purpose of prison essay

Why Do We Have Prisons in the United States?

The Enlightenment brought the idea that punishments should be certain and mild, rather than harsh with lots of pardons and exceptions.

What is prison for? That’s a question a growing movement is asking as it looks beyond reforming prisons and sentencing laws, and imagines abolishing incarceration altogether. To think about what that might look like, it’s worth considering  how the U.S. prison system began , as historian Jim Rice did in his analysis of an early Maryland penitentiary.

Maryland based its criminal law on English precedent, which meant terrifying punishments like hanging for minor theft, but also selective enforcement of the penalties with frequent pardons that demonstrated the mercy of officials. But where English lawmakers feared poor migrants wandering the country, Maryland’s upper classes needed more laborers than they could find. So, in place of the death penalty, thieves in the state were typically lashed and fined, keeping them alive while plunging them into debt. Those who couldn’t pay might be sold into servitude.

Then, in 1789, as Baltimore grew from a village to a city desperately in need of public works crews, the state passed the “Wheelbarrow Act.” This made most serious offenses punishable with hard labor on roads and the Baltimore harbor—up to seven years for free men or 14 for enslaved men.

But the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was an era of criminal justice reform on both sides of the Atlantic. The Enlightenment brought the idea that punishments should be certain and mild, rather than harsh with lots of pardons and exceptions, and that they should relate only to the crime, not the status of the person being punished. This also offered a more formal way to address crime in growing urban areas where officials could no longer respond to lawbreaking based on personal familiarity with the participants in a dispute.

In 1809, Maryland joined the growing ranks of U.S. states and European countries punishing crimes at penitentiaries. As the word suggested, the theory behind the institutions was that inmates could be induced to repent and reform. Not surprisingly, Maryland determined that a key tool in this project was “labour of the hardest and most servile kind,” including textile work, nail-making, and housekeeping. And while reformers expected penitentiaries to provide religious education and tailor work assignments to the goal of character improvement, in practice they were geared toward the fiscal needs of the institution, which the state expected to be self-supporting.

Another key divergence between theory and practice involved black convicts. Lawmakers assumed that African-Americans—free or enslaved—were inherently unreformable and that “prison life too closely resembled everyday black life to hold any real terror,” Rice writes. Nonetheless, black people flooded into the penitentiary.

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From the start, the penitentiary system didn’t fulfill reformers’ dreams. But the system made sense to officials who needed to keep order in bustling cities and supply labor to growing industries. The question today is what role prisons fill for the people who support them, and what alternatives might work better for the communities that bear the brunt of punishment.

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The New York Times

The learning network | what should be the purpose of prison.

What Should Be the Purpose of Prison?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

More people are spending time in jail (PDF) because they don’t have enough money to pay fines or post bail, or because they are too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves, according to a new report. And the United States prison population is near a record high (PDF) even though violent crime nationally has fallen by nearly 50 percent and property crime has dropped by more than 40 percent from its peak. All this raises an important question:

What should be the purpose of prison?

In a Feb 11 article, “Jails Have Become Warehouses for the Poor, Ill and Addicted, a Report Says,” Timothy Williams writes:

Jails across the country have become vast warehouses made up primarily of people too poor to post bail or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves, according to a report issued Wednesday. The study, “Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America,” found that the majority of those incarcerated in local and county jails are there for minor violations, including driving with suspended licenses, shoplifting or evading subway fares, and have been jailed for longer periods of time over the past 30 years because they are unable to pay court-imposed costs. The report, by the Vera Institute of Justice, comes at a time of increased attention to mass incarceration policies that have swelled prison and jail populations around the country. This week in Missouri, where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer stirred months of racial tension last year in the town of Ferguson, 15 people sued that city and another suburb, Jennings, alleging that the cities created an unconstitutional modern-day debtors’ prison, putting impoverished people behind bars in overcrowded, unlawful and unsanitary conditions. While most reform efforts, including early releases and the elimination of some minimum mandatory sentences, have been focused on state and federal prisons, the report found that the disparate rules that apply to jails is also in need of reform. “It’s an important moment to take a look at our use of jails,” said Nancy Fishman, the project director of the Vera Institute’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections and an author of the report. “It’s a huge burden on taxpayers, on our communities, and we need to decide if this is how we want to spend our resources.” The number of people housed in jails on any given day in the country has increased from 224,000 in 1983 to 731,000 in 2013 — nearly equal to the population of Charlotte, N.C. — even as violent crime nationally has fallen by nearly 50 percent and property crime has dropped by more than 40 percent from its peak.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— What should be the purpose of prison?

— Should jails and prisons punish people? Should they serve as a deterrent to crime? Or should they try to rehabilitate people — and help them get back on their feet?

— Should we incarcerate people for minor offenses, such as driving with suspended licenses, shoplifting or evading subway fares? Or should local officials come up with other alternatives? What should those alternatives be?

— The Vera Institute of Justice study said that while 68 percent of jail inmates had a history of abusing drugs, alcohol or both, jail-based drug treatment programs had been underfunded. Should prisons and jails provide more mental health and drug and alcohol treatment services? Who should pay for those programs?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

i think prison is a good thing to keep at the bad people away from doing bad thing an important moment to take a look at our use of jails,” said Nancy Fish man, the project director of the Vera Institute’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections and an author of the report. “It’s a huge burden on taxpayers, on our communities, and we need to decide if this is how we want to spend our resources.”i agree with this statement because it is showing how prison should stay and show the right from wrong

I believe the purpose of prison should be to help people who have addictions and problems not putting them in a wrong environment. Even though i know some people can be violent and uncooperative. I feel that it is also in some places people that are poor and don’t have correct care and can’t post bail. I don’t believe Jail should punish people it should instead help them with their problems. Also help them get back on their feet. I also believe that they should provide more health care and medical treatment

I think prisons should should be used for punishment. If we used prison for rehab, then the ones that need rehab would be abused. I also think mental health and drug therapy should be more of a necessity. i think we should find other ways of dealing with minor offenses.

to hold people who don’t follow the law. If the inmates deserve it or refuse authority then yes. they should help them and deterrent them. no, they should get a ticket that is reasonable. yes, the states because they are the ones arresting the people and sending them to jail.

I think the purpose of prisons are to punish people who go against the law ,and to give them time to think on what they have done. I think prisons should both punish and help. Maybe instead of putting people who do minor crimes in prison they should work, if not they should be in a prison for some time. Yes, I think people in prison should have more help with drugs and such. The government should pay.

I think that jail should be for punishing people for the crime or crimes they have committed. They should not punish them since being in jail is already enough. Once they get close to the time when they are going to be released, I would have them start helping them get back on their feet. Local officials should come up with alternative punishments for people who committed minor crimes. I think the government should pay for mental health and drug and alcohol treatment services.

The purpose of prison should be to keep the bad people that do not so good thing away from the the people who do good and to punish them Yes according to what did to put them in there. yes they should also do that if they seem that there doing good . The people who do that should go in prison for a little to learn their lesson . They should the treat meant for they won’t do it in the future

1. i think the purpose of prison is to send a message to the person that is in it, to be punished, and it is also purposed to protect the public. 2.i honestly think that it would be the best to help them and rehabilitate them to get them back on their feet. 3. i think that if we do keep this system than yes i would think it is appropriate. 4. i think that it is important to help those people who have messed up badly in life and get them back on the track, so i think that the government should pay or the persons family members.

The purpose of jail is to punish criminals who have done bad things and broken the law. It should punish people because the person’s actions that caused them to go to jail maybe hurt or punished someone innocent so yes prison should be used to punish people. Yes prison should be a deterrent to crime. Rehab is used to rehabilitate people not prison so no. Maybe put people in prison for a week for minor crimes but not years. Prison should provide more medical help and the local government should pay for the programs.

i believe that prision is to help criminals realize that what they have done is not acceptable and they need to notice that what they didnt isnt allowed in whatever state or city that they live in. Jails and prisions should not punish people. Their time that they are doing should be enough they shouldnt be abused.

Prison is a good thing and a bad thing, the good thing about prison is its disciplines people, but sometimes some people are being disciplined for no good reason. If people get caught with drugs,then they should do a urinary analysis and if the UA comes up dirty for substances then they should do a rule 25. Personally I think it would be better to go to treatment instead of prison, because once they get out of prison they are going to be using again. When people are in prison they think about what they are going to do when they get out. People in treatment are thinking about how they are going to change their ways.. I think people should take a look at a person before just sending them to prison.

I believe that prisons are correctional facilities. They are not rehabilitation centers for drug or alcohol abusers, nor are they places for the needy to get an easy meal or shelter for a few weeks. I recently went on a prison tour in South Africa where I had the opportunity to speak to inmates that were currently serving time. Here are some interesting points I took from that visit. — Prison life is NOT better than living below the breadline every day where your only choice is to commit crime. Many inmates remarked that to stay alive they needed to steal as jobs are difficult to find and stealing is the only way to survive. That being said, there was unanimous agreement that the inmates would do anything to get out of prison if they could.

— Although many people are “corrected” and are fit to return to society many still reoffend. Unfortunately this is the nature of society. Even the fear of prison and the gloom that comes with it cannot overrule the need for food and shelter. It is virtually impossible to get a job with a criminal record and thus many people return to their old ways where being a criminal is a way of life, a necessity to survive.

–South African correctional facilities offer no substance rehabilitation whatsoever. This means that inmates must go cold turkey upon being convicted. Unfortunately when prisoners are released they often begin using drugs again and are caught for the second or third time, even after being clean whilst serving time. This seems to be inevitable and it doesn’t seem that specific programs to rehabilitate substance abusers will change this pattern. I make this point on similar grounds as the above – old habits are hard to break and societal as well as contextual pressures force drug users to reoffend.

Of course, there is much more to say on the matter and I think it is important to mention that many inmates seemed genuinely sorry for their actions and were doing their best to make ammends. Unfortunately as good-intentioned as these people may be, once they are released they have nowhere to go, nothing to eat and no work. This forces the cycle to repeat itself. Does making prison more scary prevent reoffenders? I doubt it. Do rehabilitation programs lead to less people turning to drugs on release? I also doubt it. What is desperately needed are programs for released inmates to get jobs and be reintegrated back into society in order to prevent recidivism. How this can be achieved I don’t know but it’s the missing link in the fight against crime.

I do believe their should be prisons and the purpose be for criminals that have committed a serious crime, such as killers, rapist, attempted murder etc. Also prisons for these people should not be a time to get a school degree, work out, have rites. The only rites they should have is a to a trial , the right to appeal if they feel unjust, a cot to sleep on food and clean clothes. Rich or poor, they need to do the time. If mentally ill, then there needs to be a separate prison for them as a safety to themselves and others. But again they should not be given special treatment. Medication if they need calming, a place to sleep, clean clothes, food and evaluations to see if they can stand trial at a later time. For small violations such as non paid tickets, shoplifting, etc where they did not harm a person, then community service needs to be enforced. This world needs cleaning up, utilize the people who do not follow the law to work off their time for the crime they committed.

I do believe their should be prisons and the purpose be for criminals that have committed a serious crime, such as killers, rapist, attempted murder etc. Also prisons for these people should not be a time to get a school degree, work out, have rites. The only rites they should have is a to a trial , the right to appeal if they feel unjust, a cot to sleep on food and clean clothes. Rich or poor, they need to do the time. If mentally ill, then there needs to be a separate prison for them as a safety to themselves and others. But again they should not be given special treatment. Medication if they need calming, a place to sleep, clean clothes, food and evaluations to see if they can stand trial at a later time. For small violations such as non paid tickets, shoplifting, etc where they did not harm a person, then community service needs to be enforced. This world needs cleaning up, utilize the people who do not follow the law to work off their time for the crime they committed

I believe the prisons should be used for people who have committed serious crimes such as murder, rapes, anyone with the intent of hurting another and has tried. People in prison should not have the rite to get an education, working out with weights or anything to better themselves. They committed a crime, violated or ended another persons life, what they took away from one person they should have to experience themselves. Rich or poor, do the crime you pay the time. Therapy should be given to the point of getting them off drugs, drinking and therapy group talking. For the lesser crimes where a person is not a threat to society then community service from building, cleanups, helping the poor, soup kitchens, trash pick up etc, should be utilized. Imagine the money saved and people in society helping out. Sometimes we all can learn from other generations when we experience their point of living. So keep prisons , just use them for the intended purpose, real crimes.

I think the purpose of prisons should be to punish crimes to prevent them from happening again. The purpose of prisons should be to deterrent crimes so they won’t needlessly repeat. I do think prisons rehabilitate people and get them back on their feet although that may encourage people who need help to commit crimes to receive help instead of finding other solutions to their problems and issues. We shouldn’t incarcerate people for minor offenses because the public has to pay for the prison in taxes. Instead, local officials should come up with different ways to reprimand the misdemeanor. Some punishments could be community work or taking classes to understand what they did wrong. Prisons and jails should provide mental health and drug treatments to the prisoners if they are needed and the government, not the public should fund it. Although prisons should provide those services, I believe that there should be another way to obtain those services outside of prison for those who desperately need it instead of giving people incentives treatments for committing a crime.

Prisons and Jails are great for keeping the bad people away, but putting people there for being unable to pay fines is just raising taxes. Use the taxes for something else rather than keeping a human sustained in prison for an amount of time. They should just be put in debt if they cannot pay, not put in prison. Prisons are to punish people who are very bad, not if you’re not paying for the subway. That is what fines are for. They should provide programs to make sure that people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are no longer addicted to make sure they won’t go to prison again, and have to be sustained for another sentence.

I believe that the purpose of prisons is a form of punishment to prevent serious crimes from repeatedly happening and giving a criminal time to mull over what they did wrong. Prison should serve a purpose to prevent crimes, not encourage crimes. Although some crimes occur because of mental illness or drug issues I believe prisons should provide treatments to ailments and attempt to rehabilitate people so they won’t have to go to prison because of money problems. There also is an issue with providing treatments in prison because that can be seen as an incentive to a person who lacks funds to buy their own medical supplies to commit a crime to get access to treatments. We should not incarcerate people for minor crimes such as driving with suspended licenses or shoplifting or other misdemeanors. Instead of imprisoning them and wasting peoples’ money for taxes, local officials should come with punishments that could make the offenders understand and learn what they did wrong. Some good punishments are community service; accounting classes to teach them about money, working at a shop teach why losing several small objects add up to a large amount, and showing them why licenses are so important. Jails and prisons should have a better system and procedure on providing the ital health and drug abuse treatments so when the people in jail are released they can avoid falling into the same mental or drug health issues again. The government should pay for it and find a cost efficient way to treat all the needy prisoners.

The purpose of a prison is to be a place of punishment for those who have committed crimes. Should prisons punish those confined in it? No, being in a prison is enough of a punishment. The moment a person enters a prison they are stripped of personal freedom, with that being said prisons should serve as a deterrent to crime. Depending on the crime and the purpose for committing the crime prisons can also serve as rehabs. You wouldn’t punish someone who stole food to feed their family the same way you would punish someone who stole money to buy drugs. In this time and society some individuals need help to be set on the right track. Prisons should not be filled with individuals who have committed minor offenses such as driving with a suspended license. The world is filled with people who execute heinous crimes such as murder and rape. Prisons should try to confine them and not others who have committed minor offenses. For those who have committed minor offenses local officials should punish them by using alternatives such as public humiliation. Nothing teaches a lesson better than the stinging pain of shame. Mental health, drug, and alcohol treatments should be provided in prisons. By having these treatment centers prisons are nursing individuals and helping them get back on their feet. The funding for these programs should come from taxes.

Prisons is a place for that criminal.The people in here are killers,murderers,rapist.Or did some horrible things.but there are also some people did something like stole a ride and so on.Whatever they did,they are one of the member in this society.They broke the rules and law.So they should introspect themselves what they had done.But some people did such things due to poor.They don’t want to do,they have to do.So we should give a place and chance to them.If better,they can also contribute themselves to this society after prison.We shouldn’t give up them.As a government, it should give money and equipment to prison without hesitation. And help the people in there instead of putting them into a incorrect environment.Through a good physical and mental treatment,most of them can be a better man.Meanwhile we need to reform and improve the treatment to the minor offenses. That ‘s the purpose of prisons.That’s my point of view.

i think prison should be there to help people get better and not want to go back to prison. i don’t think that someone should go to jail just because of a speeding ticket or parking ticket. whats the point i think its just using more tax dollars to pay for people a place to stay and a meal each day. i think its more that people need help not prison there are some people who deserve life in prison but others don’t.

I think the purpose of prison should be to punish the people who have done wrong. I dont think it should be a place to help addicts. I do think that prisons should punish people, but only if they are in there for something like murder. If someone is in for drugs i dont think the jail should serve as a rehabilitation center.

The purpose of prison should be to help keep people from doing bad things. I think that not only should they punish people for what they did, but they should be able to rehabilitate people and get them back on their feet. People should not get arrested for driving with a suspended license or failing to pay a speeding ticket. That’s just a bunch of bullcrap! Instead, [the person who’s doing the wrong] should receive notices and/or reminders in the mail, whether it be electronic or paper, that they need to get their licenses renewed, or they still need to pay their ticket. I think this is the way things should be! That way, we don’t have overcrowded jails and prisons in our free country.

I personally don’t think someone should go to jail or prison for a minor offense such as many traffic violations. But I also still think there should be a some type of penalty for many traffic or small crimes if it happens many times in a short time period. For the fact to keep traveling safe and free from acccidents.

I think the purpose of prison is to show that person who committed a crime that what they did was wrong. And that their not gonna get away with it, with out learning the hard way. prison shouldn’t be just a place for people to live who don’t want to pay the fine that they got. I also think that they should have to work it off in the jail or prison i think its about two dollars a hour so let them work it off other wise there gonna live in there till the day they die.

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The Purpose of Prisons Overview Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Many people would not dispute the fact that prisons are created for different purposes. For instance, punishment and rehabilitation are the most significant ones. Some may assume that prisons have only one goal, which is either punishment or rehabilitation. Arguably, jails should serve all purposes for prisoners regarding the severity of the crime that they committed. Punishment includes retribution for crimes against society, depriving criminals of their freedom, and incapacitation which refers to the removal of criminals from the community. Meanwhile, rehabilitation activities involve giving educational classes in jail, training job skills, and treatment services with a psychologist or social worker, and are designed to change criminals into law-abiding citizens.

One of the most commonly applied types of punishment for a convicted offender is imprisonment and deterrence. Prison was a saving grace for some offenders, pushing them to change their criminal behavior and make apologies for their crimes. In this context, the punishment model is justified to prevent the crime from occurring again. Moreover, in some jails, conditions are terrifying; thus, ordinary citizens may accept that prisons are terrible places and, as a result, be aware of committing the crime. According to the statistics, the awareness of jails eventually had a minor influence on the number of inmates because “the proportion of US residents who are in prison fell 15%, from 506 sentenced prisoners in 2008 to 431 in 2018 per 100,000 US residents” (Carson, 2020, p. 1). Thus, the US local authorities achieve a decrease in crimes through deterrence and discipline, even in small amounts.

On the other hand, punishment through depriving and incapacitation may cause serious health issues due to the horrendous condition in jails. This situation may lead to prison riots, difficulties with rehabilitation, and policy implications such as financial losses and societal rejection and hate. For instance, Maruschak (2015) mentioned that “half of state and federal prisoners and local jail inmates reported ever having a chronic condition. Chronic conditions include cancer, high blood pressure, stroke-related problems, diabetes, heart-related problems, kidney-related problems, arthritis, asthma, and cirrhosis of the liver” (p. 1). Additionally, rehabilitation with punishment is one of the worst ideas that had ever occurred because penalties may reduce some symptoms. Still, they would never correct the original issue of why a person had been seized to jail.

Therefore, if the government provides proper medical care and education for prisoners, the number of crimes may decrease considerably. Snell (2014) claimed that “four states (California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania) held more than half of all inmates on death row on December 31, 2011” (p. 1). Thus, punishment may cause a positive effect on society, such as the fear of jails, as well as negative, for example, the struggle for prisoners’ rights regarding death and other sentences. Meanwhile, rehabilitation and education of inmates may extinguish the issue with the fight for individuals’ rights, and force realized prisoners to teach other humans that crime committing is not worth striving.

In conclusion, in light of the information mentioned above, the US government has not decreased the number of offenses and crimes considerably. Statistics prove that there was a minor reduction of the US residents in prisons, and, still, those are the minor amounts. Therefore, in order to prevent illegal activities, even more, the authorities should provide not only deterrence but also proper medical treatment and education regarding the severity of the prisoner’s crime.

Carson, E. A. (2020). Prisoners in 2018 . U.S. Department of Justice.

Maruschak, L. M. (2015). Medical Problems of State and Federal Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011–12 . U.S. Department of Justice.

Snell, T. L. (2014). Capital Punishment, 2011 – Statistical Tables . U.S. Department of Justice.

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The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (2014)

Chapter: 12 the prison in society: values and principles.

12 The Prison in Society: Values and Principles

The transformation of U.S. punishment policy during the rise in incarceration reflected not just deep changes in society, but also a change in thinking. The country experienced a tumultuous period of economic and political change, rapidly rising crime rates, and changing race relations. The politics of criminal justice policy became much more punitive. Policy makers enacted laws that were meant to send many more people to prison and keep them there longer. These changes reflect a shift in emphasis among competing values. Public and professional discourses moved from a focus on rehabilitation as the predominant purpose of punishment to just deserts, or retribution, as the primary goal. Stated in colloquial terms, “tough on crime,” “do the crime, do the time,” and “adult time for adult crime” became the public narrative.

The preceding chapters of this report assessed the scientific evidence on the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States. In the next chapter, the committee considers the policy implications of that evidence. However, questions regarding the appropriate use of prison in a democratic society cannot be resolved solely by reference to evidence, nor can a society decide whether prison rates are too high only by weighing narrowly quantifiable costs against benefits. Accordingly, the committee explored the scholarly literatures on the purposes of punishment, the role of prisons in democratic societies, and the normative principles 1 that have traditionally limited the penal power of the state. This chapter

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1 Political theorists and legal analysts have often observed that public policy necessarily embodies ethical judgments about means or ends. These judgments are informed by normative principles: basic ideals or values—often embedded in history, institutions, and public

documents important shifts in prevailing ways of thinking that reinforced the growth in the use of prison. An assessment of this literature was an essential step for the committee in addressing its charge to discuss the policy implications of the scientific evidence on high rates of incarceration.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Early in the twentieth century, the goal of rehabilitation of offenders was central to mainstream thinking about the purposes of punishment. Incarceration was widely seen as an opportunity to address the needs and remedy the defects of the criminal offender (Rothman, 1971, 1980; Garland, 1991, 2001). The rehabilitative ideal was regularly compromised in practice and too rarely truly attained. There was nonetheless a positive transformative purpose that was supposed to be central to the institutional design of the prison, the nature of correctional programming, the use of probation and parole, and the day-to-day practices of sentencing judges (Allen, 1981).

In the shifting political climate of the 1970s, however, skepticism about the appropriateness and the effectiveness of rehabilitation grew. From the 1970s on, two sometimes incompatible goals were increasingly invoked: to link the severity of punishments closely to the seriousness of crimes and to prevent crime, principally through deterrence and incapacitation. Andrew von Hirsch (1976), reporting for the Committee for the Study of Incarceration, detailed a theory of punishment based on retribution and deterrence in his book Doing Justice , and he added the phrase “just deserts” to the nation’s criminal justice vocabulary. Numerous other philosophers, criminal lawyers, and correctional officials urged that retribution be recognized as the primary purpose of punishment (e.g., Morris, 1966; Morris, 1974; Fogel, 1979). As von Hirsch (1976, 2007) observed, punishment is a blaming institution that censures offenders for criminal conduct. Retribution, for Von Hirsch, was to be moderated by a principle of fairness and by a fundamental commitment to apportioning punishments to offenders’ relative blameworthiness. Others urged a shift away from rehabilitation as a goal and toward crime prevention. In Thinking about Crime , James Q. Wilson (1975) channeled public anxiety and anger about street crime, repudiated rehabilitation as an achievable objective, and argued that deterrence and incapacitation should be viewed as the preeminent goals of punishment.

These works signaled a shift in values. The emphasis on rehabilitation was replaced by an emphasis on punishment as a symbol of moral accountability and as a means to control crime.

___________________________________________________

understanding—that offer a yardstick by which good governance is measured (see, e.g., Gillroy and Wade 1992).

The notion that punishments should aim to prevent crime dates from the work of Cesare Beccaria (1764) and Jeremy Bentham (1830, 1970), who pioneered the modern theory of deterrence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see Chapter 5 ). Early in the twentieth century, positivist thinkers, typified by Enrico Ferri (1921) in Europe and by Jerome Michael and Herbert Wechsler (1937) in the United States, laid preventive foundations for what came to be called indeterminate sentencing, In this sentencing framework, offenders should be imprisoned if they threatened public safety and should be released when they ceased to do so (Pifferi, 2012). Otherwise, they should be kept in prison and thereby incapacitated until they ceased to present an unacceptable safety threat.

The retributive and crime control mission of punishment gained renewed emphasis beginning in the 1970s. Research on incapacitation and deterrence burgeoned (Greenwood and Abrahamse, 1982; National Research Council, 1978a). Among policy makers and practitioners, deterrence, incapacitation, and offender accountability became the predominant objectives of punishment. Proponents of legislative proposals to make sentencing laws more punitive invoked theories of deterrence and incapacitation. Crime control was a key goal for measures such as mandatory minimums, three-strikes, truth-in-sentencing, and sentences of life without parole.

As the goals of crime control and offender accountability ascended, however, long-standing principles that limited harsh punishment receded from political debate and crime policy. The magnitude of the increase in incarceration rates after 1972 and the speed with which it occurred demonstrate the transformation of the purposes of punishment.

In both classical and contemporary retributive theories, punishments may or must be imposed because they are deserved, but to be just they must be closely apportioned to the seriousness of the crime. In both classical and contemporary consequentialist theories, 2 punishments may or must be imposed if doing so will achieve valid preventive goals, but to be just they must be no more severe than is needed for them to be effective.

Many recent sentencing laws sought to be punitive, and were, but failed to assure that punishments were apportioned to the seriousness of offenders’ crimes. Many recent sentencing laws sought to prevent crime through deterrence and incapacitation, but failed to ensure that punishments were no more severe than was necessary to achieve their aims. Today, with little evidence of a sizable reduction in crime that is attributable to a more than 4-fold increase in incarceration over nearly 40 years, and with the possibility of real social harm from excessive use of incarceration, old principles of restrained punishment need to be reemphasized.

2 Utilitarian, positivist, and other theories that justify actions by reference to their effects, or consequences, are called “consequentialist” theories.

Principles for the restrained use of punishment—similar to the values of crime control and offender accountability—have deep roots in normative theories of jurisprudence and social policy. Some emerge from historical and contemporary efforts to justify the imposition of pain on convicted offenders. Others emerge from broader concerns about the nature of citizenship in a free society. These principles of restraint can curb the rush to punish by appealing to ideas of fairness and by underlining the steadfast mutual obligations that arise from citizens’ common membership in the social compact.

The following sections trace the scholarly literature and the intellectual lineage of the principles that should inform the use of incarceration and the role of prison in U.S. society. Each section distills a core principle that acts as a constraint on the power of the state to punish individuals who have violated the law. These principles provided guidance to the committee as we weighed the evidence of the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States. Taken together, these normative principles describe a broad conception of justice to which the nation’s public institutions should aspire:

•    Desert and proportionality : Punishments are said to be deserved, and therefore just, only to the extent that their severity is apportioned to the seriousness of the crimes for which they are imposed. Because of myriad differences in the circumstances of offenses and offenders, punishments may sometimes justly be less severe than is maximally deserved but should never be more severe.

•    Parsimony: Punishments for crime, and especially lengths of prison sentences, should never be more severe than is necessary to achieve the retributive or preventive purposes for which they are imposed.

•    Citizenship: The conditions and consequences of punishments for crime, especially terms of imprisonment, should not be so severe or so enduring as to violate an individual’s fundamental status as a member of society.

•    Social justice: Prisons should be instruments of justice. Their collective effect should be to promote, and not to undermine, society’s aspirations for a fair distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities.

Each of these principles recognizes that the forcible deprivation of liberty through incarceration is an awesome state power that is vulnerable to misuse, threatening the republican values that underpin the legitimacy of the prison and of the state. These principles of restraint are complements, not alternatives, to recent emphases on offender accountability and crime control. Offender accountability and crime control are unquestionably important values but, unbalanced by principles of restraint, they have

precipitated unconstrained growth in incarceration. The principles of restraint help set limits on the scale of incarceration and point toward new approaches.

DESERT AND PROPORTIONALITY

The principle of proportionality should guide the distribution of punishment across the full range of crimes. Proportionality requires that crimes be sentenced in relation to their seriousness and the extent of the offender’s moral culpability. Ideas about proportionality are as old as humankind. Plato and Aristotle wrote about them. In modern times, they are developed most fully in philosophical writing on retribution and desert. That literature dates from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century writings of Immanuel Kant (1965 [1798]). Kant believed that respect for the moral autonomy of human beings requires that offenders be held accountable for their wrongdoing in strict proportion to its seriousness. He proposed a “principle of equality” under which harms brought into the world by offenders would be returned to them as punishment in “like kind.” That is not now and never has been practicable in absolute terms. No one can make a compelling case for why any particular crime deserves to be punished to a uniquely appropriate degree. However, that has not significantly inhibited the development of retributive theories of punishment.

Modern writing makes the case not for absolutely deserved but for relatively deserved punishments (e.g., von Hirsch 1976, 1992; Duff 1986, 2001; Robinson 2008). What is seen as important is that comparably serious crimes are punished in comparable ways, and that more serious ones are punished more severely than less serious ones (and, of course, vice versa). Proportionality thus provides guidance in setting relative levels of punishment across the full range of offenses, not the absolute level of severity of punishment for any particular offense. Once crimes have been ranked according to their seriousness, the principle of proportionality offers a benchmark by which severity can be calibrated. There is wide public agreement about the relative seriousness of various crimes (Roberts and Stalans, 1997; Darley 2010; Robinson, 2013).

At this time, the committee believes, most people—including legislators, judges, and practitioners—share and support common intuitions about deserved punishments and proportionality. However, this has not always been true in the United States, as we show in Chapter 3 . During the half century when indeterminate sentencing systems were ubiquitous, many people believed that punishments should be individualized to take account of offenders’ rehabilitative prospects and to reflect public safety needs for their incapacitation. The existence of widely held intuitions about retributive punishment were acknowledged but disparaged as old-fashioned and

unseemly. Retributive ideas had little influence (e.g., Michael and Wechsler, 1937). Proportionality in the contemporary sense was simply not seen as important.

That view changed in the 1970s when rehabilitation lost credibility and support as a primary aim of punishment. Indeterminate sentencing fell from favor. Partly by default and partly because they fit with contemporaneous concerns for individual rights, procedural fairness, and transparency and accountability in government, retributive ideas became much more influential. Absence of proportionality underlay major critiques of unwarranted disparities in indeterminate sentencing. Proportionality was seized upon as a plausible and principled basis for setting standards for sentencing by the developers of determinate sentencing laws and newly invented guidelines systems.

Sentencing guidelines were widely adopted by state and local U.S. jurisdictions during the 1970s and 1980s. Ideas about proportionality provided a framework for creating comprehensive systems for setting sentences for criminal offenses. Guidelines typically took the form of two-dimensional grids that specified sentences according to the severity of the offense and the offender’s criminal history. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of these developments and the social science evidence concerning their largely positive effects.) Well-designed, well-managed systems successfully reduced disparities, made sentencing predictable, made the system more transparent, and held judges accountable. They also provided important tools for rational and economic policy making. Early guidelines systems in Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon not only made sentencing more consistent, predictable, and transparent, but also enhanced financial planning and correctional management (Tonry, 1996).

The gains in justice, rationality, and cost-effectiveness that proportionality ideas fostered ultimately proved short-lived. The core ideas about justice and equal treatment that motivated support for proportionality were eroded by the adoption of mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes laws, and other measures that readily imposed incarceration. Such laws often disconnected the severity of punishments from the seriousness of crimes. Low-level drug crimes often were punished as severely as serious acts of violence. Under three strikes laws, some misdemeanors and minor property felonies were punished as severely as homicides, rapes, and robberies. In other Western countries that enacted mandatory minimum sentence laws, judges were almost always authorized to disregard the minimums in the “interest of justice.” By contrast, U.S. laws almost never give judges that discretion (Tonry, 2009b).

“Parsimony,” like proportionality, is an old idea but one that is salient in the current debate. Jeremy Bentham (1830, 1970) believed that the measure of a good law or policy is whether it maximizes human happiness. He regarded all infliction of pain, including on offenders, as an “evil” but as justifiable if its imposition prevented greater pain for others. If that test could not be satisfied, a principle of parsimony (sometimes he used the term frugality) forbade imposition of the punishment. Immanuel Kant was, of course, not a utilitarian and did not believe moral matters could be evaluated by weighing costs and benefits (1965 [1798]). However, an idea akin to parsimony is central to classical retributive theories and to contemporary ideas about proportionality in punishment. By all such accounts, and by definition, any punishment that is more or “disproportionately” severe than is deserved is unjust. The word parsimony is not used by retributivists but the underlying concept is the same: Any punishment that is more severe than is required to achieve valid and applicable purposes is to that extent morally unjustifiable. It is excessive. During the indeterminate sentencing period, the term “least restrictive alternative” was used to express the concept, for example, in the Model Sentencing Act of the Advisory Committee of Judges of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (1972).

The idea of parsimony as a restraint on punishment expresses the normative belief that infliction of pain or hardship on another human being is something that should be done, when it must be done, as little as possible. The late University of Chicago law professor Norval Morris likened it to a “Hippocratic criminal justice” oath according to which criminal punishments should do no harm beyond that which is minimally required in order to achieve valid social purposes (Tonry, 1994, 2004). The legitimate social purposes served by punishment have come to be defined as retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Retribution reflects “society’s official view of what a criminal deserves,” and Morris (1982, p. 161) adds, “it is not finely tuned.” Deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation are more utilitarian, intended to promote public safety.

Morris (1974) offered a highly influential account of punishment that takes parsimony seriously. Called “limiting retributivism,” Morris’s theory posits that for every crime, wide agreement can be reached that some punishments would be unjustly severe and others would be unduly lenient. He described unjustly severe and unduly lenient punishments as “undeserved” and possible punishments that lay between them as “not undeserved.” The phrasing is awkward but it is based on the view that it is unlikely that widespread agreements can be reached about punishments that are uniquely “deserved” for particular crimes but highly likely that wide agreements

can be reached that particular punishments are unjustly severe or unduly lenient.

The range of allowable “not undeserved punishments” is however only the starting point. Within that range, Morris said, any punishment could in theory be appropriate, but the presumptions in a free society, consistent with Bentham’s notion of parsimony, should favor liberty. Thus the presumption in every case should be that punishments should be imposed at the bottom end of the allowable range. Overcoming the presumption would require that good evidence be available to show that a more severe punishment would achieve demonstrable preventive effects. The American Law Institute (2011) explicitly adopted Morris’s limiting retributivism as the theoretical basis of the Model Penal Code—Sentencing . It is reflected in the laws of states that have adopted systems of presumptive sentencing guidelines (Frase, 2013).

Parsimonious use of criminal punishments may have benefits larger than sparing offenders unnecessary suffering and saving public monies. Greater restraint in the use of punishment could, for example, advance public safety. When punishments are unduly severe and affect large numbers of people in particular communities, crime may flourish as justice institutions lose legitimacy, time in prison becomes a predictable feature of young men’s lives, and the deterrent effect of prison is dulled (Muller and Schrage, 2014; Nagin, 1998).

Social justice may also be more enhanced by parsimonious use of punishment. The concentration of incarceration mainly among poor and minority men in severely disadvantaged communities means that the negative effects of incarceration, including diminution of the life chances of the children of those incarcerated, are also socially concentrated. Throughout this report, we presented evidence showing that those incarcerated face risks to economic opportunities and well-being, and that family members and neighborhoods may also be affected. Parsimonious use of punishment may not only minimize unnecessary use of penal sanctions including imprisonment, but also limit the negative and socially concentrated effects of incarceration, thereby expanding the distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities more broadly throughout U.S. society.

CITIZENSHIP

The principle of citizenship is a basic tenet of jurisprudence and constitutional government. Citizenship denotes a core set of fundamental rights accruing to all persons by virtue of their membership in a political community. T.H. Marshall (1950) describes how citizenship establishes basic civil rights to self-expression and recourse to the courts; political rights to the franchise; and in the modern era through social policy, a basic right

to human welfare. Together, the rights of citizenship establish a minimum standard of human dignity and protections against state action that compromises, abridges, or undermines the capacity of citizens to exercise those rights.

Incarceration tests the limits of citizenship. Penal confinement necessarily restricts freedom of action in ways that are experienced by no other citizens. Still, the idea that there are basic standards and rights to which all citizens remain entitled is reflected in two precepts of public policy that are widely although not universally applied: that the restrictions associated with incarceration are temporary, and that the nature of penal confinement must respect human dignity. Underlying measures for the temporary and dignified character of punishment is the concept of what Meyer (2010) describes as human connectedness among the members of a political community that serves to limit the penal power of the state.

The temporary character of incarceration is reflected in the fact that the overwhelming majority of prisoners ultimately will return to free society, and underscores why time spent in prison should not serve to compromise their successful re-entry when they do. The many mechanisms for discretionary release that accelerate the prisoner’s return to the community and hasten the full restoration of rights—from parole, through the expiration of collateral consequences, to executive pardons—also underscore the time-limited, temporary nature of the prison experience and the importance given to restoring full citizenship rights as soon as possible. 3

The need to maintain human dignity for incarcerated individuals is well established by international standards (e.g., United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2006). Many legal and correctional organizations in the United States also openly value human dignity and acknowledge the importance of protecting it during penal confinement. The American Correctional Association takes “humanity” as its first principle of correctional supervision, stating, “The dignity of individuals, the rights of all people and the potential for human growth and development must be respected” (American Correctional Association, 2002). In its Standards on Treatment of Prisoners, the American Bar Association (2010, Standard 23-7.1) endorses a similar principle: “Correctional authorities should treat prisoners in a manner that respects their human dignity, and should not subject them to harassment, bullying, or disparaging language or treatment, or to invidious discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity,

3 For a history of parole release in the United States and its connection to the reforming impulse of the Progressive movement, see Rothman (1980). Office of the Pardon Attorney (1996) catalogs state and federal collateral consequences and mechanisms for the restoration of rights. Meyer (2010) reviews the normative theory of mercy and its connection to Kantian theories of retribution.

religion, language, national origin, citizenship, age, or physical or mental disability.”

Some of the most authoritative statements on this issue can be found in the United States Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, which has evolved to embody a standard of basic decency in prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Thus in the landmark capital case Furman v. Georgia , Justice William O. Brennan famously wrote that “punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity.” More recently, Justice Kennedy echoed these sentiments when, speaking directly about the way that harsh conditions of confinement could adversely and unconstitutionally affect the treatment of prisoners, he wrote that: “Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment” [ Brown v. Plata , 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011), p. 1928].

The legal scholar Robert Cover’s observation that “[t]he experience of the prisoner is, from the outset, an experience of being violently dominated, and it is colored from the beginning by the fear of being violently treated” [cited in Brown v. Plata , p. 1608] serves as a reminder of the power of imprisonment and a caution against losing sight of the old adage that persons are sent to prison as punishment not for (more) punishment. In this context, the principle of citizenship requires that the punishment of prison should not be so severe that it causes damage to prisoners, places them at serious risk of significant harm, or compromises their chances to lead a fulfilling and successful life after they are released.

Yet during the past decades of high rates of incarceration, as we have noted, the growth of incarceration strained fidelity to the principle of citizenship. Under pressure to accommodate and manage truly unprecedented and rapidly increasing numbers of prisoners and a multitude of other challenging problems, the limiting principle that acknowledges and protects the essence of human dignity inherent in all prisoners was at times compromised. Moreover, although the goal of rehabilitation may have been rarely attained, it nonetheless served as a kind of restraining edge against the worst excesses of imprisonment. If, at least in theory, prisoners were supposed to be released from prison better off than they entered, then there were some implicit limits to what prison administrators and officials could knowingly tolerate or practice. When the nation relinquished its commitment to rehabilitation, this implicit limit was relaxed.

To be sure, there were some measurable positive changes that occurred in the nature of imprisonment, even during these otherwise challenging times. As we have noted earlier in this report, lethal violence has significantly declined overall in U.S. prisons, and that many prisons and entire prison systems continued to be well managed and adequately staffed and supported. As we have also noted, however, although systematic and

comprehensive research on the quality of life and other more subtle indices of the experience of incarceration is limited, evidence of problematic practices, conditions, and forms of treatment persists.

The principle of citizenship—and respect for human dignity—would require review of certain conditions of confinement. Our review suggests, for example, that lengthy periods of isolation or administrative segregation can place prisoners at risk of significant psychological harm (see Chapter 6 ). Other evidence suggests that, partly as a result of serious overcrowding, prisoners have experienced reduced access to educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programs; and little or no adequate preparation for the return to free society. Prisoners who return to free society emotionally damaged, socially marginalized, or unprepared to obtain gainful employment may never be able to become fully functioning and participating members of the community, violating the most basic tenets of the principles of citizenship.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The legal and political theory of punishment is largely silent on the social context in which criminal behavior arises. Criminal punishment is treated as a state-sanctioned blaming of offenders for moral failure, with limits imposed on the state to preserve core rights of citizenship. Justice is served by the equal treatment of suspects, defendants, and the incarcerated. This view of criminal punishment typically neglects the social or economic circumstances of crime, or the social inequality that often grows as cases move from arrest, to conviction, and then incarceration. The equation of justice with equal treatment in the courts is striking since the authorities deal overwhelmingly with the poor. We have seen from our review of incarceration statistics that, in the period of high incarceration rates, imprisonment has become commonplace for recent birth cohorts of men, particularly minorities, with very little schooling. Pervasive incarceration among poor men raises the question: What is the significance of poverty and social inequality for the U.S. system of punishment as an instrument of justice?

Classical conceptions of justice took little notice of the social inequalities that frequently divided the citizenry. Liberal justice of the eighteenth century insisted on a basic equality among men, in the language of the Declaration of Independence. Still, the liberal justice of equal rights failed to deliver citizenship to enslaved populations in the United States, and widely failed to deliver the franchise to women. Other deep social and economic inequalities persisted through the liberal revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

By the early twentieth century, normative theorists—deeply concerned by the problems of poverty and social inequality—advocated for social

policy to help redress unequal life chances produced by the rapidly industrializing economies of Western Europe and the United States. In 1912, R.H. Tawney’s treatise on Equality reflected on the inadequate education and slum housing of the English working class, leading him to call for not merely “an open road, but … an equal start” (Tawney 1912, p. 143). Nearly 40 years later, T.H. Marshall (1987 [1950]) described how public education, health care, and income assistance were establishing a dignified standard of living as a basic social right. Political philosophers explicitly made the connection between poverty and injustice. John Rawls (1971) in his monumental Theory of Justice argued that a just society would provide for the fair distribution of “primary goods,” which included not only wealth and income, but powers and opportunities and the social bases of self-respect. Amartya Sen (1992) went further, arguing that justice demanded not only a fair distribution of the means to freedom, but freedom itself in the form of human capabilities. The central thread running through all this writing surpassed the idea of equal treatment to include the alleviation of poverty and inequality, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of justice. 4 In this account, the state played a central role in promoting the opportunities of the most disadvantaged.

The normative theory of social justice developed in parallel with the modern social policy instruments for poverty reduction and equal opportunity. Throughout the twentieth century, public health and education systems, cash assistance programs, and social insurance were all charged with improving the well-being and life chances of the disadvantaged and the unfortunate (Esping-Andersen 1990; Katz 1996).

Key elements of the modern criminal justice system also shared in this policy history. David Rothman (1980) has shown how, in the United States, indeterminate sentencing, the juvenile court, and and parole release and supervision all had their roots in the same progressive movement of the early twentieth century that also championed public sanitation and secondary school education. David Garland (2001) called this perspective on correctional policy, “penal welfarism,” underlining its aspirations to affirm citizenship and provide opportunity to society’s most marginal members. This perspective was eclipsed as incarceration rates increased. Sentencing guidelines replaced indeterminate sentencing, discretionary parole release was widely abandoned and incarceration was used more readily.

Although correctional policy clearly changed as incarceration rates increased, the over-representation of the poor in the criminal justice system did not. The challenge to penal policy of advancing social justice thus

4 The language of social justice came to be widely adopted by legal philosophers and political theorists (e.g., Ackerman 1980; Nussbaum 1998; Miller 1999; Barry 2005).

remains no less urgent than when penal welfarism first emerged as a policy philosophy in the early twentieth century.

In this context, the principle of social justice requires that a penal system avoid adding to social inequality or reduced opportunity. This goal of limiting penal harm recognizes that the power of incarceration is vast and may be socially damaging to those who are incarcerated, their families, and their communities. Minimizing penal harm is imperative because of the severe social and economic disadvantage of those at greatest risk of incarceration.

Reducing the negative effects of incarceration, however, is a minimal goal. More ambitiously, by helping to provide order and predictability in daily life and by reducing violence and other crime in the poorest communities, the criminal justice system can be expected to contribute positively to social justice. In this case, social justice is served by improvements in public safety. More than a general reduction in crime, however, social justice is particularly advanced where crime is reduced among poor and marginal populations. Improving public safety most for the poorest, for whom crime rates are highest, provides for a fairer distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities. Because rates of violence tend to be highest in the poorest communities, the goal of public safety is closely aligned with the value of social justice. Public safety consistent with social justice goes beyond the traditional focus on the detection, apprehension, and prosecution of crimes to also encompass prevention, and the mitigation of the social and economic conditions in which crime tends to flourish. In contrast, if the criminal justice system preserves or exacerbates racial, economic, and other inequalities, social justice is compromised.

Incarceration not only is associated with race, poverty and their correlates, incarceration has also become highly prevalent in the nation’s poorest communities. Incarceration and social inequality are closely entwined. Our review of the evidence on the effects of incarceration suggests that the most troubled communities have not clearly become safer as a result of the growth of incarceration, and they may have suffered significant negative effects. In this respect, high incarceration rates have likely failed to deliver social justice. Through its intimate connection to social inequality, the criminal justice system also risks losing its legitimacy, particularly in the communities where its effects are felt most deeply.

In the domain of justice, empirical evidence by itself cannot determine public policy. Tacit conceptions of fairness and human welfare can remain hidden in the sober accounting of costs and benefits. Even more challenging, the social science evidence is often incomplete and uncertain. Moreover, an

explicit and transparent account of normative principles has been notably missing from the significant policy shifts that propelled the rise in incarceration rates over the last four decades. As a committee, we worried that respect was lost for incarceration as an awesome state power in a liberal society. In this chapter, we have elaborated a set of key normative principles with deep roots in jurisprudence and theories of governance. These principles help supplement the large body of empirical evidence we have reviewed, indicating future directions for policy and research.

CONCLUSION: In the domain of justice, empirical evidence by itself cannot point the way to policy, yet an explicit and transparent expression of normative principles has been notably missing as U.S. incarceration rates dramatically rose over the last four decades. Normative principles have deep roots in jurisprudence and theories of governance and are needed to supplement empirical evidence to guide future policy and research.

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society.

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm.

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States recommends changes in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy to reduce the nation's reliance on incarceration. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. The study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.

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A better path forward for criminal justice: Changing prisons to help people change

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Christy visher and christy visher professor - university of delaware john eason john eason associate professor - university of wisconsin.

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Below is the third chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

Prison culture and environment are essential to public health and safety. While much of the policy debate and public attention of prisons focuses on private facilities, roughly 83 percent of the more than 1,600 U.S. facilities are owned and operated by states. 1 This suggest that states are an essential unit of analysis in understanding the far-reaching effects of imprisonment and the site of potential solutions. Policy change within institutions has to begin at the state level through the departments of corrections. For example, California has rebranded their state corrections division and renamed it the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. For many, these are not only name changes but shifts in policy and practice. In this chapter, we rethink the treatment environment of the prison by highlighting strategies for developing cognitive behavioral communities in prison—immersive cognitive communities. This new approach promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff. Behavior change requires changing thinking patterns and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based strategy that can be utilized in the prison setting. We focus on short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations to begin implementing this model and initiate reforms for the organizational structure of prisons.

Level Setting

The U.S. has seen a steady decline in the federal and state prison population over the last eleven years, with a 2019 population of about 1.4 million men and women incarcerated at year-end, hitting its lowest level since 1995. 2   With the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, criminal justice reformers have urged a continued focus on reducing prison populations and many states are permitting early releases of nonviolent offenders and even closing prisons. Thus, we are likely to see a dramatic reduction in the prison population when the data are tabulated for 2020.

However, it is undeniable that the U.S. will continue to use incarceration as a sanction for criminal behavior at a much higher rate than in other Western countries, in part because of our higher rate of violent offenses. Consequently, a majority of people incarcerated in the U.S. are serving a prison sentence for a violent offense (58 percent). The most serious offense for the remainder is property offenses (16 percent), drug offenses (13 percent), or other offenses (13 percent; generally, weapons, driving offenses, and supervision violations). 3 Moreover, the majority of people in U.S. prisons have been previously incarcerated. The prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation’s population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, with inadequate education. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work experience. 4

According to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average sentence length in state courts for those sentenced to confinement in a state prison is about 4 years and the average time served is about 2.5 years. Those sentenced for a violent offense typically serve about 4.7 years with persons sentenced for murder or manslaughter serving an average of 15 years before their release. 5 Thus, it is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Are they prepared to be valuable community members? What lessons have they learned during their confinement that may help them turn their life around? Will they be successful in avoiding a return to prison? What is the most successful path for helping returning citizens reintegrate into their communities?

Regrettably, prison life is often fraught with difficulty. Being sentenced to incarceration can be traumatic, leading to mental health disorders and difficulty rejoining society. Incarcerated individuals must adjust to the deprivation of liberty, separation from family and social supports, and a loss of personal control over all aspects of one’s life. In prison, individuals face a loss of self-worth, loneliness, high levels of uncertainty and fear, and idleness for long periods of time. Imprisonment disrupts the routines of daily life and has been described as “disorienting” and a “shock to the system”. 6 Further, some researchers have described the existence of a “convict code” in prison that governs behavior and interactions with norms of prison life including mind your own business, no snitching, be tough, and don’t get too close with correctional staff. While these strategies can assist incarcerated persons in surviving prison, these tools are less helpful in ensuring successful reintegration.

Thus, the entire prison experience can jeopardize the personal characteristics required to be effective partners, parents, and employees once they are released. Coupled with the lack of vocational training, education, and reentry programs, individuals face a variety of challenges to reintegrating into their communities. Successful reintegration will not only improve public safety but forces us to reconsider public safety as essential to public health.

Despite the toll of difficult conditions of prison, people who are incarcerated believe that they can be successful citizens. In surveys and interviews with men and women in prison, the majority express hope for their future. Most were employed before their incarceration and have family that will help them get back on their feet. Many have children that they were supporting and want to reconnect with. They realize that finding a job may be hard, but they believe they will be able to avoid the actions that got them into trouble, principally committing crimes and using illegal substances. 7 Research also shows that most individuals with criminal records, especially those convicted of violent crimes, were often victims themselves. This complicates the “victim”-“offender” binary that dominates the popular discourse about crime. By moving beyond this binary, we propose cognitive behavioral therapy, among a host of therapeutic approaches, as part of a broader restorative approach.

Despite having histories of associating with other people who commit crimes and use illegal drugs, incarcerated individuals have pro-social family and friends in their lives. They also may have some personality characteristics that make it difficult to resist involvement in criminal behavior, including impulsivity, lack of self-control, anger/defiance, and weak problem-solving and coping skills. Psychologists have concluded that the primary individual characteristics influencing criminal behavior are thinking patterns that foster criminal activity, associating with other people who engage in criminal activity, personality patterns that support criminal activity, and a history of engaging in criminal activity. 8  While the context constrains individual behavior and choices, the motivation for incarcerated individuals to change their behavior is rooted in their value of family and other positive relationships. However, most prison environments pose significant challenges for incarcerated individuals to develop motivation to make positive changes. Interpersonal relationships in prison are difficult as there is often a culture of mistrust and suspicion coupled with a profound absence of empathy. Despite these challenges, cognitive behavioral interventions can provide a successful path for reintegration.

Many psychologists believe that changing unwanted or negative behaviors requires changing thinking patterns since thoughts and feelings affect behaviors. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) emerged as a psycho-social intervention that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions. It focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and developing personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. 9  In most cases, CBT is a gradual process that helps a person take incremental steps towards a behavior change. CBT has been directed at a wide range of conditions including various addictions (smoking, alcohol, and drug use), eating disorders, phobias, and problems dealing with stress or anxiety. CBT programs help people identify negative thoughts, practice skills for use in real-world situations, and learn problem-solving skills. For example, a person with a substance use disorder might start practicing new coping skills and rehearsing ways to avoid or deal with a high-risk situation that could trigger a relapse.

Since criminal behavior is driven partly by certain thinking patterns that predispose individuals to commit crimes or engage in illegal activities, CBT helps people with criminal records change their attitudes and gives them tools to avoid risky situations. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a comprehensive and time-consuming treatment, typically, requiring intensive group sessions over many months with individualized homework assignments. Evaluations of CBT programs for justice-involved people found that cognitive restructuring treatment was significantly effective in reducing criminal behavior, with those receiving CBT showing recidivism reductions of 20 to 30 percent compared to control groups. 10 Thus, the widespread implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer rearrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration after release. CBT can also be used to mitigate prison culture and thus help reintegrate returning citizens back into their communities.

Thus, the widespread implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer rearrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration after release.

Even the most robust CBT program that meets three hours per week leaves 165 hours a week in which the participant is enmeshed in the typical prison environment. Such an arrangement is bound to dilute the therapy’s impact. To counter these negative influences, the new idea is to connect CBT programming in prison with the old idea of therapeutic communities. Therapeutic communities—either in prison or the community—were established as a self-help substance use rehabilitation approach and instituted the idea that separating the target population from the general population would allow a pro-social community to develop and thereby discourage antisocial cognitions and behaviors. The therapeutic community model relies heavily on participant leadership and requires participants to intervene in arguments and guide treatment groups. Inside prisons, therapeutic communities are a separate housing unit that fosters a rehabilitative environment.

Cognitive Communities in prison would be an immersive experience in cognitive behavioral therapy involving cognitive restructuring, anti-criminal modeling, skill building, problem-solving, and emotion management. These communities would promote new ways of thinking and behaving among its participants around the clock, from breakfast in the morning through residents’ daily routines, including formal CBT sessions, to the evening meal and post-dinner activities. Blending the best aspects of therapeutic communities with CBT principles would lead to Cognitive Communities with several key elements: a separate physical space, community participation in daily activities, reinforcement of pro-social behavior, use of teachable moments, and structured programs. This cultural shift in prison organization provides a foundation for restorative justice practices in prisons.

Accordingly, our recommendations include:

Short-Term Reforms

Create Transforming Prisons Act

Accelerate decarceration begun during pandemic.

Medium-Term Reforms

Encourage Rehabilitative Focus in State Prisons

Foster greater use of community sanctions.

Long-Term Reforms

Embrace Rehabilitative/Restorative Community Justice Models

Encourage collaborations between corrections agencies and researchers, short-term reforms.

To begin transforming prisons to help prisons and people change, a new funding opportunity for state departments of correction is needed. We propose the Transforming Prisons Act (funded through the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance) which would permit states to apply for funds to support innovative programs and practices that would improve prison conditions both for the people who live in prisons and work in prisons. This dual approach would begin to transform prisons into a more just and humane experience for both groups. These new funds could support broad implementation of Cognitive Communities by training the group facilitators and the correctional staff assigned to the specialized prison units. Funds could also be used to broaden other therapeutic programming to support individuals in improving pro-social behaviors through parenting classes, family engagement workshops, anger management, and artistic programming. One example is the California Transformative Arts which promotes self-awareness and improves mental health through artistic expression. Together, these programs could mark a rehabilitative turn in corrections.

While we work to change policies and practices to make prisons more humane, we also need to work towards decarceration. The COVID-19 crisis has enabled innovations in diverting and improving efforts to reintegrate returning citizens in the U.S. During the pandemic, many states took bold steps in implementing early release for older incarcerated persons especially those with health disorders. Research shows that returning citizens of advanced age and with poor health conditions are far less likely to commit crime after release. This set of circumstances makes continued diversion and reintegration of this population a much wiser investment than incarceration.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

In direct response to calls to abolish prisons and defund the police, state prisons should move away from focusing on incapacitation to rehabilitation. To assist in this change, federal funds should be tied to embracing a rehabilitative mission to transform prisons. This transformation should be rooted in evidence-based therapeutic programming, documenting impacts on both incarcerated individuals and corrections staff. Prison good-time policies should be revisited so that incarcerated individuals receive substantial credit for participating in intensive programming such as Cognitive Communities. With a backdrop of an energized rehabilitative philosophy, states should be supported in their efforts to implement innovative models and programming to improve the reintegration of returning citizens and change the organizational structure of their prisons.

In direct response to calls to abolish prisons and  defund  the police, state prisons should move away from focusing on incapacitation to rehabilitation.

As the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, current U.S. incarceration policies and practices are costly for families, communities, and state budgets. Openly punitive incarceration policies make it exceedingly difficult for incarcerated individuals to successfully reintegrate into communities as residents, family members, and employees. A long-term policy goal in the U.S. must be to reduce our over-reliance on incarceration through shorter prison terms, increased reliance on community sanctions, and closing prisons. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that decarceration poses minimal risk to community safety. Given this steady decline in the prison population and decline in prison building in the U.S. since 2000, we encourage other types of development in rural communities to loosen the grip of prisons in these areas. Alternative development for rural communities is important because the most disadvantaged rural communities are both senders of prisoners and receivers of prisons with roughly 70 percent of prison facilities located in rural communities.

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Public safety and public health goals can be achieved through Community Justice Centers—these are sites that act as a diversion preference for individuals who may be in a personal crisis due to mental health conditions, substance use, or family trauma. Recent research demonstrates that using social or public health services to intervene in such situations can lead to better outcomes for communities than involving the criminal justice system. To be clear, many situations can be improved by crisis intervention expertise specializing in de-escalation rather than involving the justice system which may have competing objectives. Community Justice Centers are nongovernmental organizations that divert individuals in crisis away from law enforcement and the justice system. Such diversion also helps ease the social work burden on the justice system that it is often ill-equipped to handle.

Researchers and corrections agencies need to develop working relationships to permit the study of innovative organizational approaches. In the past, the National Institute of Justice created a researcher-practitioner partnership program , whereby local researchers worked with criminal justice practitioners (generally, law enforcement) to develop research projects that would benefit local criminal justice agencies and test innovative solutions to local problems. A similar program could be announced to help researchers assist corrections agencies and officials in identifying research projects that could address problems facing prisons and prison officials (e.g., safety, staff burnout, and prisoner grievance procedures).

Recommendations for Future Research

Some existing jail and prison correctional systems are implementing broad organization changes, including immersive faith-based correctional programs, jail-based 60- to 90-day reentry programs to prepare individuals for their transition to the community, Scandinavian and other European models to change prison culture, and an innovative Cognitive Community approach operating in several correctional facilities in Virginia. However, these efforts have not been rigorously evaluated. New models could be developed and tested widely, preferably through randomized controlled trials, and funded by the research arm of the Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), or various private funders, including Arnold Ventures.

Correctional agencies in some states may be ready to implement the Cognitive Community model using a separate section of a prison or smaller facility not in use. Funding is needed to evaluate these pilot efforts, assess fidelity to the model standards, identify challenges faced in implementing the model, and propose any modifications to improve the proposed Cognitive Community model. Full-scale rigorous tests of the Cognitive Community model are needed which would randomly assign eligible inmates to the Cognitive Community environment or to continue to carry out their sentence in a regular prison setting. Ideally, these studies would observe the implementation of the program, assess intermediate outcomes while participants are enrolled in the program, follow participants upon release and examine post-release experiences in the post-release CBT program, and then assess a set of reentry outcomes at several intervals for at least one year after release.

Prison culture and environment are essential to community public health and safety. Incarcerated individuals have difficulty successfully reintegrating into their communities after release because the environment in most U.S. prisons is not conducive to positive change. Normalizing prison environments with evidence-based programming, including cognitive behavioral therapy, education, and personal development, will help incarcerated individuals lead successful lives in the community as family members, employees, and community residents. States need to move towards less reliance on incarceration and more attention to community justice models.

Recommended Readings

• Eason, John M. 2017. Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation . Chicago, IL: Univ of Chicago Press.

Travis, J., Western, B., and Redburn, S. (Eds.). 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Orrell, B. (Ed). 2020. Rethinking Reentry . Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.

Mitchell, Meghan M., Pyrooz, David C., & Decker, Scott. H. 2020. “Culture in prison, culture on the street: the convergence between the convict code and code of the street.” Journal of Crime and Justice . DOI:  10.1080/0735648X.2020.1772851 .

Haney, C. 2002. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment.” https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment .

• Carson, E. Ann. 2020. Prisoners in 2019. NCJ 255115. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Travis, Jeremy, Bruce Western, and Steven Redburn, (Eds.). 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration . Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
• Kaeble, Danielle. 2018. Time Served in State Prison, 2016. NCJ 252205. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Haney, Craig. 2002. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment.” Prepared for the Prison to Home Conference, January 30–31, 2002. https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment .
• Visher, Christy and Nancy LaVigne. 2021. “Returning home: A pathbreaking study of prisoner reentry and its challenges.” In P.K. Lattimore, B.M. Huebner, & F.S. Taxman (eds.), Handbook on moving corrections and sentencing forward: Building on the record (pp. 278–311). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Latessa, Edward. 2020. “Triaging services for individuals returning from prison.” In B. Orrell (Ed.), Rethinking Reentry . Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.
• Nana Landenberger and Mark Lipsey. 2005. “The positive effects of cognitive-behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment.” Journal of Experimental Criminology , 1, 451–476.

Governance Studies

U.S. States and Territories

Allison P. Harris

August 8, 2024

Howard Henderson

June 27, 2024

Gabriel R. Sanchez

March 4, 2024

Is prison an effective form of punishment?

ULaw Criminology Lecturer Angela Charles completed her BA undergraduate degree in History and Criminology, followed by an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She is currently completing a PhD which explores the experiences of Black women in UK prisons through an intersectional lens. Her studies focus on the unique impact race and gender has on black female prisoners. Angela has worked within the criminal justice sector in a Secure Training Centre, the National Probation Service, and Youth Justice. Today Angela answers the question – is prison an effective form of punishment?

By Cara Fielder . Published 27 May 2021. Last updated 25 July 2022.

How do we assess the effectiveness of prisons?

Reform is arguably one of the most important reasons why prisons are vital. The gov.uk website talks about providing the right services and opportunities that support rehabilitation to prevent a return to crime. Some of the areas they mention are:

• Improving prisoners’ mental health and tackling substance misuse
• Improving prisoners progress in maths and English
• Increasing the numbers of offenders in employment and accommodation after release.

I would add that offenders should also be supported in learning about money and finance, improving their confidence, developing their understanding of supportive relationships, dealing with issues that may arise or previous traumas. Reform is about equipping someone with the tools to successfully navigate life’s difficulties without resorting to crime.

Life after prison is the final theme on the website and this is the support needed by prisoners once they are released. This includes working with probation services. They highlight the need for services that support prisoners from the transition ‘through the gate’. The main factors being employment and accommodation. When looking at the statistics for prisons achieving their target for accommodation on the first night following release, this is only 17.3%. When we look at employment targets within the first 6 weeks of release, this was at 4%, which is very low. These statistics raise concerns as to whether prison is successful in rehabilitation. Or is it merely a punishment that puts people’s lives on hold?

Real life examples of the prison being effective and ineffective

One woman I interviewed explained that none of the education options in the prison were suitable. She already had a degree, so did not need the English and maths classes that were provided. To her, the prison just wanted to tick a box to show people in prison were engaging in some form of education rather than helping black women progress and gain educational skills that were tailored to an individual’s needs and current level of education .

However, another Black woman said that being in prison had forced her to take level 1 and 2 English and Maths. She had been putting it off when she was in society but being in prison allowed her to take the time to do it. She passed and felt that she would have better prospects leaving the prison than when she came in. Additionally, she had been trained on how to clean up chemical spills and learnt all about the control of substances hazardous to health (COSSH). Again, she learnt new skills that she felt she would be able to use in the outside world.

Relationships

Many women stated that they could speak to their loved ones regularly on the phone, which allowed them stay connected. However, some of the women complained about how costly phone calls were. Also, transport to the prison was an expense that many women’s families could not afford. Therefore, in some cases, relationships with families were put on hold.

One woman talked about her drug recovery and explained how supportive her drug worker had been. They helped her through her recovery and were a source of support and consistency during her prison experience. Even when she moved onto another wing, she mentioned how this staff member still came to check on her. She believes if she had not come to prison, she would still be addicted to drugs. In this case, imprisonment was effective and helped her to rehabilitate.

Another example came from a woman who said that her prison experience allowed her to improve herself, deal with previous traumas, and come up with ways to deal with this. She used the prison experience to identify what things triggered previous traumas and how to deal with this, as well as living in the moment. In this sense, sometimes prison can be used as a period of reflection and self-improvement.

The final example I want to give comes from several women that highlighted the systemic racism they felt was occurring in the prison. The women stated that many of the officers stereotyped them as aggressive, loud troublemakers because of their race. This had a knock-on effect because it affected how long it took for women to get moved from a closed prison to an open prison, be released for day visits, to work and see family. It also meant that they felt like they could not be themselves. For these women, prison was not effective because they were dealing with the disadvantage of being black and female. They had fewer opportunities for employment progression and they had few supportive relationships with staff. When we think about examples like this, we must determine how effective the prison would be for these women. It would be a punishment but would it help rehabilitate them or leave them bitter, angry, frustrated and no better off than before they entered the prison?

Criminological arguments for prisons

One argument for prison is that it is an effective deterrent. Prison can be seen as a tough type of punishment because it takes away your freedom, potential support networks and in many ways, it strips away your identity. The thought of prison is enough for some people to not even contemplate committing a criminal act.

Prison sentences are also a message to the wider public that this is what will happen if you commit a crime. Prison advocates would say this is a message to wider society about what is right and wrong and what will happen if you commit a crime. 

Additionally, prison advocates argue that prison is such a difficult time for people that the experience should then deter them from committing any further offences. However, we know that is not the case because many individuals who have committed an offence and go to prison then commit further offences. This makes us question, is prison a) effective and b) enough of a deterrence?

Another argument for prison is that by putting people in prison, we protect the public by ensuring these individuals cannot commit any further offences. Additionally, prison sentences provide a sense of justice to the victims affected by the crime and the public.

Criminological arguments against prisons

The first argument would be that prisons do not work. Those advocating for prison reform highlight reoffending statistics as an example of the ineffectiveness of prisons.

The adult reoffending rate for the October to December 2018 cohort was 27.5%.

Almost 101,000 proven re-offences were committed over the one-year follow-up period by around 25,000 adults. Those that reoffended committed on average 3.97 re-offences. [Source – Home Office – Proven reoffending statistics for England and Wales, published October 2020].

Research shows that long prison sentences have little impact on crime. Time in prison can actually make someone more likely to commit crime — by further exposing them to all sorts of criminal elements. Prisons are also costly, using up funds that could go to other government programs that are more effective at fighting crime.

Additionally, there are arguments that prison does not rehabilitate prisoners. While there are some opportunities in prison, this does not always meet the needs of the prisoners and does not help them on their release due to the views people in society have about imprisonment and criminal records. On release, three-fifths of prisoners have no “identified employment or education or training outcome”. If prison punishes people through the experience itself but then does not offer those individuals the opportunity to improve and change their lives once they are released, can we realistically expect people to be rehabilitated and not return to crime?

Some believe that the whole prison system is an oppressive institution governed by the powerful that cages the marginalised and powerless. They would argue that prison further damages people because it causes further trauma, exposes them to further violence, reinforces disadvantage and creates further crime and social harm. The prison also does very little to tackle the underlying causes of crime in communities. However, some have argued that by reducing the prison population, we are still widening the net and criminalising people, as community sentences and alternatives to custody would be increased rather than looking at some of the structural inequalities that may lead to crime and criminal behaviour.

Others argue that prison mainly holds those that are from lower socio-economic backgrounds and ethnic minorities, punishing poverty and disadvantage while protecting the crimes of the powerful. For example, where are the imprisoned individuals from corporations that cause widespread harm, such as those that need to be held accountable for the Grenfell Tower fire, multi-million corporations and so on?

There are many arguments for abolishing prison, and then there are arguments that recognise prison cannot be abolished completely but needs reforming.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime highlights some of the reasons why prisons need to be reformed. These are:

• Human rights, as prison is a deprivation of the basic right to liberty.
• Imprisonment disproportionately affects individuals and families living in poverty. From the potential loss of income from an individual going to prison, lawyer costs, costs to visit and communicate with that individual, the lack of employment opportunities when released, the marginalisation and so on.
• Public health consequences – It is argued that many prisoners have poor health and existing health problems when entering the prison. These problems are exacerbated due to; overcrowding, poor nutrition, lack of exercise and fresh air. Then there are also the infection rates, self-harm and poor mental health. The argument is that staff will be vulnerable to some of these diseases, and so will the public once these individuals are released.
• Detrimental social impact – Imprisonment disrupts relationships and weakens social cohesion.
• Costs – The cost of each prisoner for their upkeep, but also the social, economic and health costs mentioned previously, which are long-term.

The Howard League for Penal Reform says on their website:

“The prison system is like a river.

The wider it gets, the faster it flows – and the harder it becomes to swim against the tide. Rather than being guided to safer shores, those in the middle are swept into deeper currents of crime, violence and despair. What began as a trickle turns into a torrent, with problems in prisons spilling into the towns and cities around them.”

In conclusion, when we think about the prison, and imprisonment as a punishment and reform option, there is a lot to consider. We need to assess the overall effectiveness of prisons and the need for justice against the harm imprisonment can have on an individual. We must consider the long-term impact the prison has on an individual, not just mentally, but also considering the impact it will have on their life chances and their ability to reintegrate into society.

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Approximately 25 percent of the world’s prison population is located in the United States,  making the country the world leader  in locking up its own people. Activists currently argue that mass incarceration not only perpetuates inequalities, but that the underpinnings of the prison system are racist, capitalist, sexist, colonialist, ableist, and transphobic. From the school-to-prison pipeline to the privatization of prisons, mass incarceration remains inherently intertwined with everyday facets of American life. 

The problems underpinning mass incarceration are nothing new, but nonetheless are at the root of a revitalized movement calling for the  end of policing and prisons . Some activists call for complete abolition, and others aim for defunding the police and eliminating private prisons. These causes have gained significant steam since the anti-police brutality protests of last summer. 

Maybe you’ve seen facts like how Black people are  incarcerated in state prisons five times the rate of white people  and that the number of life sentences  has increased in the past three decades , or heard activists arguing that prisons actually  do not make communities any safer , and are far better at  extracting labor  than keeping any kind of order. Maybe you feel lost about how things got this way and how to help. 

If you’re fairly new to this topic, it can feel overwhelming getting a full grasp at the myriad ways mass incarceration harms our communities. Here are several books, podcasts, and documentaries on mass incarceration to help you get started, as well as some organizations to follow.

Beyond Prisons Co-hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein get to the heart of issues hurting incarcerated people the most. A great episode to start with—especially since there’s not a ton of  easily accessible literature on electronic monitoring specifically—is  “Challenging E-Carceration feat. James Kilgore.” “ How One Inmate Changed The Prison System From The Inside,”  Code Switch In this episode of NPR’s  Code Switch , investigative reporter Michael Shapiro digs up the history of activist Martin Sostre, who was incarcerated several times and was one of the first prisoners to challenge prison conditions successfully in court.

Justice in America Hosted by journalist Josie Duffy Rice,  Justice in America  tackles a new criminal justice issue every week, explaining how the system works and who it affects. It hasn’t been updated since last April, but the episodes are still relevant; some highlights include  “Criminalizing Mothers”  and  “Restorative Justice: What Justice Could Look Like.”

Are Prisons Obsolete?  by Angela Y. Davis In this short book (about 130 pages!), renowned professor and activist Angela Davis explores why the prison system is so ingrained in our culture and how exploitive it has become. She delineates why the prison system is no longer feasible and imagines what decarceration would look like in practice. 

Chokehold: Policing Black Men  by Paul Butler According to former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, the U.S. prison system is working just as intended. In his book, Butler argues that even though white men are the ones who commit the majority of violent crimes, police, prosecutors, and judges will always look to the Black man as a scapegoat. 

Fourth City: Essays from Prison in America  edited by Doran Larson With more than 70 essays written by incarcerated Americans,  Fourth City  chronicles the day-to-day experience of what it’s like living inside and how prisons fail to achieve their goal of rehabilitation. 

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness  by Michelle Alexander Published in 2010,  The New Jim Crow  has been considered the seminal work on mass incarceration. Civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander explores the unique cruelty of the prison system and how it has been used to exert control over millions of Americans, specifically Black and Hispanic men. She ultimately ties the system of modern mass incarceration to the Jim Crow laws of the South, which were designed to criminalize and subjugate Black people after the Civil War.

From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post Civil Rights America  by Patrisia Macías-Rojas Remember those viral photos of kids in cages? Mass incarceration even extends to immigration policy. Patrisia Macias-Rojas, a sociology and Latin American studies professor, makes the case for why cross-movement work is necessary: because of the influential nature of the criminal justice system, immigration enforcement has become much more punitive in the past few decades.

Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality  by Luana Ross Native Americans face one of the highest rates of incarceration. In this study, Luana Ross, an Indigenous sociologist, tackles the criminalization of Native American women and how it stems from a larger history rooted in colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. That violence continues in the prison system, where race continues to play a significant factor in the experience incarcerated women have.

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States  by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock By unpacking the harmful archetypes that have been weaponized against the LGBT community, the authors explore how queer expression has been criminalized, further exacerbating existing racial and gender inequalities. 

The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America  by Naomi Murakawa Both liberals and conservatives have blood on their hands, according to political scientist Naomi Murakawa. Her primary argument is that the current prison system wasn’t forged during the late 1960s—which was defined by “tough on crime” policies—but actually during the civil rights liberalism era following World War II. The liberal intention to curb crime had lost the plot, Murakawa says, but support continues, regardless of the prison system’s cyclical violence, because “tough on crime” messaging goes hand in hand with racism and capitalism.

The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards  by Nancy A. Heitzeg For many Black, brown, and Indigenous kids, police presence in schools does not make them feel safer mainly because it’s a surefire way to be sent down the school-to-prison pipeline. Dr. Nancy A. Heitzeg provides a deep look into how this phenomenon developed, how it has changed, and how racism plays into who gets a warning and who is disciplined.

We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America  by Robert T Chase Using 30 years worth of legal documents from prisoners, historian Robert T Chase explores how the pivot away from prison plantations to penitentiary cells in the South worsened labor conditions and increased power inequality for prisoners.  We Are Not Slaves  chronicles the prisoner-led movements that led to legal victories against the new reforms, but also how white supremacists got in the way.

Documentaries

13th In this documentary aptly named after the 13th Amendment—which abolished slavery and ended involuntary servitutde (except as punishment for a crime)—director Ava DuVernay intricately weaves the histories of disenfranchisement and criminalization together to show how mass incarceration directly is connected to slavery. 

Crime + Punishment  Once upon a time, members of the New York Police Department were required to fill arrest quotas, which were proven to disproportionately target Black and brown people. Even though the policy ended in 2010, quota-based policing persisted. Director Steven Maing documents the story of 12 officers, who speak up about the punishment top brass gave when they refused to continue meeting quotas after the practice was banned. 

“Prison State,”  Frontline   Prison State  follows how Kentucky tries to stop its cycle of mass incarceration and follows four individuals intertwined in that cycle. (And, good news: PBS’  Frontline  is free to watch.) 

Organizations, Initiatives, and Other Resources

8 to Abolition Not an organization, but a great primer on ways we can start transforming our justice system now. 

An Indigenous Abolitionist Study Guide It’s important to decolonize your perspective as much as possible. The Yellowhead Institute has crafted a wonderful syllabus with this goal in mind.

Critical Resistance Co-founded by Angela Y. Davis, Critical Resistance has been doing abolition work for decades.  Follow Critical Resistance on Twitter here .

Equal Justice Initiative EJI is a non-profit organization that produces reports and educational materials regarding mass incarceration. You can subscribe to  EJI’s newsletter here .

Transform Harm Created by abolition activist Mariame Kaba, Transform Harm is a resource hub for those looking to understand transformative justice.

Your local bail fund If someone is facing trial, they may have a cash bail that they are unable to pay, preventing them from leaving jail while they wait for trial.  Community bail funds  are a way to circumnavigate that process and have  been vital  for anti-racism protestors as well as low-income Black, brown and Indigenous folks. The  Community Justice Exchange  is a great place to start finding community bail funds near you—just be sure to look into your state, district, or territory’s laws first to ensure that cash bail is actually posted in that jurisdiction.

New York Public Library (NYPL) Correctional Services   Donate a book to an incarcerated person today!

[Originally published on  January 22, 2021  via Vice ]

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1 The purpose, efficacy and regulation of prisons

Richard Sparks presents a series of views about the purpose, efficacy and regulation of prisons. The audio programme was recorded in 2001.

Participants in the audio programme were:

Richard Sparks Professor of Criminology at the University of Keele and is now Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh;

Rod Morgan Professor of Criminal Justice at Bristol University;

Larry Viner a London magistrate;

Alison Liebling an academic at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge;

Tim Newell Governor of Grendon Open prison;

Eric Cullen head of Psychology at Grendon Prison;

David Wilson head of operational training for the Prison Service.

After listening to the audio programme bear in mind the following questions:

How has the programme added to your knowledge of the prison system?

What do you now think the purpose of imprisonment should be?

Why do you think Grendon ‘works’?

Does prison work? part 1 (11 minutes 7 MB)

Transcript: Does prison work?

Does prison work? part 2 (6 minutes 4 MB)

Transcript: Does prison work? part 2

Does prison work? part 3 (13 minutes 8 MB)

Transcript: Does prison work? part 3

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Prison Essays

by Hayder Ahmed (Leeds, UK)

I also agree

Jan 04, 2016

It's a nice essay, but it's too long, u can't manage to write such a long essay in 40 minutes only. Another problem is that there is no precise conclusion. Though there is, its very vague. Another problem is lack of connective words.

Jan 26, 2017

Gooooooooooooood essay

Jan 26, 2017

Great essay I agree with the essay.

Feb 11, 2017

I like this essay, It's giving me a lot of ideas that I needed. Love it so much. Thank you for posting this wonderful essay.

Sep 08, 2020

The person who commented that this needs to be done in under 40 min is braindead. It's for aice, nice essay bro.

Oct 14, 2020

It's not islamic society is it, it's certain countries such as Saudi Arabia that do it, not islamic society's. Apart from that very good.

Click here to add your own comments

Alternatives to Prison

by Lenah (Yemen)

Some people think that the best way to reduce crime is to give longer prison sentences. Others, however, believe there are better alternative ways of reducing crime. Discuss both views and give your opinion. Crime by all of its types is a dangerous problem which start expanding in some countries. A lot of governments trying to reduce its. Some people think that the best way to stop this problem is put criminals in the prison for longer period. Others, believe that there are more different solutions can effect better than first opinion. In this essay I am going to discuss these two opinions. There are benefits for give longer prison sentences. Firstly, this judgment will be a strong deterrent for the criminal. Furthermore, it isolates the offender from society. Therefore will produce a safety society and free of crime. Moreover, when the prisoner spends long time in the prison that will help an opportunely service to rehabilitate him. However, Some people believe that spending longer time in prison will mix the prisoner with other criminals, so his character will not improve and this thing increases the problem worse. One thing will solve that is Judgment on the prisoner's civil and social work service with an electronic bracelet around his foot to follow him. This solution has a lot of advantages. First of all, this thing will improve the behavior of offender. Another advantage is this thing will help prisoner to be more respectable with everybody. Therefore, prisoner can mix with society under government following. In my opinion, Making the criminal acts of the civil and social service with an electronic device will create a safety society. This solution is very useful than other. Finally, government should decided which ways are have more positive effects than other, for a society free of crimes and dangerous. *** Help this IELTS candidate to improve their score by commenting below on this essay on reducing crime.

	Hi Lenah, Your content (answering the question) and organisation are generally ok, even though a bit mechanical. But you have very noticeable problems with grammar. You need to fix this if you want to achieve a good IELTS score.

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• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Prisons and Jails

Introduction, general overviews.

• Data Sources
• Theoretical Perspectives on Corrections
• The Imprisonment Experience
• Jails and Short-Term Confinement
• Juvenile Corrections
• Women and Prison
• Prison Violence
• Correctional Treatment
• Capital Punishment
• Imprisonment Trends
• Prisoner Reentry and Recidivism
• Consequences of Incarceration

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Prisons and Jails by Beth M. Huebner , Morgan McGuirk LAST REVIEWED: 29 May 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396607-0037

Prisons and jails have been a central part of society for many centuries, and a substantial body of work has been amassed on theories of punishment. Correctional institutions serve many functions but generally serve to manage men and women who have been accused or convicted of criminal offenses. The nature and purpose of correctional institutions vary considerably. Traditionally the study of corrections focused on the prison; however, the research on corrections now includes the study of a range of institutions and community sanctions. In addition, a specialization of research in this area seeks to explain unique experiences of inmates, including that of women and juveniles. The literature listed in this article summarizes the prominent works in this area and provides sources of reliable data on jails and prisons.

A number of texts on corrections and imprisonment have been developed. Clear, et al. 2019 provides a broad overview regarding a range of topics on corrections and is appropriate as an introductory text for students. The Latessa and Holsinger 2015 reader is comprised of annotated classical and contemporary articles, appropriate as a stand-alone text for undergraduate courses or as a supplementary text for a graduate course in corrections. For advanced graduate seminars, Morris and Rothman 1997 provides an excellent historical and theoretically informed discussion of imprisonment in the United States and abroad. Tonry 2006 discusses the future of corrections in an accessible anthology of works by top correctional scholars. Finally, the Pew Center on the States 2008 is an important electronic text that includes contemporary statistics illustrating imprisonment trends, and is suitable for either established researchers or new students.

Clear, Todd, Mike Reisig, and George F. Cole. 2019. American corrections . 12th ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Broad and accessible overview of prisons, jails, and community corrections. Suitable for undergraduate courses.

Latessa, Edward J., and Alexander M. Holsinger, eds. 2015. Correctional contexts: Contemporary and classical readings . 5th ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Anthology of annotated classic and contemporary readings in corrections; includes materials on the history of corrections, institutional treatment, working in prison, and release from prison. Appropriate text for an advanced undergraduate class or an introduction to imprisonment in a graduate course.

Morris, Norval, and David J. Rothman, eds. 1997. The Oxford history of the prison: The practice of punishment in Western society . New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Edited collection of essays designed to trace the history of imprisonment in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and Australia. Augmented with articles on jails, detention of juveniles and women, and the political prisoner.

Pew Center on the States. 2008. One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008 . Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts.

Provides a comprehensive narrative on the growth of imprisonment in the past two decades. Includes a number of cogent graphs; an excellent introduction to imprisonment trends for an undergraduate student. Available online .

Tonry, Michael, ed. 2006. The future of imprisonment . Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Edited volume of essays written by top penal scholars. Using a historical lens, the contributors provide theoretically rich analysis of current imprisonment policy. This sophisticated anthology is appropriate for policy makers and scholars alike.

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June 21, 2019

Do Prisons Make Us Safer?

New research shows that prisons prevent far less violent crime than you might think

By David J. Harding

Geoff Livingston Getty Images

One person is sentenced to state or federal prison every 90 seconds in the United States, amounting to almost 420,000 per year .   The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We incarcerate for multiple reasons, including justice and punishment, but one of the main justifications is public safety. Putting individuals convicted of crimes, especially violent crimes, in prison is thought to make the rest of us safer.

But how much safety does all this imprisonment actually buy us? A study I recently published with colleagues shows the answer is very little, especially in the long-term.

There are good reasons to think prisons might prevent crime. The experience of imprisonment could deter someone from committing crimes to avoid prison in the future. Prison might provide opportunities for rehabilitation, such as drug and alcohol treatment, education, or counseling. And, at the very least, someone who is in prison cannot commit a crime in the community, an effect criminologists call “incapacitation.”

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Yet there are also good reasons to believe that prisons might actually increase crime. The harsh prison environment could exacerbate mental health problems, make people more prone to aggression, or make them cynical and distrustful of the legal system. Prisons could isolate prisoners from friends and family who might help them find jobs eventually. Or prisoners may learn from other prisoners how to be better criminals.

To examine how prison affects violent crime, our study compared people sentenced to prison to those sentenced to probation supervision in the community, using data on all individuals sentenced for a felony in Michigan between 2003 and 2006. They were followed through 2015 to track convictions for violent crimes.

The study focused on people who had committed a violent crime and were eligible for both prison or probation sentences. Such people were typically convicted of crimes like robbery or assault (individuals convicted of more serious violent crimes like rape or murder are generally not eligible for probation).

Determining whether differences in future violent offending are a result of prison itself is challenging, however. Those who are sentenced to prison are probably more likely than those sentenced to probation to commit a violent crime in the future, even if they had not been sentenced to prison.

To overcome this challenge, the study used the random assignment of criminal defendants to judges to mimic a randomized experiment. Different judges are more harsh or lenient in their sentencing, even within the same county courthouse.  The study compared defendants randomly assigned to harsher judges to those who were randomly assigned to more lenient judges.

The study found that sentencing someone to prison had no effect on their chances of being convicted of a violent crime within five years of being released from prison. This means that prison has no preventative effect on violence in the long term among people who might have been sentenced to probation. 

It also found a preventative “incapacitation” effect in the short term, during the time when prisoners were still in prison, but this effect is smaller than we typically assume. Preventing one person who was previously convicted of a violent crime from committing a new violent crime within five years of their sentence requires imprisoning 16 such individuals.

These findings are important for two reasons. First, imprisoning just one person costs tens of thousands of dollars per year . The short-term and small preventative effect of prison means those dollars could be better spent on other violence prevention or public safety strategies.

Second, the high costs of prison combined with concerns about the negative collateral consequences for prisoners, their families, and communities have prompted renewed efforts in states around the country to reduce imprisonment. Yet despite the fact that over half of prison inmates were convicted of a violent crime , most criminal justice reforms exclude those with violent pasts. The results from this study mean that many people convicted of crimes like robbery and assault could be sentenced to probation rather than prison with little impact on public safety.

The purpose of prison

Sharp, robert c..

1 The title of this essay is 'The Purpose of Prison' by Robert Sharp. At the age of 40, after having spent most of my adult life in prisons, with another 20 years ahead of me for a wrongful conviction, I fail to see the purpose incarceration serves. Is the purpose to reform on individual? Is it an opertunity for an individual to repay a debt to society? Is the purpose to protect society from an individual? Or is it to use an incarcerated individual as an example to others, lest they meet the same fate? Incarceration may just be a form of terror used against an individual to force them to submit to the will of the state. Whatever its purpose, a judge has never honestly articulated what ends were to be met by warehousing me for days or decades. If the purpose of imprisoning me was reform, the state could not have gone about it in a worse manner. My first time in prison was in the notorious maximum security prison in Joliet, Illinois. I was a teen my first time there. I would be sent there, and later the equally notorious Statesville, for selling $75.00 in marijuana to a vice cop. My first cell mate was a crack dealer and member of Chicago's most deadly street gang. We became friends in the same way most men become friends when they're forced to share a few square feet and a toilet behind a locked door. Outside the cell I would become aquainted with dealers of every drug imaginable, murderers, armed robbers, pimps, rapists, thieves and any petty crime you can imagine. Everybody was a member of 2 a street gang or a prison gang. The most influential prisoners were members of drug cartels and what used to be called the Outfit. There was a hierarchy of criminals in Joliet, as in all prisons. At the top of the pyramid were the smartest and often times the most violent men. They were divided mostly by gangs and race. At the bottom of the pyramid were the most desperate and simple prisoners, broken men. Below even them were child predators and those discovered to have cooperated with the authorities - rats. These people were murdered for sport, with the silent acquiescense of staff making just over minimum wage. The economy in the prison was fueled by drugs, with heroin being the main staple. There were more addicts than there was accessible smack though, so the prices were high. Whoever had the most heroin had the most power. I saw more drugs in prison than I ever saw in society. I entered Joliet as a small time pot dealer and left with connections to local, national and international crime syndicates. I was not reformed by prison, I was deformed by it. If the purpose of incarcerating me was to repay a debt to society, society should request a refund. Upon my release from selling $75.00 of marijuana, I would next be imprisoned for possessing about $300.00 in crack-cocaine. This time I would be federally prosecuted and sentenced to eleven years. The federal government would snatch away all of my twenties and pay over $200,000.00 to incarcerate me for a decade. For that decade the state would also support my infant daughter, on the public dole, which was 3 compounded by emotional costs that can never be paid. Then there is my poverty stricken mother, one of these members of society supposedly crying out that my debt be repaid to them, who would spend the next decade crying over the loss of her only child. She would spend some of her meager earnings from a minimum wage part time job to visit me in far off prisons. She would feel obligated to send me money, as she had before me with my imprisoned father, so I could call home and find small measures of comfort a few dollars can find you in prison. Now, with just 5 years in on a nonviolent drug sentence of 30 years, my daughter will have only known me for a few of her 20 years, I'll never meet my granddaughter and my mother will languish in a nursing home alone after suffering a stroke this past year. Is this how a just society requires me to repay a debt, by keeping me from my obligations as a father or only son? Is the suffering of and neglect of the people I love, their harm, payment enough? Is society content caring for them as I'm warehoused decade after decade because I had the audacity to sell something the government created an insatiable demand for? My incarceration only increases debts to society, none of which will be paid by me. Is the purpose of these sentences really to protect society from me? Twenty years after I was released from one of the worlds most notorious prisons for selling an ounce of marijuana the state of Illinois reversed 4 course and legalized marijuana. The state is now expunging the marijuana convictions previously imposed, 770,00 of them, including mine. After I'd served a decade in federal prisons all around the nation, far from my home, the politicians who once believed I had to be punished at one hundred times the rate for possessing rock cocaine instead of powder cocaine, also reversed course. Now they determined the disparity was draconian and racist and they made the 2 equal, lowering the crack ratio to the equivalent of powder. This occured 5 years after my release, and while the change couldn't restore the 8 extra years which had been stolen from me by a draconian and racist sentence, at least some of them who passed the original law muttered general apologies. I had the privilege to encounter one of my old crack customers who society protected from me for a decade, the crack addicted prostitute who set me up for her $50 in Crime Stoppers reward money. Ten years later she still enthusiastically smoked crack, she was still a prostitute, and she still executed controlled buys for the policemen she engaged in inappropriate sexual relations with. While I'd been away she'd killed another person in a car accident while intoxicated, been convicted of perjury for lying in court about her role in the death of an elderly man she married for his money, and had been implicated in a gangland murder where her car was used to transport a murder victim in its trunk. I wasn't incarcerated to protect her, I was incarcerated so the state could justify not incarcerating her. Was society 5 better served by imprisoning me to allow her to continue her crimes? The state's actions endangered society even more with their actions, which resulted in 3 needless deaths. Is the purpose of my incarceration to deter others from committing the same crime I committed? If so, I never encountered anybody who informed me my incarceration influenced their actions. The people I'd sold drugs to prior to my incarceration were still using the same drugs from before my decade of incarceration, after my release. There was no shortage of people who were eager to fill the void created by my imprisonment. My own father was sentenced to 20 years for dealing heroin and imprisoned from the time I was 5 until I was 15. His imprisonment did not deter me. Neither did it discourage my police detective step father from stealing drugs from a police evidence locker to give to my mother. Other police from his department weren't discouraged from purchasing drugs from me to share with their mistresses. Not even a State Attorney who had once prosecuted me for a drug crime was deterred from buying cocaine through me. I don't know a single person who changed their actions, attitude or appetites based on my incarceration. It's evident the most effective purpose of prison has been to influence my actions through terror. Prison is designed to force you into submission when all other tactics have failed. Every incarceration follows the same pattern. It begins with me being led by armed guards 6 into a place with high stone walls that resembles a midieval fortress or a place surrounded by fences that hold several tows of concertina wire that resemble updated versions of World War II era concentration camps. Regardless of wall or fence, there's always been guard towers occupied by trigger happy guards whose paychecks depend upon shooting any of the tortured souls therein should they attempt an escape or engage in any disturbance within their perimeter. Every entrance is the same. The manacled men on the bus become stone silent as the bus approaches the prison as their hearts fall into their stomachs, and they become filled with fear, dread, or both. Then you are marched under armed guard into a courtyard in chains, much the same way slaves were offloaded from boats over 200 years ago. While being processed like human chattle you are stripped of your birth name which gets replaced by a number. Dehumanizing an individual to the people paid to treat them as subhuman is easier when the individual is stripped of his individuality, such as his name. After you have been examined and deloused you will then be led to some sort of auditorium. In there you will be warned by some midlevel perfunctionary in a cheap suit that the Warden is on his way and you best treat this great man with respect. When the great man arrives he will make a short speech letting you know you're in his house and you will do as he says, and as the man in the cheap suit says, and you will obey the hundred or so others who work for him. Or else. And you don't want or else. After the speech you will be led to a temporary cell. In the maximum security 7 prisons of Illinois, like Menard, this temporary cell is small and dungeon like. There is not any lighting. Inside the room of limestone blocks and century old steel bars you have to keep you company a fetid toilet, a stained mattress, roaches, rats, and the shreiks of the other tormented souls entombed among you. You may spend days like this before being released into population. You are almost relieved to be led to your small cell in population after this, until you realize you will be spending years in this cubicle not big enough for yourself, but with at least one but maybe 2 other men. In a federal prison I was at on the Florida-Alabama state line your bunks came from the wall, concrete slabs, 3 high, resembling ancient mortuary slabs, which didn't provide enough room for you to sit up in. If you don't like amenities though you are more than welcome to a single cell in the prison's Special Housing Unit, their moniker for solitary confinement, what prisoners universally call the hole, most appropriately. You will find yourself here for rule infractions, if you're targeted by other inmates, or on the whim of a petty sadist guard. I spent over 6 months in the hole once because I filed a lawsuit against the Warden for illegally opening letters from my attorney. Your mind unravels in solitary confinement until you're feeble, given enough time. Solitary confinement is the most effective weapon of the sadist, not even a committed masochist can withstand it for long. The monotony of prison life is interrupted by regular violence. You grow accustomed and apathetic to most of it, such as fist fights and stabbings, because 8 they are so common. It's the spontaneous mass violence of riots that get your attention. I've survived 3 of them so far. In the first one at Joliet or Menard, I was wedged into a stairwell descending into a dining hall when a prisoner behind me had his intestines flayed open with a homemade razor. Instantly, before you even realize the screaming, you smell the victims excrement leaving his body and can taste the iron in his blood in the air. When the stampeding bodies from the stairwell pushed me into the dining hall the scene was surreal. Most of the inmates were fighting each other with reckless abandon, with an animalistic furvor I'd never seen before. Other inmates hid under steel tables which were already pitted from the shotgun blasts that quelled previous riots. The guards were firing dozens of shots indescriminately into the mob from the ceiling and the buckshot was ricocheting all over the room. When it was over the entire room was bathed in blood. In subsequent federal prison riots I'd witnessed mens scalps stomped off the tops of their heads and a guys eyeball being kicked from its socket before it was crushed under the boot of the other guy jumping on his head. These images never leave you. In retrospect, looking back on my life in prison, I'm certain the government uses incarceration to force people to submit to their will. It's an effective use of terror. But for a false conviction I would not have returned. Ruling through terror takes us back to our Roman origins. The Ceasars would publicly crucify people, George Washington would exhibition public hangings and we build 9 massive cathedrals to warehouse people for decades when they fail to follow the decrees of politicians. It's an effective way to rule an empire. Although I hope this system of maintaining order through terror comes to an end before I complete the rest of my 30 year sentence for a nonviolent vice crime, I am not optimistic. I recall the words of Churchill in this regard, that the United States can always be counted upon to do the right thing, after every other option has been exhausted. Formerly, Robert Sharp Currently, Prisoner Federal Correctional Institution PO Box 1000 Oxford, WI 53952

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Prison Journalism Project

Independent Journalism by the Incarcerated

The Case for Wasting Time on Wastes of Time

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I’m serving a life sentence, so what difference would it make for me to indulge in programs or work or school? Since the COVID-19 pandemic has only made it harder to secure work or partake in academic or prison programs, why not take the path of least resistance? 

In here, I’m constantly told that work, education or programs are a waste of time. The people who express those beliefs have become hopeless through constant setbacks. 

I understand their perspective. In confinement, most people are burdened and stressed. An unintentional sense of discouragement pervades this environment. 

But I don’t let it stunt my growth. I keep asking myself, “What is it that I want, and how bad do I want it?” And, “What am I willing to do to get what I want?”

When I arrived at 4-Block on the C-yard at California’s High Desert State Prison, I was frustrated. I knew it would take an excessive amount of time to enroll in school or a program. Six months passed, and I was still on the waiting list for enrollment and job assignments. I wanted to take initiative, even though people told me this would be a waste of time. 

But what is doing nothing in a place where time is all you have? To me, that sounded like a waste of time.

I’ve been hit with roadblock after roadblock. I eventually decided to ride it out for a while and be patient, which is a skill I highly recommend to anyone incarcerated. 

Then, in the early days of December 2021, I found an opportunity that gave me purpose. It came in the form of a writing prompt from the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Getting Out By Going In . 

The prompt called for a 15-page personal essay. I felt hesitant to complete the assignment because the deadline was just weeks away. I doubted my work simply because I had never taken the time to reflect in depth on myself before. But I had to see where I might get with it. I wrote the essay and mailed it in. 

I was open and honest in my essay and satisfied with my work. I reminded myself that I had chosen to use my time in a positive manner in a place where I had to constantly find the will to do so. 

A certificate of completion arrived with my mail in January 2022. It took me about two weeks to write the essay — and countless hand cramps to finish — but the recognition was a morale boost for me and fuel for my will. I felt proud. 

Through this assignment I was able to relive the positive and negative experiences I believed had most affected my life. Self-reflection reminded me of where I wanted to be, what I desired and what I still had to say. I wanted my actions, efforts and my ambitions to speak for me. 

Experiences like this can be empowering. In prison, doubt and discouragement circulate in the air — I once believed this perspective too. 

Some folks can’t see the point in indulging. Some folks have lost all they had to lose. I get where they are coming from. But ultimately, I’m against the action of wasting time more than I’m against doing something that might be a waste of time.

Disclaimer : The views in this article are those of the author. Prison Journalism Project has verified the writer’s identity and basic facts such as the names of institutions mentioned.

Paul Soulik

Paul Soulik is a writer incarcerated in Nevada, where he is trying to build a new life as he faces a long sentence. He tries to find healthy ways to occupy his time.

Doha Declaration

Education for justice.

• Agenda Day 1
• Agenda Day 2
• Agenda Day 3
• Agenda Day 4
• Registration
• Breakout Sessions for Primary and Secondary Level
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• E4J Youth Competition
• India - Lockdown Learners
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• The Online Zoo
• I would like a community where ...
• Staying safe online
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• We can all be heroes
• Respect for all
• We all have rights
• A mosaic of differences
• The right thing to do
• Solving ethical dilemmas
• UNODC-UNESCO Guide for Policymakers
• UNODC-UNESCO Handbooks for Teachers
• Justice Accelerators
• Introduction
• Organized Crime
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• Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Reform
• Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice & SDGs
• UN Congress on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
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• Cyberstrike
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• Running out of Time
• Zorbs Reloaded
• Developing a Rationale for Using the Video
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• Post-viewing Activities
• Previewing the Firearms Video
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• Previewing the Human Trafficking Video
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• Criminal Justice & Crime Prevention
• Corruption & Integrity
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• Introduction & Learning Outcomes
• Corruption - Baseline Definition
• Effects of Corruption
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• Measuring Corruption
• Possible Class Structure
• Core Reading
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• Guidelines for Stand-Alone Course
• Appendix: How Corruption Affects the SDGs
• What is Governance?
• What is Good Governance?
• Corruption and Bad Governance
• Governance Reforms and Anti-Corruption
• Guidelines for Stand-alone Course
• Corruption and Democracy
• Corruption and Authoritarian Systems
• Hybrid Systems and Syndromes of Corruption
• The Deep Democratization Approach
• Political Parties and Political Finance
• Political Institution-building as a Means to Counter Corruption
• Manifestations and Consequences of Public Sector Corruption
• Causes of Public Sector Corruption
• Theories that Explain Corruption
• Corruption in Public Procurement
• Corruption in State-Owned Enterprises
• Responses to Public Sector Corruption
• Preventing Public Sector Corruption
• Forms & Manifestations of Private Sector Corruption
• Consequences of Private Sector Corruption
• Causes of Private Sector Corruption
• Responses to Private Sector Corruption
• Preventing Private Sector Corruption
• Collective Action & Public-Private Partnerships against Corruption
• Transparency as a Precondition
• Detection Mechanisms - Auditing and Reporting
• Whistle-blowing Systems and Protections
• Investigation of Corruption
• Introduction and Learning Outcomes
• Brief background on the human rights system
• Overview of the corruption-human rights nexus
• Impact of corruption on specific human rights
• Approaches to assessing the corruption-human rights nexus
• Human-rights based approach
• Defining sex, gender and gender mainstreaming
• Gender differences in corruption
• Theories explaining the gender–corruption nexus
• Gendered impacts of corruption
• Anti-corruption and gender mainstreaming
• Manifestations of corruption in education
• Costs of corruption in education
• Causes of corruption in education
• Fighting corruption in education
• Core terms and concepts
• The role of citizens in fighting corruption
• The role, risks and challenges of CSOs fighting corruption
• The role of the media in fighting corruption
• Access to information: a condition for citizen participation
• ICT as a tool for citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
• Government obligations to ensure citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
• Teaching Guide
• Brief History of Terrorism
• 19th Century Terrorism
• League of Nations & Terrorism
• United Nations & Terrorism
• Terrorist Victimization
• Exercises & Case Studies
• Radicalization & Violent Extremism
• Preventing & Countering Violent Extremism
• Drivers of Violent Extremism
• International Approaches to PVE &CVE
• Regional & Multilateral Approaches
• Defining Rule of Law
• UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy
• International Cooperation & UN CT Strategy
• Legal Sources & UN CT Strategy
• Regional & National Approaches
• International Legal Frameworks
• International Human Rights Law
• International Humanitarian Law
• International Refugee Law
• Current Challenges to International Legal Framework
• Defining Terrorism
• Criminal Justice Responses
• Treaty-based Crimes of Terrorism
• Core International Crimes
• International Courts and Tribunals
• African Region
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• Asian Region
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• Middle East & Gulf Regions
• Core Principles of IHL
• Categorization of Armed Conflict
• Classification of Persons
• IHL, Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism
• Relationship between IHL & intern. human rights law
• Limitations Permitted by Human Rights Law
• Derogation during Public Emergency
• Examples of States of Emergency & Derogations
• International Human Rights Instruments
• Regional Human Rights Instruments
• Extra-territorial Application of Right to Life
• Arbitrary Deprivation of Life
• Death Penalty
• Enforced Disappearances
• Armed Conflict Context
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
• Convention against Torture et al.
• International Legal Framework
• Key Contemporary Issues
• Investigative Phase
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• Armed Conflict
• Case Studies
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• Surveillance & Interception of Communications
• Privacy & Intelligence Gathering in Armed Conflict
• Accountability & Oversight of Intelligence Gathering
• Principle of Non-Discrimination
• Freedom of Religion
• Freedom of Expression
• Freedom of Assembly
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• Fundamental Freedoms
• Definition of 'Victim'
• Effects of Terrorism
• Access to Justice
• Recognition of the Victim
• Human Rights Instruments
• Criminal Justice Mechanisms
• Instruments for Victims of Terrorism
• National Approaches
• Key Challenges in Securing Reparation
• Topic 1. Contemporary issues relating to conditions conducive both to the spread of terrorism and the rule of law
• Topic 2. Contemporary issues relating to the right to life
• Topic 3. Contemporary issues relating to foreign terrorist fighters
• Topic 4. Contemporary issues relating to non-discrimination and fundamental freedoms
• Module 16: Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
• Thematic Areas
• Content Breakdown
• Module Adaptation & Design Guidelines
• Teaching Methods
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ vis-à-vis International Law
• 2. Scope of United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ
• 3. United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ in Operation
• 1. Definition of Crime Prevention
• 2. Key Crime Prevention Typologies
• 2. (cont.) Tonry & Farrington’s Typology
• 3. Crime Problem-Solving Approaches
• 4. What Works
• United Nations Entities
• Regional Crime Prevention Councils/Institutions
• Key Clearinghouses
• Systematic Reviews
• 1. Introduction to International Standards & Norms
• 2. Identifying the Need for Legal Aid
• 3. Key Components of the Right of Access to Legal Aid
• 4. Access to Legal Aid for Those with Specific Needs
• 5. Models for Governing, Administering and Funding Legal Aid
• 6. Models for Delivering Legal Aid Services
• 7. Roles and Responsibilities of Legal Aid Providers
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• 1. Context for Use of Force by Law Enforcement Officials
• 2. Legal Framework
• 3. General Principles of Use of Force in Law Enforcement
• 4. Use of Firearms
• 5. Use of “Less-Lethal” Weapons
• 6. Protection of Especially Vulnerable Groups
• 7. Use of Force during Assemblies
• 1. Policing in democracies & need for accountability, integrity, oversight
• 2. Key mechanisms & actors in police accountability, oversight
• 3. Crosscutting & contemporary issues in police accountability
• 1. Introducing Aims of Punishment, Imprisonment & Prison Reform
• 2. Current Trends, Challenges & Human Rights
• 3. Towards Humane Prisons & Alternative Sanctions
• 1. Aims and Significance of Alternatives to Imprisonment
• 2. Justifying Punishment in the Community
• 3. Pretrial Alternatives
• 4. Post Trial Alternatives
• 5. Evaluating Alternatives
• 1. Concept, Values and Origin of Restorative Justice
• 2. Overview of Restorative Justice Processes
• 3. How Cost Effective is Restorative Justice?
• 4. Issues in Implementing Restorative Justice
• 1. Gender-Based Discrimination & Women in Conflict with the Law
• 2. Vulnerabilities of Girls in Conflict with the Law
• 3. Discrimination and Violence against LGBTI Individuals
• 4. Gender Diversity in Criminal Justice Workforce
• 1. Ending Violence against Women
• 2. Human Rights Approaches to Violence against Women
• 3. Who Has Rights in this Situation?
• 4. What about the Men?
• 5. Local, Regional & Global Solutions to Violence against Women & Girls
• 1. Understanding the Concept of Victims of Crime
• 2. Impact of Crime, including Trauma
• 3. Right of Victims to Adequate Response to their Needs
• 4. Collecting Victim Data
• 5. Victims and their Participation in Criminal Justice Process
• 6. Victim Services: Institutional and Non-Governmental Organizations
• 7. Outlook on Current Developments Regarding Victims
• 8. Victims of Crime and International Law
• 1. The Many Forms of Violence against Children
• 2. The Impact of Violence on Children
• 3. States' Obligations to Prevent VAC and Protect Child Victims
• 4. Improving the Prevention of Violence against Children
• 5. Improving the Criminal Justice Response to VAC
• 6. Addressing Violence against Children within the Justice System
• 1. The Role of the Justice System
• 2. Convention on the Rights of the Child & International Legal Framework on Children's Rights
• 3. Justice for Children
• 4. Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law
• 5. Realizing Justice for Children
• 1a. Judicial Independence as Fundamental Value of Rule of Law & of Constitutionalism
• 1b. Main Factors Aimed at Securing Judicial Independence
• 2a. Public Prosecutors as ‘Gate Keepers’ of Criminal Justice
• 2b. Institutional and Functional Role of Prosecutors
• 2c. Other Factors Affecting the Role of Prosecutors
• Basics of Computing
• Global Connectivity and Technology Usage Trends
• Cybercrime in Brief
• Cybercrime Trends
• Cybercrime Prevention
• Offences against computer data and systems
• Computer-related offences
• Content-related offences
• The Role of Cybercrime Law
• Harmonization of Laws
• International and Regional Instruments
• International Human Rights and Cybercrime Law
• Digital Evidence
• Digital Forensics
• Standards and Best Practices for Digital Forensics
• Reporting Cybercrime
• Who Conducts Cybercrime Investigations?
• Obstacles to Cybercrime Investigations
• Knowledge Management
• Legal and Ethical Obligations
• Handling of Digital Evidence
• Digital Evidence Admissibility
• Sovereignty and Jurisdiction
• Formal International Cooperation Mechanisms
• Informal International Cooperation Mechanisms
• Data Retention, Preservation and Access
• Challenges Relating to Extraterritorial Evidence
• National Capacity and International Cooperation
• Internet Governance
• Cybersecurity Strategies: Basic Features
• National Cybersecurity Strategies
• International Cooperation on Cybersecurity Matters
• Cybersecurity Posture
• Assets, Vulnerabilities and Threats
• Vulnerability Disclosure
• Cybersecurity Measures and Usability
• Situational Crime Prevention
• Incident Detection, Response, Recovery & Preparedness
• Privacy: What it is and Why it is Important
• Privacy and Security
• Cybercrime that Compromises Privacy
• Data Protection Legislation
• Data Breach Notification Laws
• Enforcement of Privacy and Data Protection Laws
• Intellectual Property: What it is
• Types of Intellectual Property
• Causes for Cyber-Enabled Copyright & Trademark Offences
• Protection & Prevention Efforts
• Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
• Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment
• Cyberbullying
• Gender-Based Interpersonal Cybercrime
• Interpersonal Cybercrime Prevention
• Cyber Organized Crime: What is it?
• Conceptualizing Organized Crime & Defining Actors Involved
• Criminal Groups Engaging in Cyber Organized Crime
• Cyber Organized Crime Activities
• Preventing & Countering Cyber Organized Crime
• Cyberespionage
• Cyberterrorism
• Cyberwarfare
• Information Warfare, Disinformation & Electoral Fraud
• Responses to Cyberinterventions
• Framing the Issue of Firearms
• Direct Impact of Firearms
• Indirect Impacts of Firearms on States or Communities
• International and National Responses
• Typology and Classification of Firearms
• Common Firearms Types
• 'Other' Types of Firearms
• Parts and Components
• History of the Legitimate Arms Market
• Need for a Legitimate Market
• Key Actors in the Legitimate Market
• Authorized & Unauthorized Arms Transfers
• Illegal Firearms in Social, Cultural & Political Context
• Supply, Demand & Criminal Motivations
• Larger Scale Firearms Trafficking Activities
• Smaller Scale Trafficking Activities
• Sources of Illicit Firearms
• Consequences of Illicit Markets
• International Public Law & Transnational Law
• International Instruments with Global Outreach
• Commonalities, Differences & Complementarity between Global Instruments
• Tools to Support Implementation of Global Instruments
• Other United Nations Processes
• The Sustainable Development Goals
• Multilateral & Regional Instruments
• Scope of National Firearms Regulations
• National Firearms Strategies & Action Plans
• Harmonization of National Legislation with International Firearms Instruments
• Assistance for Development of National Firearms Legislation
• Firearms Trafficking as a Cross-Cutting Element
• Organized Crime and Organized Criminal Groups
• Criminal Gangs
• Terrorist Groups
• Interconnections between Organized Criminal Groups & Terrorist Groups
• Gangs - Organized Crime & Terrorism: An Evolving Continuum
• International Response
• International and National Legal Framework
• Firearms Related Offences
• Role of Law Enforcement
• Firearms as Evidence
• Use of Special Investigative Techniques
• International Cooperation and Information Exchange
• Prosecution and Adjudication of Firearms Trafficking
• Teaching Methods & Principles
• Ethical Learning Environments
• Overview of Modules
• Module Adaption & Design Guidelines
• Table of Exercises
• Basic Terms
• Forms of Gender Discrimination
• Ethics of Care
• Case Studies for Professional Ethics
• Case Studies for Role Morality
• Additional Exercises
• Defining Organized Crime
• Definition in Convention
• Similarities & Differences
• Activities, Organization, Composition
• Thinking Critically Through Fiction
• Excerpts of Legislation
• Research & Independent Study Questions
• Legal Definitions of Organized Crimes
• Criminal Association
• Definitions in the Organized Crime Convention
• Criminal Organizations and Enterprise Laws
• Enabling Offence: Obstruction of Justice
• Drug Trafficking
• Wildlife & Forest Crime
• Counterfeit Products Trafficking
• Falsified Medical Products
• Trafficking in Cultural Property
• Trafficking in Persons
• Case Studies & Exercises
• Extortion Racketeering
• Loansharking
• Links to Corruption
• Bribery versus Extortion
• Money-Laundering
• Liability of Legal Persons
• How much Organized Crime is there?
• Alternative Ways for Measuring
• Measuring Product Markets
• Risk Assessment
• Key Concepts of Risk Assessment
• Risk Assessment of Organized Crime Groups
• Risk Assessment of Product Markets
• Risk Assessment in Practice
• Positivism: Environmental Influences
• Classical: Pain-Pleasure Decisions
• Structural Factors
• Ethical Perspective
• Crime Causes & Facilitating Factors
• Models and Structure
• Hierarchical Model
• Local, Cultural Model
• Enterprise or Business Model
• Groups vs Activities
• Networked Structure
• Jurisdiction
• Investigators of Organized Crime
• Controlled Deliveries
• Physical & Electronic Surveillance
• Undercover Operations
• Financial Analysis
• Use of Informants
• Rights of Victims & Witnesses
• Role of Prosecutors
• Adversarial vs Inquisitorial Legal Systems
• Mitigating Punishment
• Granting Immunity from Prosecution
• Witness Protection
• Aggravating & Mitigating Factors
• Sentencing Options
• Alternatives to Imprisonment
• Death Penalty & Organized Crime
• Backgrounds of Convicted Offenders
• Confiscation
• Confiscation in Practice
• Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA)
• Extradition
• Transfer of Criminal Proceedings
• Transfer of Sentenced Persons
• Module 12: Prevention of Organized Crime
• Adoption of Organized Crime Convention
• Historical Context
• Features of the Convention
• Related international instruments
• Conference of the Parties
• Roles of Participants
• Structure and Flow
• Recommended Topics
• Background Materials
• What is Sex / Gender / Intersectionality?
• Knowledge about Gender in Organized Crime
• Gender and Organized Crime
• Gender and Different Types of Organized Crime
• Definitions and Terminology
• Organized crime and Terrorism - International Legal Framework
• International Terrorism-related Conventions
• UNSC Resolutions on Terrorism
• Organized Crime Convention and its Protocols
• Theoretical Frameworks on Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
• Typologies of Criminal Behaviour Associated with Terrorism
• Terrorism and Drug Trafficking
• Terrorism and Trafficking in Weapons
• Terrorism, Crime and Trafficking in Cultural Property
• Trafficking in Persons and Terrorism
• Intellectual Property Crime and Terrorism
• Kidnapping for Ransom and Terrorism
• Exploitation of Natural Resources and Terrorism
• Review and Assessment Questions
• Research and Independent Study Questions
• Criminalization of Smuggling of Migrants
• UNTOC & the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants
• Offences under the Protocol
• Financial & Other Material Benefits
• Aggravating Circumstances
• Criminal Liability
• Non-Criminalization of Smuggled Migrants
• Scope of the Protocol
• Humanitarian Exemption
• Migrant Smuggling v. Irregular Migration
• Migrant Smuggling vis-a-vis Other Crime Types
• Other Resources
• Assistance and Protection in the Protocol
• International Human Rights and Refugee Law
• Vulnerable groups
• Positive and Negative Obligations of the State
• Identification of Smuggled Migrants
• Participation in Legal Proceedings
• Role of Non-Governmental Organizations
• Smuggled Migrants & Other Categories of Migrants
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Module 6: Prison Reform

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E4J University Module Series: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

Introduction and learning outcomes.

• Topic 1: Introducing the aims of punishment, imprisonment and the concept of prison reform
• Topic 2: Current trends, key challenges and human rights
• Topic 3: Towards humane prisons and an appropriate resort to alternative sanctions

Case studies

Possible class structure   , core reading, advanced reading, student assessment, additional teaching tools, guidelines to develop a stand-alone course.

• First published in July 2019

  This module is a resource for lecturers  

Topic one - introducing the aims of punishment, imprisonment and the concept of prison reform.

This part of the Module first explores briefly the theoretical justifications that underpin the aims of punishment, and then examines the main purposes of imprisonment. The focus then shifts to introduce students to the importance and development of prison reform.

What justifies punishment?

If an individual commits a crime, it is often assumed that the State is justified in imposing punishment. Some forms of punishment cause harm. It is important therefore to establish what justifies and underpins the imposition of particular forms of punishment.

There are five main underlying theoretical justifications of criminal punishment which form the basis of sentencing decisions across jurisdictions: retribution; incapacitation; deterrence; rehabilitation; and, reparation. These are defined above in the Key Terms section of this Module. Students should note that the differing rationales underlying the imposition of punishment are considered more fully in Module 7 on Alternatives to Imprisonment of the E4J University Module Series on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

What justifies imprisonment?

Imprisonment is used as a form of punishment in every country in the world (for statistics on the prison populations of 223 independent countries and dependent territories see the World Prison Brief ). In most countries, it is the most severe form of punishment that courts can impose. Levels of imprisonment around the world have risen dramatically since the Second World War, though more rapidly in some regions than others (Coyle et al., 2016). Proponents of imprisonment often argue that the sanction of incarceration can be justified by incorporating many of the differing aims of punishment highlighted above, namely through its incapacitative and deterrent effect, as well as through its ability to change and rehabilitate, and the notion that a prison sentence is a justly deserved and proportionate response to crime (Scott, 2007). While there is often disagreement regarding the relative weight that should be given to these differing aims and the way in which prisons should operate, international law strongly emphasizes the importance of rehabilitation and reintegration in order to meet the primary purpose of imprisonment.

Article 10.3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (GA Resolution 2200A (XXI)) states that: "The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation". Of significance, the ICCPR is a legally binding multilateral treaty that represents an international consensus that prisoners be treated humanely, consistent with their inherent human dignity, and that prisons be focused on rehabilitation and reformation rather than punishment. Similarly, Rule 4 of the Nelson Mandela Rules (2015) also emphasize the significance of preparing offenders for their social reintegration in justifying imprisonment:

1. The purposes of a sentence of imprisonment or similar measures deprivative of a person's liberty are primarily to protect society against crime and to reduce recidivism. Those purposes can be achieved only if the period of imprisonment is used to ensure, so far as possible, the reintegration of such persons into society upon release so that they can lead a law-abiding and self-supporting life.

2. To this end, prison administrations and other competent authorities should offer education, vocational training and work, as well as other forms of assistance that are appropriate and available, including those of a remedial, moral, spiritual, social and health- and sports-based nature. All such programmes, activities and services should be delivered in line with the individual treatment needs of prisoners.

Yet there is little evidence to suggest that the use of imprisonment as a punishment worldwide has been effective in achieving this aim (Coyle et al., 2016). Conversely, the overuse and overreliance on imprisonment worldwide has led to a growing recognition that overcrowding and poor regimes in penal institutions around the world have led to significant human rights violations, with prisoners enduring inhuman and degrading prison conditions without adequate access to basic services or rehabilitation programmes  delivered in line with their individual needs (UNODC, 2013a). Many prisoners are subject to appalling treatment and conditions that inherently undermine their human dignity and value as human beings (see for example: Coyle et al, 2016; Penal Reform International, 2018; see also Module 1 in this University Module Series). The aim of this Module is to assess key prison reform and public safety strategies that can challenge the inhumane treatment of prisoners and provide a strong basis for improving prison conditions around the world in order to ensure that prisoners' fundamental rights and basic human needs are met, as well as to challenge the overuse of detention.

The significance of prison reform

Since imprisonment has been imposed as a punishment, significant attempts have been made to improve the conditions of prisons. Across different jurisdictions, concern over the treatment of prisoners is at the core of the development of prison reform. As Vivien Stern noted, prison reform is "a cause that has touched the imaginations of many through the centuries, and continues to do so" (Stern, 1998, p. 248). Key questions to be addressed in this section include: What is the history of prison reform? Which actors have shaped prison reform? Why are prisoners' rights important?

A brief history of prison reform

Most prison historians of the Western world date "the birth of the prison", to use Foucault's phrase, to the late eighteenth century, the era of Enlightenment and European/American revolutions (see Foucault, 1977; Ignatieff, 1978; Radzinowicz and Hood, 1986; Morris and Rothman, 1995; Gibson, 2011). Prior to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the use of imprisonment was limited, and prisons were mainly used to hold debtors, the accused awaiting trial and convicted persons awaiting their sentence - usually whipping, the stocks or hanging (see Barnes, 1921; Blomberg and Lucken, 2010). As severe criminal codes and barbarous public rituals of corporal punishment were abolished, imprisonment was increasingly used by the courts as a method of punishment, eventually becoming the most dominant means of punishing offenders. The use of imprisonment subsequently spread around the world, often introduced by colonial governments to countries with no indigenous concept of prisons, or by indigenous rulers under pressure from Western imperialistic powers (see Coyle, 2002; Zinoman, 2001; Bernault, 2003; Dikötter, 2002; Botsman, 2005; Gibson, 2011).

As long ago as the 1600s, during the colonial period of American history, Quaker groups and others campaigned against capital or corporal punishment, and urged for the use of imprisonment as a more humane alternative. William Penn (1644-1718), for example, founder and governor of the Pennsylvania colony, abolished capital punishment for all crimes except murder and treason. Penn declared that "all prisons shall be workhouses" and that "all prisoners shall have liberty to provide themselves, bedding, food, and other necessaries" (Barnes, 1922, p. 70). Prisoners would learn a trade as part of their reformation, and to help prepare them for life after release. While Penn's proposals were not systematically implemented, his belief that prison could serve as an instrument of reformation continued to influence prison reformers.

In 1787, a group of reform minded Quakers and other prominent citizens, including Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), established the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (now known as the ' Pennsylvania Prison Society '). Reformers were shocked by the sordid conditions, lack of discipline, and treatment of prisoners. All types of prisoners (men, women and children) were living together, and were expected to pay fees to the jailors for basic provisions such as food, clothing and heat. Liquor was sold to prisoners at a profit by jailors, and prison buildings were not fit for purpose, with no clean water or sewage disposal. As part of their reform strategy, the Society proposed the creation of larger penitentiaries, and recommended that prisoners should be separately incarcerated in a system of solitary confinement. Living conditions were improved, but prisoners were confined perpetually to their cells. Isolation and silence were expected to encourage individual reflection, reform and rehabilitation - a system that became known as 'the Pennsylvania System' or 'Separate System' which influenced significant change in many prison systems across around the world (see Teeters, 1927; Sellin, 1970; Roberts, 1985; see also Pennsylvania Prison Society).

A competing approach that became known as the 'congregate system' or 'Auburn system' (named after Auburn State Prison in New York State) emerged around the same time. The model was championed by social reformers and clergymen such as Louis Dwight (1793-1854) who founded the 'Boston Prison Discipline Society' in 1824 (Barnes, 1921). It called for prisoner isolation at night and congregate working in the day, but with no verbal communication allowed between prisoners - a rule that was enforced with "military-like discipline and liberal use of a whip" (Quen, 1975, p. 132). While the two systems differed, they both strove to maintain discipline by enforcing stringent rules and by upholding the premise that contact between prisoners should be prohibited in order to minimize the negative influence prisoners might have on one another. Competition between supporters of the two systems continued until the late nineteenth century, by which time most states had adopted the congregate system, with the in-built advantage of producing income via industry (see Roberts, 1985; Rotman, 1990).

Some commentators maintain that early prison reformers in America were influenced by the writings and activities of philosophers and social reformers in Europe (for an alternative perspective, see Rothman, 1995), including the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and social reformer John Howard (1726-1790), among others (see, for example, Barnes, 1921). Cesare Beccaria, for example, in his most famous work, Dei delitti e delle pene - On Crimes and Punishments , first published in 1764, argued powerfully for the abolition of capital or corporal punishment, a larger use of imprisonment as punishment, and improvement in the administration of prisons. One of Jeremy Bentham's most famous ideas was his design of the 'panopticon' prison in 1791. The panopticon facilitated for the total separation of prisoners while allowing guards in a central location to observe all prisoners but to remain invisible themselves. The separation, isolation and overall design of the panopticon were considered integral for the purposes of reflection and rehabilitation. Although the panopticon was never built, a number of early prisons in Britain and the United States reflected Bentham's ideas of segregation and isolation (for critical reflection, see Foucault, 1977; Semple, 1993; Steadman, 2007). Prison reformer John Howard published The State of the Prisons in England and Wales in 1777 and An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe in 1789, based on an extensive tour and study of prisons across many European jurisdictions. Howard was appalled by the inhumane conditions and poor treatment of prisoners, and with jailers living off fees paid by prisoners. His reform efforts led to substantial change, including the abolition of jailers' fees, and improving hygiene and health care in prisons (Howard, 1777; 1789; Morris and Rothman, 1995; Wilson, 2014; see also The Howard League of Penal Reform ).

Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), who in 1816 began to visit female prisoners in a London prison, petitioned for better prison conditions to improve their circumstances and to raise awareness about women in prison, and their imprisoned children. In 1827, she published an influential book, Observations of the Visiting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners , addressing the unpopular topic of female imprisonment and providing details for improving penal institutions (Fry, 1827). She wanted prisoners to be educated and for them to live in sanitary conditions. Her work inspired many organizations, including the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (see also Zedner, 1995). Another prominent reformer was Dorothea Dix from the United States who criticized neglectful practices towards the mentally ill in prisons, challenged the idea that people with mental illness could not be helped, and played a key role in creating new institutions for the treatment of the mentally ill across the United States and Europe (see Muckenhoupt, 2004).

Many great and influential writers have also highlighted inhumane treatment of prisoners, and the importance and necessity of prison reform. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the Philadelphia model of solitary confinement (the separate system), and was horrified by the inhumanity of this treatment. After visiting several prisoners, whom he called men "buried alive" and cut off from "the living world", he concluded:

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature (Dickens, 2000, p. 111, originally published in 1842).

Another example is the author Fyodor Dostoevsky who devoted his semi-autobiographical novel, The House of the Dead , to describing life of prisoners in Siberian prison camps. His main character, Aleksandr Petrovich, who is sentenced to ten years in prison for murder, says of the effects of "the belauded system of solitary confinement" that it:

Attains only false, deceptive, external results. It drains the man's vital sap, enervates his soul, cows and enfeebles it, and then holds up the morally withered mummy, half imbecile, as a model of penitence and reformation (Dostoevsky, 1979, p. 13-14, originally published in 1861).

While brutal and public forms of corporal punishment had been replaced by private and apparently more humane systems of carceral discipline, they were "no less repressive than the corporal punishment of the old regime, and even more insidious in its aim to use the body as an instrument to regiment the soul and reshape the mind" (Foucault, 1977, cited by Gibson, 2011, p. 1042; for further critical reflection of the development of the modern prison, see also Rothman, 1971; Ignatieff, 1978).

The history of prison reform in Africa, Asia and Latin America has come to the fore among scholars in recent years (see for example: Dikötter and Brown, 2007; Sherman, 2009; Gibson, 2011). In these regions, many countries faced significant challenges implementing prison reforms that symbolized colonial domination. The difficulties involved in reformulating existing punishment systems meant that many countries struggled to implement humane forms of punishment (see Coyle, 2002). In Africa, for example, colonial prisons differed from European prisons in that they "sought to reinforce white authority" and "constituted not a replacement for but an addition to corporal punishment" (Gibson, 2011, p. 1053; for insight on the treatment of female prisoners in colonial Senegal, see Konaté, 2003 and 2013). Colonial prison reform in countries in Asia has been described as a story of a "largely alien institution" that was seen to be "not only a site of colonial oppression but also of systematic attempts to break caste and impose Christianity" (Arnold, 2007, p. 147-149; see also Yang, 1987; Anderson, 2003; 2007). In Latin America, prison reform became "part of a process of state and nation formation in which a rhetoric about modernization and innovation was generally contradicted by the continual - and usually violent - exclusion of the majorities from the exercise of democratic rights and citizenship" (Salvatore and Aguirre, 1996, p. 12; see also Salvatore et al., 2001). Importantly, many colonial governments were faced with strong opposition from anticolonial and political prisoners who, through their memoirs, contact with newspapers, riots and resistance, ensured that "the abysmal conditions in colonial prisons became a global issue that could not be ignored" (Gibson, 2011, p. 1062). Colonial legacy, however, continues to shape prison populations and prison administration around the world (Scott and Flynn, 2014).

During the twentieth century, prison reform groups focused on prisoners' rights as a means of improving prison conditions and alleviating the deprivations of imprisonment. Organizations such as the 'Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners', formed by prisoners and ex-prisoners in the United Kingdom, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the United States petitioned for formal due process rights and humane conditions (Easton, 2011). The ACLU National Prison Project , set up in 1972, works "to ensure that conditions of confinement are consistent with health, safety, and human dignity, and that prisoners retain all rights of free persons that are not inconsistent with incarceration." Since the 1970s, the project has instigated a large number of class actions, petitioning the United States government on a wide range of issues including better medical provision for prisoners with HIV, TB and cancer, the protection of prisoners from sexual assaults, challenging prison overcrowding and inhumane prison conditions (Easton, 2011, p. 39-40).

Prisoners' human rights have also been addressed across different jurisdictions through judicial intervention and independent oversight. In India, for example, a number of cases since the mid-1970s have developed human rights jurisprudence on the administration of prisons and the human rights of prisoners (see for example: Charles Sobraj v. Superintendent Central Jail , Tihar, AIR 1978 SC 1514; Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration , AIR 1980 SC 1579). In an important judgment in 1996, the Supreme Court of India identified key problems in the prison system. It called for action to be taken to address the following issues: "overcrowding, delay in trial, torture and ill-treatment, neglect of health and hygiene, insubstantial food and inadequate clothing, prison vices, deficiency in communication, streamlining of jail visits and management of open-air prisons" (Harigovind, 2013, p. 27; Ramamurthy v. State of Karnataka , 1996, SCC (Cri) 386). In terms of independent oversight in India, prison reformer Kiran Bedi earned recognition for the work she carried out as Inspector General of Prisons in 1994 for addressing corruption and human rights abuses, and reforming the Tihar prison of Dehli (one of the largest prisons in the world) along therapeutic and community lines (see Bedi, 2007), though many of her reforms have since been abolished (Codd, 2013).

Over recent decades, various national and international organizations have campaigned and worked to promote the importance of prisoners' rights in different regions of the world, often collaborating closely with relevant government departments and local prison officials to reform the conditions in prisons, and implement international standards (see UNODC, 2013a). Across Africa, for example, the African Prisons Project (APP) work to reform prison conditions by "promoting the health and physical wellbeing of prison communities through increased access to essential health services" and by introducing "basic skills, creative and vocational training to encourage prisoners to use their time to prepare for release". The APP's initiative ' Justice Changemaker Training' also works to build senior prison and criminal justice personnel's professional and leadership skills by equipping them with "formal education, legal training and exposure to global best practice to ensure that prisoners' rights are upheld" (see also 'Capacity Development Projects' and 'Human Rights Advocacy Projects' of the Faraja Foundation ). In Asia, the International Committee of the Red Cross has worked to support prisoners' rights and improve prison conditions for many decades. For example, the project Call for Action in the Philippines, launched in 2007, aims to address "the legal and procedural issues leading to overcrowding in prisons, deficient living conditions for detainees, and poor detainee health conditions, notably the spread of tuberculosis". Similarly, in the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia, the European Union and UNODC launched the project, ' Support to Prison Reform in the Kyrgyz Republic ' in 2009, which aims to contribute to strengthening the rule of law through reform of the prison system.

In most societies in the world, at least one national or international non-governmental organization can be found, working towards improving prisoners' conditions and bringing prisoners' rights to the attention of the public (see for example: Amnesty International , the International Committee of the Red Cross and Penal Reform International ). The central premise that unifies the work of prison reformers is a human rights one, that prisoners are human beings and should be treated at all times with "humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person" (Article 10.1 of the ICCPR (GA Resolution 2200A (XXI)), despite any crime that they may have committed. In other words, there are certain rights and freedoms which are fundamental to human existence, and which cannot be denied or forfeited, including the basic right to safety or to adequate standard of living, such as adequate food, water, accommodation, sanitation, ventilation, clothing, bedding, and opportunities for exercise (see Coyle, 2002; United Nations, 2005; Coyle et al., 2016).

Imprisonment is therefore increasingly recognized as a serious and severe punishment that should constitute only a loss of the right to liberty, not the restriction of other human rights or the imposition of additional punishment. As Coyle (2002, p. 42) noted, imprisonment cannot include, "risk of physical or emotional abuse by staff or by other prisoners" or "risk of serious illness or even death because of the physical conditions or the lack of proper care" (Coyle, 2002, p. 42). Similarly, Alexander Paterson, who was appointed as a Commissioner of Prisons in Britain in 1922 famously stated, individuals "are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment" (cited in Ruck, 1951, p. 13, emphasis added; see also Robinson and Crow, 2009). As stated earlier, the primary purpose of imprisonment should be "reformation and social rehabilitation" so that prisoners can be released from prison as law-abiding and self-supporting citizens, crucial to the reduction of reoffending and protection of the public (Article 10.3 of the ICCPR (GA Resolution 2200A (XXI)). The international community has affirmed this purpose of imprisonment, more recently, in the the Nelson Mandela Rules , 2015, Rule 4; and the Doha Declaration , 2014).

While many prison reformers have demonstrably improved conditions for prisoners over the years (see especially Morris and Rothman, 1995), they continue to face significant challenges in the twenty first century. In many countries, outdated legislation, "tough on crime" policies, a lack of political will and social pressures, as well as limited resources and weak monitoring systems, threaten the impact of prison reform work, and challenge the human rights argument underpinning the importance of prison reform. In all regions of the world, the use of imprisonment continues to raise questions about the extent to which it is an effective, fair and humane punishment. The next part of this Module examines contemporary prison trends and challenges, as well as the development of international human rights standards. 

Next: Topic two - Current trends, key challenges and human rights

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1.5 The Purposes of Punishment

Learning objective.

• Ascertain the effects of specific and general deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution.

Punishment has five recognized purposes: deterrence , incapacitation , rehabilitation , retribution , and restitution .

Specific and General Deterrence

Deterrence prevents future crime by frightening the defendant or the public . The two types of deterrence are specific and general deterrence . Specific deterrence applies to an individual defendant . When the government punishes an individual defendant, he or she is theoretically less likely to commit another crime because of fear of another similar or worse punishment. General deterrence applies to the public at large. When the public learns of an individual defendant’s punishment, the public is theoretically less likely to commit a crime because of fear of the punishment the defendant experienced. When the public learns, for example, that an individual defendant was severely punished by a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty, this knowledge can inspire a deep fear of criminal prosecution.

Incapacitation

Incapacitation prevents future crime by removing the defendant from society. Examples of incapacitation are incarceration, house arrest, or execution pursuant to the death penalty.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation prevents future crime by altering a defendant’s behavior. Examples of rehabilitation include educational and vocational programs, treatment center placement, and counseling. The court can combine rehabilitation with incarceration or with probation or parole. In some states, for example, nonviolent drug offenders must participate in rehabilitation in combination with probation, rather than submitting to incarceration (Ariz. Rev. Stat., 2010). This lightens the load of jails and prisons while lowering recidivism , which means reoffending.

Retribution

Retribution prevents future crime by removing the desire for personal avengement (in the form of assault, battery, and criminal homicide, for example) against the defendant. When victims or society discover that the defendant has been adequately punished for a crime, they achieve a certain satisfaction that our criminal procedure is working effectively, which enhances faith in law enforcement and our government.

Restitution

Restitution prevents future crime by punishing the defendant financially . Restitution is when the court orders the criminal defendant to pay the victim for any harm and resembles a civil litigation damages award. Restitution can be for physical injuries, loss of property or money, and rarely, emotional distress. It can also be a fine that covers some of the costs of the criminal prosecution and punishment.

Figure 1.4 Different Punishments and Their Purpose

Key Takeaways

• Specific deterrence prevents crime by frightening an individual defendant with punishment. General deterrence prevents crime by frightening the public with the punishment of an individual defendant.
• Incapacitation prevents crime by removing a defendant from society.
• Rehabilitation prevents crime by altering a defendant’s behavior.
• Retribution prevents crime by giving victims or society a feeling of avengement.
• Restitution prevents crime by punishing the defendant financially.

Answer the following questions. Check your answers using the answer key at the end of the chapter.

• What is one difference between criminal victims’ restitution and civil damages?
• Read Campbell v. State , 5 S.W.3d 693 (1999). Why did the defendant in this case claim that the restitution award was too high? Did the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agree with the defendant’s claim? The case is available at this link: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11316909200521760089&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

Ariz. Rev. Stat. §13-901.01, accessed February 15, 2010, http://law.justia.com/arizona/codes/title13/00901-01.html .

Criminal Law Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.