as over 60% of released inmates are rearrested within the first three years of release, community policing presents a platform through which public safety can be safeguarded.
According to La Vigne et al. (2006), with the help of community police and correction officers, the U.S. Department of Justice normally places the returning prisoners under tight surveillance to collect information about a returning prisoner’s association with gangs together with their activities in the community. Such information are utile in helping the department of justice plan their interventions strategically to protect the community from the potential threat of a returning prisoner (La Vigne et al., 2006).
Besides, returning prisoners are always expected to comply with certain conditions for a given duration after their reentry in to the community. In most cases, the returning prisoners are expected to meet special compliance such as random drug testing, curfew, participation in treatment programs and maintaining regular contact with the supervising agency (La Vigne et al., 2006). Community police effecting such compliances normally base their activities on the activities of the supervising agencies concerned with the reentering prisoner.
On the same note, the success of the reentrance of a released prisoner substantially depends on the involvement of the community. Consequentially, the U.S. Department of Justice always engages the community in the activities geared providing support in the reentry endeavors. With the help of the police, arrangements are always made to ensure that the public is educated on the efforts of the department in ensuring that the release prisoners do not commit other crimes. Such education programs also aim at building the confidence of the community members towards the returning prisoner. La Vigne et al. (2006) also pinpoint Restorative justice model is yet another method that is used to ensure a threat-free reentry of release prisoner. The model operates on the foundation of making the returning prisoner acknowledge is past wrong doing while accepting to be held accountable for any future wrong doing, protecting the community, especially the victim, from victimization, while also helping the returning prisoner become a productive member of the community through instilling life skills such as behavior management into him (La Vigne et al., 2006).
New proposals to help protect the public and reduce recidivism
As was seen above, there are several programs that work towards the reduction of recidivism as well as promote successful reentry of released prisoner. However, even as these programs exist, the community increasingly becomes intolerant to released prisoners while the rate of recidivism has seemingly remained the same. From a personal point of view, I am opinionative that the department of justice should campaign for the creation of more and more prison resource centers to make education readily available for inmates. Additionally, the government to work out mechanism, perhaps through makeshift arrangements with employers, to quickly find job placements for released prisoners as one of the ways of suppressing recidivism. Moreover, a lot of effort should also be placed in developing measures to completely prevent crime; without crime, recidivism no longer becomes an issue. Lastly, the concerned parties should review the existing rehabilitative program to unravel their effectiveness and also devise ways of bettering them. Admittedly, I find a very peculiar connection between recidivism and public safety with regards to released prisoners. I conceptualize that once recidivism has been completely averted, released prisoners will cease to be seen as threats to public safety.
Conclusion
Concisely, the US prisons are designed to server to important functions; rehabilitation and punishment. The rehabilitative function of the U.S. prison is attainable with the help of various rehabilitative programs, such as the women rehabilitative programs, aimed at addressing particular criminogenic needs of the offenders. Apparently, U.S. prisons are famous for violence, overcrowding and deteriorated physical conditions as well as poor health conditions. Being of cognizant of the fact the released prisoners often revert to crime, prisons have several programs aimed combating the problem of recidivism. Notably, several programs aimed at battling recidivism also double up as rehabilitative programs. Nonetheless, recidivism can be further averted through completely preventing crime, creation of more prison resource centers, creation of employment opportunities for released offenders as well as reevaluation of the existing rehabilitative programs.
References
Bushway, S. D. & Paternister, R. (2009). Impact of Prison on Crime. In Raphael, S. & Stoll, M. A. (Eds.), Do Prisons Make Us Safer?: The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom (pp. 119-126). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hensley, C., Rutland, S. & Gray-Ray, P. (2002). Conjugal Visitation Programs: The Logical Conclusion. In Hensley, C. (Ed.), Prison Sex: Practice and Policy (pp. 143-155). Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
La Vigne, N. G., Solomon, A. L., Beckman, K. A., & Dedel, K. (2006). Prisoner Reentry and Community Policing: Strategies for Enhancing Public Safety. U.S. Department of Justice: 1-85.
Mills, J.F., Kroner, D.G. & Forth, A.E. (1998). Novaco Anger Scale: reliability and validity within an adult criminal sample. Assessment, 5, 237-248.
Pollock, J. M. (Ed.) (2005). Prisons: Today and Tomorrow. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Siegel, Larry J. (2012). Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cancage Learning.
