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Prison Reform
America’s criminal justice system shows a common trend of high repeat offenders, despite correctional facilities and courts’ efforts to reintroduce such offenders back into society. The solution to the problem would be to change how the criminal justice system operates for criminals based on charge. Rather than being used as a tool for just punishing lawbreakers, the prison should be used as an avenue for reforming convicted criminals. Focusing more on education, job skills, or in some cases, social skills.
First, the increasing cases of repeat offenders in society imply that the penal system is not efficient in transforming criminals to fit back in communities once they complete their jail period. Many incarcerated criminals often find themselves back in prison soon after their release because the penal system is not efficient enough to transform their behavior (Beckett 239). Therefore, there is a need to reform the criminal justice system to enhance retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. It is vital to consider the social reintegration of criminals once they complete their jail terms.
Secondly, the penal system needs to find effective ways to transform the convicted criminals to ensure they are good citizens before reintegrating into society. The penal system should equip the convicted criminals with skills they can use in the outside world upon their release. However, the current criminal justice system uses the penal system as a tool to punish lawbreakers instead of reforming them to become useful and productive citizens (Vigne 69). A convicted individual finds it tough to survive in the outside world without having any job skills. Many of them lose touch with the outside world, and they have to start from nothing after their release. Such people often return to their previous behavior as criminals, and they end up back in prison.
Equipping convicted criminals with job skills allows them to earn a living upon their release from prison. It reduces their chance of committing a crime because they will find it easy to re-enter society after spending some time locked up. Having somewhere to start from after coming from prison minimizes the chance of the convicted criminals committing more crimes upon their prison release (Vigne 74). Therefore, it helps to mitigate the increasing number of convicted people in prisons. Currently, the penal system is full of convicted criminals. Considering building more prisons will be expensive to maintain. Therefore, the best solution is to reform the criminal justice system to minimize convicted criminals each year. The course will then help to transform the convicted criminals into ordinary citizens before their release into society.
Thirdly, the criminal justice system should consider educating the convicted criminals to enlighten them and ease their reintegration into society. The education will convince the convicts of the importance of changing their lives for the better. Therefore, many of them will abandon the criminal life and try to build their lives honestly. Providing formal education to the convicted criminals will help them understand the best way of living with others. The criminal justice system will reduce the number of criminal cases and convicted criminals in the penal system. Many people begin to question the criminal justice system’s efficiency because of the high number of incarcerated criminals in prisons (Bacote and Nathaniel 13). For instance, the system can offer short course learning to convicted criminals with few years or months before reintegrating into society.
Lastly, the criminal justice system should transform the convicted criminal by focusing on enhancing their social skills. It will enable the convicted criminals to fit well with other people upon their reintegration into society. Some people spend more time locked up to lose the skill to interact well with others in society. Teaching convicted criminals social skills will make it easy for them to interact with other community members upon their prison release. Some prisoners can prefer to remain in prison than go back to society because they lack the skills to interact with other citizens (Bacote and Nathaniel 19). Therefore, the penal system should transform the convicts by teaching them some social skills they will use in the outside world upon their release. Lack of such social skills results in many convicted criminals getting back to prison because they interact with ordinary people in the outside world the same way they interact with other convicts.
Conclusively, prisons should not be a tool for punishing criminals but rather an avenue for reforming convicted criminals by focusing more on education, job skills, or in some cases, social skills. The current number of convicted criminals in the penal system increases, which implies that the system is less efficient in transforming such criminals. Therefore, there is a need to reform the criminal justice system to reduce convicted criminals. For example, prisons can equip prisoners with job skills, which they can use upon their release. It will help them find employment rather than turn to the crime to get them back to prison. Reforming the current criminal justice system is the best way to minimize the increasing number of convicted criminals in the penal system.
Works Cited
Bacote, Vincent, and Nathaniel Perrin. “Redemptive Rehabilitation: Theological Approaches to Criminal Justice Reform.” Christian Scholar’s Review 49.1 (2019): 3-24.
Beckett, Katherine. “The politics, promise, and peril of criminal justice reform in the context of mass incarceration.” Annual Review of Criminology 1 (2018): 235-259.
Vigne, LA. “Next steps in federal corrections reform: Implementing and building on the first step act.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 32.2 (2019).