WHY REHABILITATION?
In order to encourage a radical change for prisoner’s situation, treatments need to focus on rehabilitation, working along with the prisoners to help them. A lot of journalists compare prisoners to animals and it is not by treating them like animals that we will help out. According to the article Punishment Fails. Rehabilitation Works, “Generations of research has shown that the more severely children are punished, the more violent they become” (New York Times).
Setting up a rehabilitation process would be more constructive and human. The main goal would be to make these prisoners lose the habit of constantly relying on violence. The objective is also to teach them how to be more communicative and behave like normal human beings. It is important for them to stop being aggressive and threatening. To begin this process of rehabilitation, officers or eventually therapists would have to start making them feel comfortable to talk, interact with officers and willing to make things change. As mentioned in the article Rehabilitation or Punish, “they are providing mental health services to the prison population, which has rates of mental illness at least three times the national average” (American Psychological Association). This is a hard task considering these prisoners are often devoted to this lifestyle and see no escape to it and force themselves to be non-communicative. Today they refuse all communication because they are taught to go against the system. By making them understand that officers are there to work on their side things can eventually change. Of course this does not happen in one day but the idea is to remain persistent for them to see the change of approach.
What American Prisons could look like after rehabilitation
By giving inmates more responsibility, comfort, and freedom within the prison walls, governors say they are offering prisoners the chance to change. Some Europeans countries have succeeded in rehabilitating their prisoners. This solution has been a great solution for prisoners to get violence off their minds. Here are a few examples:
- In Austria’s Justizzentrum Leoben minimum security prison, convicts live in one-bed cells which each come with a television set and en suite
- Halden prison in Norway has a two-bedroom house where inmates can enjoy overnight visits from family members.
- Bastøy Prison, situated on an island off the coast of Norway, is a minimum-security prison home to over 110 inmates, but only 69 staff members. Every type of offender may be accepted, and those who are free to cycle the island’s tracks and fish in the surrounding waters. When interviewed, many of its prisoners expressed eagerness to start families and enter employment upon release.
Works Cited
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10514678/The-old-debate-punish-prisoners-or-rehabilitate-them.html