Punishment Versus Rehabilitation

In the field of criminal justice a constant debate over rehabilitation and punishment is taking place. There are positive and negative points for both sides. It is hard to find statistics which actually prove the success rate of the two models. In the 1970’s rehabilitation was the main goal of the correctional process. A shift occurred in the 1990’s towards punishment. It has been a back and forth tug of war since. According to many the most effective plan would be to use rehabilitation and punishment together to help deal with the issue of crime in the United States. This is why the goal of the criminal justice system has expanded to include rehabilitation, punishment, retribution, and deterrence over the last couple of decades.

The idea of deterrence is to keep people from committing crimes. Many feel the threat of punishment is the best way to achieve deterrence. The threat of going to prison for robbing a store at gun point is thought to prevent the person from committing the crime. It is difficult to determine if the treat of punishment works to deter crime. People will look at the prison population say it is not effective.

Rehabilitation may also be considered at deterrent for criminal behavior. Proponents might say if the person’s behaviors can be change chances are they will not commit crimes. A simple example might be a person who is committing robberies to get money to support a drug addiction. One may argue if the addiction was put under control the person would not have the need to commit the robberies. As with punishment it is hard to really gauge the effectiveness of rehabilitation to a deterrent of crime.

Two numbers people will look at to gauge deterrence are the prison population and recidivism rate, which is basically people who are released from prison and get arrested again. These numbers have shown a steady increase over the past few decades in the United States. To only look at these numbers would not be an accurate way to rate the success of deterrence for either punishment or rehabilitation. For example in 1983 62.5% of the prisoners released found themselves back in prison with three years this number jumped to 67.5% in 1994(www.libraryindex.com). Numbers can also be deceiving because over the last three decades the crime rate has dropped but the prison population has grown (Kelley 2004). However it would be difficult to find out how many people who do not commit crimes would use punishment or rehabilitation as the reason because not many surveys have been asking these types of questions to non-convicted people.

The push for punishment many times comes from the victims or families of victims of crimes. These people feel like their rights and freedoms have been violated and the person who violated them should lose their rights and freedoms. Punishment might allow the victims to feel some sort of relief. It might also give society relief by preventing the offender from doing the same