Us Correctional System: Punishment Vs. Rehabilitation

Corrections is defined as "a generic term that includes all government agencies, facilities, programs, procedures, personnel, and techniques concerned with the intake, custody, confinement, supervision, treatment, and presentencing and predisposition investigation of alleged or adjudicated adult offenders, youthful offenders, delinquents, and status offenders" (Schmalleger, 2011). There are two major functions of the US correctional system: punishment and rehabilitation. There has been a constant struggle in society as to which one should be used and which one is better . Over the past three decades both have been put into effect with different approaches. Each approach has its pros and cons. One may work well on one offender, while the other will work better on a different offender.

Punishment is defined as "a penalty inflicted on an offender through judicial procedure" (MERRIAM-WEBSTER, 2011). "Before the development of prisons, early punishments were often cruel and torturous" (Schmalleger, 2011). Some of the early punishments included flogging, mutilation, branding, public humiliation, workhouses, and exile. The most popular of these punishments was flogging, which is also known as whipping. In the 1790's when the prison system came along in the United States, the punishment system changed. Punishment then became incarceration for whatever crime you committed. "Imprisonment as punishment differs significantly from the concept of imprisonment for punishment..." (Schmalleger, 2011). The Walnut Street Jail in Pennsylvania Quakers was converted into the first prison in the United States. Here, all prisoners were subject to solitary confinement and exercise took place in a small high-walled yard attached to their cells, this was known as the Pennsylvania System. The next system, the Auburn system, "introduced the congregate but silent system, under which inmates lived, ate, and worked together in enforced silence. This style featured group workshops rather than solitary handicrafts and reintroduced corporal punishments. Auburn depended on whipping and hard labor to maintain the rule of silence" (Schmalleger, 2011). The Auburn system took place in New York State around the 1820's.

Today we are currently in what is called "the Just Deserts era". "The current era of just deserts represents a kind of return to the root purpose of incarceration: punishment" (Schmalleger, 2011). Some states have reestablished chain gangs. Chain gangs are "prisoners who are chained together by the ankles while they work along the roads picking up trash, clearing brush, and filling ditches" (Schmalleger, 2011). Also, most states have implemented the "three-strikes you're out" law. "The three-strikes law require mandatory sentences (sometimes life in prison without the possibility of parole) for offenders convicted of a third felony. Such mandatory sentencing enhancements are aimed at deterring known and potentially violent offenders and are intended to incapacitate convicted criminals through long-term incarceration." (Schmalleger, 2011). One state, Virginia, took a drastic move in this new era of punishment by abolishing parole and increasing sentences for certain violent crimes.

Just as some think that punishment is the way to go for offenders there are many others who believe in rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is "the attempt to reform a criminal offender and the state in which a reformed offender is said to be" (Schmalleger, 2011). In 1876, the reformatory style prison came about. Reformatory style is "a late-nineteenth-century correctional model based on the use of the indeterminate sentence and a belief in the possibility of rehabilitation, especially for youthful offenders" (Schmalleger, 2011). This style brought about the concept of early release. Captain Alexander Maconochie, who served as the warden of Norfolk Island prison, developed a system in which prisoners could earn marks for good behavior and buy their freedom. This eventually brought about parole in the United States. The first "Declaration of Principles that called for reformation to replace punishment as the goal of imprisonment," (Schmalleger, 2011) and only let out first time offenders between the ages of 16 and 30. In this system they required inmates to meet behavioral and other goals, made schooling mandatory and made trade training available. This style didn't last because most offenders got out and reentered a life of crime.

During the treatment era (1945-1967) there came about a new interest in corrections and reformation. This interest, combined with new behavioral techniques, lead to the medical model. The medical model is "a therapeutic perspective on correctional treatment that applies the diagnostic perspective of medical science to the handling of criminal offenders" (Schmalleger, 2011). Some forms of the therapy included individual sessions, group sessions, behavior therapy, drug therapy, neurosurgery, sensory deprivation, and aversion therapy. Because some of these therapies were invasive and the