Improve, Don't Imprison: Treating Inmates as Humans Work

Abstract

This research paper investigates the benefits of rehabilitation compared to current criminal justice systems. It emphasizes the real role of a prison which is ameliorating the inmates mentality and trying to change them to be non-violent and active members of the society. It also argues against the idea that a prison is only a place where a criminal is incarcerated and deprived of his/her rights in the aim of keeping the society safe. In fact, rehabilitation is more effective and efficient than other punishment systems. The first section of this paper discuss how rehabilitation help reduce violence inside and outside a prison by providing them mental health care, healthy environment and contact with the society (family).the second section describes how rehabilitation help to reduce recidivism by providing vocational training, educational programs, open regimes and behavioral programs. The third section presents facts that insure that rehabilitation reduce the country’s spending on prisons cost by saving lots of money spent on re-offenders and giving convicts the chance to be an active member of the economy by getting a job. The fourth section of the research paper addresses some misconceptions made by a part of the community that don’t believe in the effectiveness of rehabilitation.

“Life always offers us a second chance. It is called tomorrow”(Anurag Prakash Ray). However, it is time to question if human beings also give each other a second chance. Every individual is prompt to make wrong decisions, take bad choices or do mistakes, all that doesn’t mean that they are evil people, it just means that they are human beings. Although, the word mistake by itself can differ from one person to another, some people would apologize for turning the music loud and therefore insulting the surrounding, others would cross the road having a red light, while there are the ones who would commit an entire crime; but in fact all of those fall under the big title “mistake”. People are usually punished for their wrong decisions. However by focusing on illegal acts, the first that comes to mind as sort of punishment is going to jail. The majority of people tend to think that a prison in no more than a facility where criminals are incarcerated and deprived of their rights and freedom while serving a sentence for a crime. This misconception about prisons, lead to the failure of our criminal justice system in accomplishing its main task. Hence, according to James Gilligan (2012), a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University, “two third of prisoners reoffend within three years of leaving the prison, often with a more serious and violent offense.” Another argument made by Oliver Bueno (2017), a former drug dealer, states “I came out worse, the abuse got me more and more angry hating authority.” Here is where many theories and attitudes emphasized on the importance of giving criminals a second chance to reform their ways and therefore re-enter society as a productive citizen. The first approach of rehabilitation was developed by Sir Walter Crofton in the mid-19th, it was called the Irish system in which he divides the sentencing period into three consecutive stages: isolation, group work and intermediate prisons. Moving to the Pennsylvania system (late 19th century), which focuses on solitary confinement supplemented by Bible studies, giving the prisoner the chance to reflect on their sins. Jumping to 2017, where the Bill intended to give prisons four main purposes: Protect the public, reform and rehabilitate offenders, prepare prisoners for life outside prison and maintain an environment that is safe and secure. The four mentioned aims are exactly what rehabilitation programs stand for. In this paper, I will be arguing that rehabilitation in prisons is more effective and efficient than other current punishment methods. Hence, introducing the concept of rehabilitation in prisons reduce the rate of violence inside and outside prisons and might decrease the rate of reoffenders after release. More to add, introducing rehabilitation into prisons would save lots of a country’s expenses compared to current confinement systems. I will be also arguing against some social thought that are controversial to rehabilitation.

Reduce Violence in Prison

According to the international center of Prison studies, almost 2.3 million of America’s citizens sit behind bars, while approximately one-third of American adults have a criminal record and according to James Gilligan, clinical professor in psychiatry, around 90% of the prisoners return into the community within few years. By combining the two mentioned studies together, it becomes vastly important to know how we should treat them while they are imprisoned. Especially those who tend to be more aggressive than others, since violence is a major topic inside prisons. Rehabilitation programs were instigated among prisons, trying to understand the reasons behind any violent act and to implement positivity into the minds of inmates. According to the story mentioned by Professor Gilligan during an interview with take part news, who unplanned started working as prison psychiatrist with inmates at Norfolk, Massachussetts prison, he states that he had been taught up to that point that violent criminals are untreatable sociopaths, and that they would manipulate him. Basically that is how society see criminals. Often they forget that those criminals are just human beings, probably just waiting life to give them a second chance in order to become a better person. Professor Gilligan states afterwards in the same interview that people in prisons are eager for a chance to talk with somebody who showed interest in them, and would try to help them understand themselves better. His work mainly focuses on the ethos that comprehensive rehabilitation accompanied with mental health care, is a key of preventing violence. The main theory behind that was that if you put any person, even an inmate who have killed multiple person, in a position where he/she is respected and supported, they would try to change. That was proved by Professor Gilligan after he introduced a violence prevention program which was part of a rehabilitation program. It involved group therapy, listening to victims that experienced violence and its impact on their lives, as well as theater and writing classes. It came out that the likelihood to commit another violent crime after release, for those who spent two months in the program, decreased by 66.7 percent compared with those who didn’t participate in the program. This shows keeping open eyes for the mental health and psychological status of prisoners and implementing rehabilitation methods accordingly, could make society as well as jail safer.

In addition to the importance of monitoring mental health among prisoners, studies have shown that educational programs play an important role in reducing violence inside and outside prisons. One example is Lorenzo Brooks, who was labeled as a second degree murder and who served 30 years behind bars for stabbing a woman to death, he credits his personal transformation to the access to higher education stating that visiting the prison library and taking classes were the main reason for his shift and that taking sociology and psychology courses helped him to understand crimes in general as well as criminal thinking and therefore seeing himself in the eyes of others. He also became aware about the severity of his crime, and the harm he had caused to himself, his family and his community (McCray, 2016).

Another finding from a very large study (120,855 prisoners across 156 facilities) shows that being amongst prisoners classified as requiring higher levels of security would increase the likelihood of violence (Camp, Gaes, Langan & Saylor, 2003). Treating inmates as sever criminals all the time without giving them a second chance to ameliorate themselves, will emphasize the thought of themselves being criminal. Here is where the role of educational rehabilitation appears and should intervene, teaching inmates to understand their feeling and the reason behind what they did.

Despite the importance of developing technics and programs that help reform prisoners, offering better access to services in jails as well as creating better environment within prisons, is also considered as part of the rehabilitation process and would also decrease the rate of violence among inmates. Two studies clearly showed that better physical conditions is directly associated with a lower level of violence, and that prisoners experiencing higher levels of suffering had higher level of misconduct (Bierie, 2012; rocheleau, 2013). Moreover, it was found that there is a significant correlation between deprivation and violence by prisoners against staff (Morris & Worral, 2014). Those are other evidences showing that prisons shouldn’t be about making inmates life harder, since as showed, this would only worsen the situation. Creating a healthy environment and treating people with respect would be a more effective way to improve prisoners attitudes on the short term and on the long term.

One more study was conducted about the effect of visits on the behavior of prisoner. They found that violent incidents decrease by around 67% during the period of six weeks before a visit, and increase rapidly by 61% in the week afterwards (Siennick, Mears and Bales, 2013). All those studies stress on the importance of rehabilitation in decreasing the rate of violence in and outside prisons including the maintenance of a good environment.

However, it is expected that the community especially victims would show no empathy with criminals and that the society is probably not willing to help criminal enhancing their mental health. Whereas, a survey of 800 victims shows that nearly 60 percent of them would like to have a system that invests more in mental treatment, drug treatment and rehabilitation (McCray, 2016).

Reduce Recidivism

High rates of recidivism of prisoners among the world became an alert that lead the majority of judiciary systems question the efficiency of their current prison structures. Here is where a new report generated by an international criminal justice advocacy organization, Penal Reform International, appeared stating that many countries started to adopt rehabilitation programs offering inventive and productive plans to change recidivism rate. Four main approaches of rehabilitation are : vocational training, educational programs, open regimes, and behavioral programs.

Vocational Training

While serving a prison sentence, offenders are given the opportunity to choose to have a job and therefore acquire vocational training. Mekelle prison, in northern Ethiopia, adopted that form of rehabilitation in which prisoner are provided with microfinance and insurance loans that helps them start developing business ideas. The prison started to collaborate with different co-ops in construction, textiles, and agriculture. According to Almaz Gabriel, a 23 year old prisoner, she was amazed to earn several certificates in woodwork, plumbing and beauty salon training, that gave her the chance to earn money inside and outside the prison. The idea behind offering inmates the opportunity to involve in prison work programs while imprisoned is trying to make it easier for them to get a job after release. Not to mention, that the process of re-entering society is very complicated, especially with a mindset of employers that refuse to have former prisoner working for them. In that case, the inability of an ex-prisoner to find and maintain a job would automatically lead to recidivism: when money gets tight, a person would inevitably choose to turn to crime than becoming homeless or go hungry, in a sense that the fear of breaking the law wouldn’t really matter for a person who need money in their pockets to live. Therefore, gaining employment skills and thereby becoming a productive member of society is beneficial to support oneself mentally and financially, and make it easier for them to proof themselves by increasing their self-esteem and fulfillment in new jobs, and thereby diminish the probability of their reoffend.

Educational Programs

Another important form of rehabilitation is providing education for inmate. According to The Skill Funding Agency, it was found that 57 percent of prisoners have the literary skills (English and Math) of an 11 year old (2016). This is an immense problem that need to be solved to enhance their employment chances upon release, and thereby reduce the causes that would lead to their reoffence. According to Uruguay’s National rehabilitation center, the vocational as well as educational resources have led to significant reduction of recidivism rates, approached just to 10 percent compared with 60 percent in other prisons in Uruguay. Moreover, a study done by Boston University, shows that the rate of recidivism dropped to less than 5 percent compared to the national rate that is 65 percent, for inmates that earned BU degrees while incarcerated (the research was done over 25 years).

Open Regimes

One more type of rehabilitation that would decrease recidivism rate is what is called “open regime”, a program in which prisoners having a good behavior are allowed to maintain jobs outside the prison during the week and go to prison the weekend. The aim of that program is for inmates to maintain active connections with family and community member that makes it easier for them to usefully pursue their lives after being released, as stated by Slovania prison officials (McCray, 2015). The importance of staying in contact with family and friends was emphasized in a research done by the Justice Data Lab, that shows that visits from partners or family lessen the recidivism rate from 70 percent to 52 percent (Blakey, 2017). Open regimes are also known for their short prison sentences compared to usual prisons. A good example is Norway prison which allows a maximum sentence of 21 years only, and is well known for its laissez-faire approach (no barred windows, unarmed guards, etc.). Research shows that those Norwegian prison sentences assist rehabilitation, since it was verified that they have the lowest rate of reoffending in the world, 20 percent compared to 70 percent in the US, for an average of only eight months of prison sentence length compared to 4.5 years in the US in 2012 (Dreisinger, 2017).

Behavioral Programs

Offender Behavior programs are often used to address the psychological causes of criminal behavior and thereby reduce the likelihood of prisoners reoffending. Those programs are mainly based on a type of talking therapy also known as CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), mostly used in wales and England, that tries to change the beliefs and attitudes that boost criminal behavior. Criminals are known for their distorted cognition like having self-justificatory thinking, thoughts of dominance and entitlement, misinterpretation of social cues, as well as lack in long-term planning, problem solving, and decision making that contributes to rigid behavior. Cognitive behavioral treatments for offenders aim to correct those dysfunctional and criminogenic thinking patterns by trying to increase their empathy with potential future victims, since lots of criminologist argued that deficit in the ability to empathize and lack in knowledge about the victims distress are the main reasons behind criminal behavior. Those aims are achieved by letting inmates read about harm caused by their prior crimes, watch videos of their victims describing the impact of that offence on their lives and write hypothetical letters of apology to the victims. Those activities help offenders understand the severity of what they have done and therefore prevent them doing the same mistake twice.

Reduce Prison’s Costs

Nowadays, the US has more than 2.2 million people behind bars, which costs the states around 57 billion dollars per year (Lufkin, 2018). Also, According to a study done by the New York University School of Law in 2016, the US could save 200 billion dollars over 10 years if the country is able to reduce its prison’s population by 40 percent. Therefore, having overcrowded prisons and long serving sentences isn’t necessarily the most economical solution. Rehabilitation one more time proved to be a good practice in saving lots of the country’s money as well as tax payer’s money. As discussed before, applying rehabilitation programs can immensely reduce re-offending rates and thereby save financial cost of re-offending that was calculated by the national audit office to be around 13 billion dollars annually in the European region. Another example is Nevada, which was able to reduce the prison’s population by 1.6 percent and thereby save 38 million dollars on direct cost and 1.2 billion dollars on construction cost, from 2008 to 2009, in a sense that the state saves 22,000$ for each time it prevents one Nevadan prisoner from re-offending (Esperian, 2010). Also, according to a study done in California, it was found that taxpayers could save around 600$ million dollars per year if rehabilitation programs are introduced within jails (Orange County Register, 2007).

Moreover, introducing alcohol and drug addiction programs, seemed to be as important in reducing cost, since it was found that the criminal justice system could save up to 5 billion dollars if only 10 percent of drug-addicted inmates would receive drug rehabilitation rather than jail time (Zarkin, Cowell, Hicks, 2015). Looking at the large picture of recovery, treatment of drug-addicted people wouldn’t only save community’s money, but also that of individuals and families. In other words, the costs that would add up over years of drug consumption such as medical care for overdose or long term health complications costs due to drug addiction, expenses related to legal fees caused by drug-related arrest, loss of productivity due to active substance abuse, etc. are nothing compared to the treatment expenditures.

Furthermore, applying vocational programs in Minnesota, as part of the rehabilitation process, was able to save the state 700$ per participant by preventing them to re-offend (Feinstein, 2017). Another enterprise called Project Return sponsored by Tulane University stated that the cost of education, vocational training, counseling and job placement assistance costs about 2000$ per inmate instead of 63,000$ for incarceration yearly (Schwartz, 1997). To sum it up, vocational programs allow ex-prisoners to boost the economy and to give back to society.

Counter Argument

Although many flags were raised throughout years and decades emphasizing on the benefits of rehabilitation, according to Ryan King (2018), a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center in Washington, “there still is a trend to say there’s really no sentence that’s too long when it comes to violent offence”, unfortunately that sentence proved to be a dominant force in the existing criminal justice system. Especially, that media and politicians used to represent crime victims as strongly preferring tough sentencing policies. However, a national survey done by the Alliance for Safety and Justice, in which 800 crime survivors including victims of non-violent and violent crimes (rape, murder of family member, etc.) were interviewed, demonstrate the complete opposite. Basically, 61 percent of the asked victims prefer shorter prison sentences supplemented by more spending on rehabilitation and prevention, 89 percent of them favor increased investments in education than expenditures on jails, and 73 percent supported investing more in drug treatment. Moreover, according to Luz, a women from New York city who is survivor of several sexual assaults, “I don’t’ think knowing the perpetrators are in prisons helped me heal”, rather she stated that she would desire for them to receive the needed help making them aware of the impact of their actions, to value women and children and to learn how to love and be loved in an appropriate way. Another women named Doris, who forgave her son’s killer, in the public, three days after his death, claimed that treating violence is a complex process that need varied and coordinate response much like curing a cancer patient with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.

Furthermore, although it was proved that replacing usual prisons by open regimes is beneficial in reducing re-offending rates and thereby decreasing the costs spent on jails. Yet, community used to describe those sort of prisons as summer camps, claiming that they are too relaxed regimes for criminals. That’s completely incorrect, according to Thomas Ugelvik, a criminal professor at the university of Oslo, open regimes are tougher than closed ones since a prisoner have to take more responsibility. In open regimes officers expect more of a convict: they have to go to school, reveal the right positive attitude, some also have their own jobs. Basically, in an open prison one could escape easily, so inmates have to choose to stay every day and create their own imaginary wall.

Conclusion

To conclude, countries along the world should necessarily try to improve their criminal justice system in order to create a healthier and unified community. Several studies have shown that current criminal justice systems don’t seem to really work. That’s why introducing rehabilitation programs in the daily life of convicts would be beneficial in different aspects. First, it would reduce violence inside and outside prisons. Second, it would decrease recidivism. Third, it would be more economical than current prison systems. In a sense that, if inmates need education, let them have it. If they need work skills, offer them training. If they suffer from psychological problems or from drug or alcohol abuse, provide them with adequate treatments. And if they have mental illness, don’t put them into prisons in the first place. At the end of the day, those prisoners are still human beings, who have feeling and are waiting for the society to give them a second chance. Therefore, they need to be integrated into society at early stage, by being exposed to education, to vocational training, and by keeping connection to the outside world. Those simple measures would ensure that more people come out of prison willing, able and motivated to be good neighbors. In fact, we should recognize that confining offenders behind bars without trying to change them is an expensive process that only have short-term benefits.

References

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