Policy Dilemma in Rehabilitation and Corrections System

Name:
Professor:
Course Tittle:
Date:
Policy Dilemma in Rehabilitation and Corrections Systems
One of the most common ways of punishing societal vices is by imprisonment. The national law recognizes crimes of all extents from the simple pick pocketing to gruesome murders and has stipulated appropriate punishments for each crime. Particularly incarceration serves a wholesome purpose of penalizing offenders who serve weeks, months, years or even life imprisonments depending on the nature of their crimes. The penal system is meant to be correctional but this result is not always achieved. Often, we see ex-convicts going back to their original crimes or even upgrading to far more gruesome acts just after leaving prisons. This brings to table the debate of whether the prisons are doing their job well and what adjustments need to be done to ensure that they serve their intended purposes. This paper will analyze and critique the arguments of James Gilligan, MD, a forensic psychiatrist, who wrote recommendations on how to make prisons effective and less costly. In addition it will draw conclusions in defense or opposition of these sentiments.
Gilligan’s statements
I will examine three of Gilligan’s arguments for the purpose of analysis in this paper. First, Gilligan indicates that prisons are meant to be restraint centers where offenders are kept from causing harm to themselves or others. He contends that in order to change behavior, people who are dangerous to themselves or other people are to be kept in enclosures and helped to change their behaviors. The final objective here is to release them back to the society with new characters, beliefs and social values. He further argues that before we can effectively change the prison system, there is need to differentiate between punishing people and restraining people. In his opinion punishment is vengeful and meant to teach a lesson and for this reason is not a beneficial role of the penal system. He advocates for restraint rather than punishment for prisoners.
Secondly, he proposes the establishment of Anti-prison system. In his words, this describes home-like residences where prisoners live in a community system different from the normal homes of civilians by the addition of security and safe-locking. Furthermore, he believes that the since the current prisons are performing poorly, they should be all torn down and replaced with his proposed system. He compares the prisons with other American institutions and indicates that if they were performing as bad as the prisons, they would all be torn down. He statistically illustrates how two thirds of prisoners are taken back to prison in a period of three years after they had completed their initial sentence.
He believes his new idea would cause no harm to Americans as they would be setting an example for the convicts to follow. Moreover, the system will incorporate normal civilian-like operations such as provision of education, drug abuse rehabilitation, dental care, psychotherapy and medical attention. In his opinion, the best way to prevent recidivism is by providing opportunities to convicts to improve themselves for instance through education and attaining college degrees while in prison. The best way to mend ba...