Prisons are
a little different from jails. There are a lot of people who do not necessarily
know the difference between jails and prisons, which is not odd being that they
do not have any personal ties to them. However, they are quite different, and
even have different purposes. I will be discussing prisons development over
time, purpose, and dynamics. First it is important to know the history of them.
In ancient times, incarceration was
one of the least common forms of punishment. Force labor, corporal punishment,
and social ostracism were the more common punishments (Prison History,1). After
the enlightenment period in France and England, incarceration as a punishment
was introduced. After the Enlightenment Era, the were new perspectives on
liberty and human nature. People felt as though taking away people’s liberty
and autonomy would serve as better punishment.
During this time, the criminal justice system’s focus of punishment was
retribution, rather than reform. Due to America being so Christian, their
prisons were full of “sinner”. Anyone who would commit a sin, no matter the
severity of it, was put in a penitentiary to serve pennants. This did cause an
extreme overcrowding issue, which lead to the American punishment system to
change (Prison History,1).
The American prisons finally started
to change by the end of the 19th century. Now their goal was to turn
inmates into model citizens. Since then, there have been 5 different purposes
of punishment established, which are deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation,
incapacitation, and restitution. All serving different purposes and all being
extremely necessary. The prison system has gotten somewhat better, but there
are still a lot of problems concerning their most recent overcrowding issues
and recidivism. It has been hard getting those two issues to go down especially
because they go hand in hand, getting one down will get the other to go down
significantly. So then, what is the main purpose of prisons?
As mentioned earlier, the main
purpose of prisons, for a while, was to reform the inmates. It was important to
figure out how to get these inmates to become contributing members of society.
The main purpose of prisons is to stop crime and they do this by using the 5
purposes of punishment I mentioned earlier. The problem is that these purposes
are only affecting a handful of people. The only thing that is actually preventing
these people of reoffending is the fact that they are incarcerated. Therefore,
the purpose that has worked the most is incapacitation. However, this only
prevents crime until they get out of prison. As soon as these ex-convicts are
let back out into the free world they tend to reoffend, because crime is all
they know and are familiar with.
Upon release, most inmates are
optimistic about getting their lives together and bettering themselves. A lot
of them do not realize that adjusting to day to day life is not as easy as it
sounds. After prison, especially, they have been incarcerated for a long period
of time, they are not used to working every day, having bills, and
responsibilities to attend to. They either consciously or subconsciously commit
a crime to get themselves back in prison or jail. It is human nature to resort
back to what someone is comfortable with, a lot of times these former inmates are
alpha males and have a form of authority in prison and rather be somewhere
where they are considered important. Which is why it can be hard to keep them
all in line, because the inmates have a different set of rules than the prison
rules.
According to Morris G. Caldwell’s
Group Dynamics in the Prison Community, there are two separate groups within
them. There is a formal group and an informal group. The formal group is the
prison personnel, their purpose is to maintain order, organize work, and help
with the rehabilitative programs. They get the inmates in to groups and assign
tasks, the inmates are in charge of the maintenance of the prisons. The staff
is in charge of making sure the tasks are completed and done properly. The
informal group is made up of the inmates, and their roles with each other.
These roles include, gambling, sexual perversion, moonshine makers, and so
forth. These roles are secretive, but their hierarchy roles are often not. For
instance, most guards can tell which inmates are the alphas and which are
betas. However, the details of these roles are frequently looked passed. All
jail and prisons have their own set of norms and rules; however it is important
to understand why society needs institutions like this.
Sources:
www.adpsr.org/home/prison_history
http://quarterlyconversation.com/what-are-prisons-for
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