Once a Thief, Always a Thief

In many scholars' eyes, the rehabilitative process has been abandoned and a punishing new environment awaits criminals who find themselves in the clasps of the law. This shift occurs due to the overwhelmingly high recidivism rate and increased tension placed on prison institutions as conviction rates rise. This is a major cause for concern seeing how billions of dollars a year are spent on prisons. However, there is much debate on whether prisoners of today are capable of correction. The main argument lies in whether the criminal tendencies are inherit and the process is pointless or if they are merely deprived the means of a reformative environment.

Some would believe that the idea of rehabilitation is a lost cause in today's prison system due to the "nothing works" mentality and climbing recidivism rates in released prisoners. With this in mind, the prison system has shifted from reformative to punitive actions in hopes of literally deterring criminal activity with scare tactics. On the other hand, one would be lead to believe that degradation of the prison system through the continual budgeting and elimination of rehabilitative programs has directly impacted the reformative process and strewn the results of the recidivism rate. However, implementing just one of the many rehabilitative processes, prisoners with access to a higher education while incarcerated have shown a sharp decline in recidivism as well as proving beneficial in eliminating institutional costs. With these issues now presented, one can begin to analyze the debate.

Correctional facilities are created in hopes of reforming criminals of their malicious approaches to society; yet the creators no longer believe that their facilities function accordingly and now the process has more punitive intentions. As stated by Michelle S. Phelps, Ph.D. candidate in sociology and social policy, this shift of importance stems from the "nothing works" mentality that so many see today (Phelps 37). But this is nothing new to the penal system. The idea of "tough on crime" finds its roots in the 1970's when major changes began to alter the idea of a prison. Without the ability or the means to find a definitive rehabilitative process, many began to seek other solutions. Thus, the rise of the punitive era begun and criminals were soon faced with deterrence rather than a cure for their behavior (Andrews 41). Without a definitive rehabilitative process, prisons cannot afford to treat prisoners any more lightly than they do. If such a punishing experience were not the case, recidivism rates would rise even further.

Rehabilitative programs are nowhere to be found while criminals continue to pour into prisons, many returning for a second time. The cause being budgeting of prison funds and elimination of the programs that seek to keep offenders from coming back a second time. Recidivism rates are as high as 73% after ten years in terms of released prisoners from facilities without any kind of program (Derrick 505). However, with the introduction of prison industry jobs, that rate is nearly cut in half. While industry jobs wouldn't be thought of as a very reformative process, the idea that a prisoner is still working and contributing to society makes the difference. Without these programs, prison facilities are merely filled with criminals, which is commonly referred to as "warehousing." When they are later released, they are usually unprepared to function as a citizen (Esperian 322-323).

Though prisons are of major concern, lesser forms of correctional facilities face the same issues as well as have the same opportunity to prevent a future of crime. In youth detention centers, rehabilitative programs are constantly in the works to deter the adolescents from maturing with criminal tendencies. Through the use of reformative programs, it was shown that adolescents were less likely to reoffend. The only study where this was not the case was when adolescents'