In the United States today there are more than half a million criminals serving time in jails or prison. Most prisoners are male high-school dropouts between the ages of 18 and 29. Even more shocking is the fact that the number and rate of imprisonment has more than doubled over the past twenty years, and the recidivism—that is, the rate for rearrest—is more than 60 percent.
Although the stated objective of the criminal justice systems, on both federal and state levels, is to rehabilitate the inmates and reintegrate them into society, the system itself does not support such a goal. Although most jails are located within the community, prisons are usually geographically or psychologically isolated and terribly overcrowded. Even in the more enlightened prisons, only one-third of the inmates have vocational training opportunities or work release options. Even fewere have access to qualified counselors, psychologists, or social worker
If prisons are indeed to achieve the goal of rehabilitating offenders, then the prisons themselves will have to change. First, they will have to be smaller, housing no more than five hundred prisoners. Second, they will have to be built in or near population centers with community resources available for gradual reintegration into society. Finally, prison programs must be restructured to include work release and vocational and academic training that promises carry over into the inmate's life after release. In addition to parole terms and community supervised work release, successful models for such collaborative efforts between the criminal justice system and the community already exist in several hundred half-way houses throughout the country where inmates complete their sentences while beginning to re-establish their lives as productive members of society. Studies suggest that imprisonment as it is currently administered must be viewed as punishment rather than reform. Until we approach the problem in term of changing behaviors rather than segregating offenders, prisoners who are released will probably return to a life of crime
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