Changes In Correction



Changes in Correction

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Changes in Correction

Introduction

Every country has a correction or penalty system that is used to rectify the behavior of evil doers or the people who indulge in criminal and illegal activities. Most of the countries have jails and prisons, which are used to captivate the criminals and bound them for a certain period of time (according to the nature of the crime) and bring an improvement in their behavior. The United States of America has also an elaborated criminal system that decides the fate of the criminals. Just like most of the countries, it has many prisons that are used as a source of punishment for the criminals and evildoers. The United States of America has currently 1719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 3163 local jails, 80 Indian County Jails, and 1852 Juvenile correctional facilities.

Discussion

The American prisons faced a time when the prison facilities went through major transformations. The prisons were reformed and made much comfortable for the prisoners to live in so that it can facilitate the living as well as serve the meaning of being kept in a prison. This time period was known as “Big House Era”. The Big House Era started in 1930 and went on during the 1940s (Bright, 1996). During this era, the prisons were designed in the auburn style, the style of prisons is specifically used to break the spirit of the prisons.

The management noticed an absence of rehabilitation in the prisons, which is why they decided to bring in the Auburn style prisons. This approach was very successful from the management point of view. It helped significantly in controlling and reforming the prisons. The management introduced a number of reforming and rehabilitation programs. The management focused on bring positivity in the behaviors of the prisoners for a longer term. Their efforts were fruitful and where these programs brought an improvement in the efficiency of the management, they also reduced the ratio of violence among the criminals, residing inside the prisons.

Prisons are also living places just like any other housing society. They are brimming with human resources or human talent, which mostly stays idle. The industrialists and the Government came up with the idea to put this talent to use and decided to use these prisons privately. The method became popular after 1940 (Culp, 2005). The industrialists saw it as a great opportunity to earn big profits at minimal cost, but this practiced was quickly abolished due to the exploitation of the prisoners.

The idea of utilizing the talent of prisoners to earn profits by producing products from the jails became very popular but it was immediately banned by the US Government under the Act of 1929, due to the fear of an unbalance in the normal economy (Schneider, 1999). This would have created chaos and unemployment in the common market considering the less cost of production in prison. The profitability of prison industries can be increased by inducting more and more labor inside the production sector and bringing their talent to use.

Mandatory release is the release of the prisoner before the expiration of the specified period of time. The prisoner is moved from a typical prison house to a facility where he or she is kept under the community supervision. It is a helpful system that helps in checking the effectiveness of correction systems. The parole boards and judges also play an important role in the correction of a prisoner (King, et. al., 1980). Based on the institutional and previous record, the parole officer can decide to reduce the punishment of a prisoner.

Conclusions

Hence it can be concluded that the corrections system of the United States of America plays a great role in the rehabilitation and reformation of the behavior of the criminals. It refrains the evil doers from repeating the behavior again.

References

Bright, C. (1996). The Powers that Punish: Prison and Politics in the Era of the" Big House", 1920-1955. University of Michigan Press.

Culp, R. F. (2005). The rise and stall of prison privatization: An integration of policy analysis perspectives. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 16(4), 412-442.

King, R. D., Morgan, R., Martin, J. P., & Thomas, J. E. (1980). The future of the prison system (p. 34). Farnborough: Gower.

Schneider, A. L. (1999). Public-private partnerships in the US prison system. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(1), 192-208.