Introduction to Criminal Justice

Punishment is determined by a court of law for the commission of a particular offense. A few examples of modern punishment include incarceration, death, fines, forfeiture and loss of civil privileges (Gale, 2007).

In the early nineteenth century reformers proposed building prisons to house criminals for longer periods of time. This was proposed as a social good because prisons were meant to rehabilitate criminals. Many types of prisons were built, but all of them closely watched and sought to reform inmates. By 1900 thousands were held in prisons. Under the indeterminate sentencing scheme, prisoners could be released as soon as they demonstrated they had reformed (Gale, 2002).

Now prisoners have a determined amount of time they must serve. Legislatures enact laws that state what type of punishment may be applied for certain crimes (Gale, 2002). Judges will then use this to determine the type of sentence given to offenders. There are many different forms punishment can take. For minor crimes it may be restitution to the victim and/or community service, for major crimes incarceration and the death penalty.

The United States relies heavily on incarceration as a form of punishment. Many states allow first time offenders to attend short-term boot camps in an attempt to rehabilitate them. Other states have experimented with alternatives to imprisonment for drug offenders, such as treatment, probation, and work requirements (Galen, 2002). Other states have used hundreds of hours of community service and required them to pay restitution to victims for their crimes. Even with these alternatives incarceration is the most often used form of punishment.

The Supreme Court has rules that the punishment must fit the crime. In Weems v. The United States (1910) the Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Claus also bars disproportionate punishment (Gale, 2002). The Court then used this same ruling to ban the death penalty as a punishment for rape.

The United States is the only western industrialized nation to use the death penalty (Gale, 2002). Most states use the death penalty as punishment for first-degree murder. The most common form used is lethal injection, although some states still use electrocution, hanging, and firing squad as a means of execution.

The rehabilitative approach is built on the premise that intervention and punishment should lead to benefits for the individual concerned by reducing offending (Baker, 2008). In practice rehabilitation takes on many different forms. Some examples, but not all, of them are mentoring, education or skills training, treatment for addiction and/or substance abuse, and practical help (Baker, 2008).

Rehabilitation or reform became one of the main theories in the 1970s. By the 1980s it had lost much of its influence to be replaced by a "just deserts" philosophy more in keeping with the times (Bean, 2001).

The school of rehabilitation came from the corporal punishment philosophy. Incarceration replaced flogging and other forms of public humiliation. Quakers were instrumental in the changing of corporal punishment with their belief that prisoners could be reformed by religious study and spending time alone feeling remorseful. This all came about in the 1790s in Philadelphia, PA.

Over the next century competing philosophies made room for rehabilitation to greater or lesser degrees (Gale, 2002). Depending on the warden a particular prison may promote inmate work programs, encouraging private study, reward good behavior, or do nothing at all. In the late nineteenth century the main goal of reform was education.

The twentieth century was the "golden era" for rehabilitation. Along with providing educations, prisons