Correctional Ideology

Great Essays
“The correctional ideology refers to a body of ideas and practices that pertain to the processing of offenders, as determined by law.” There are three main correctional ideologies: punishment, rehabilitation, and prevention. Throughout history, these have been the methods used to deal with offenders. The make-up of these ideologies connects to the public’s opinion of the criminals. Whether society has chosen an “eye for an eye,” a more humane standard, or a hope to prevent crime, these ideologies have no doubt changed throughout time to accommodate the public’s needs. The question then lies, what do these ideologies consist of? These ideologies have various subcategories, and the focus here is to go in depth to better understand punishment, …show more content…
There are three reasons that society would use to justify a punishment ideology. The first and most common purpose is retribution. Retribution is about society and the victim getting even with the criminal. “The fundamental principle underlying the justice model is that society has a duty to punish those who break its laws and that this threat of punishment is vital in implementing the law” (Wrobleski 557). Society reasons that the answer for people that break the law is to simply get even with them. The idea being that the punishment should be equivalent to the crime. “Proponents advocate just deserts, which defines justice in terms of fairness and proportionality” (Houghton) There are some issues with retribution. This component consists of punishing the perpetrator only because they feel the need to get revenge. This could be deemed unconstitutional because it could be viewed as cruel and unusual …show more content…
The previously discussed ideologies had several problems with the effects that they caused. The current correctional practices have problems that have caused the desire for crime prevention to become prevalent. “Almost all offenders are eventually released, however, and the problem returns unless it has been effectively treated while the offender was in prison” (Allen 57). The logic behind crime prevention is clear. Preventing crime is to prevent everything that follows the crime as well. However, crime is impossible to totally prevent in society. “Crime in some form is an inevitable accompaniment in society and if serious crime were prevented, authorities would focus their attention om minor offenses” (Allen 57). This correlates to major crimes. If they were prevented, smaller crimes would become highly punishable, which would likely cause rates of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Catherine Portacio Introduction to Constitutional Law Dr. Beahm In the United States alone there are just about 2 million people currently incarcerated; that is more than 20 percent of the entire global imprisoned population. Angela Y. Davis is a professor of history of consciousness at the University of California who shows, in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, how alarming the US prison system situation isn’t as old as one average individual may think. Just about 30 years ago the entire prison population stood nearly at 200,000 people in the US; that is a tenfold hurdle in just one generation. Davis started off by explaining the drastic change in the number of prisons built in California; 3 prisons were built between 1852 and 1952; from 1984 to the present, over 80 facilities were constructed which now house about 160,000 people.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jeffery Reiman author of our reading “The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison” assigned his students an interesting assignment. At the end of their semester, the students were asked to create a correctional system that could sustain a stable and visible class of criminals. Not one that would prevent crime. Basically, almost all of the student’s proposals portrayed the correctional system we have today.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Retributionists believe incarceration is the payment for the crime actually committed. They think the criminal will not repeat their crime because they have accepted responsibility and feel satisfied they have been punished adequately, and have paid back society.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In recent discussions of the jail system, a controversial issue has been whether incarceration has helped contribute to the efforts of decreasing crime On the one hand, some argue that mass incarceration is a horrible failure. On the other hand, however, others argue that incarceration brings crime down. In sum, then, the issue is whether mass incarceration is the solution to lowering the crime rate or not. Though many people assume that mass incarceration drops the crime rate, it still does not change how the same criminals that are incarcerated are being released from jail committing the same crimes over and over making it almost impossible to drop the crime rate.…

    • 810 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the semester, we have repeatedly discussed statistics regarding current crime and incarceration rates. In comparison to previous rates, from earlier decades, it is clear that society’s viewpoint on crime has changed significantly. Beginning in the early 1970s, the United States initiated a more punitive criminal justice system (1). In The Punishment Imperative, authors Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost created a concept for the reasoning behind this mass incarceration. Referred to as the “Punishment Imperative,” its basis for reasoning focused on the symbolic image that crime held in society; meaning, as crime rates grew, the societal fear for basic safety began to emerge.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crime In Prison

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Americans today live in a country overflowing with more prisoners than ever, yet crime has been dropping since the late twentieth century. In fact, from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled from about 500,000 to 2.3 million people (Criminal 1). There are several factors contributing to this problem. In recent years, America has taken new approaches to crime, such as the “War On Drugs” and the “Three Strikes” law. These approaches have drastically increased the prison population, to the point that 1 in 31 adults, or 3.2% of the population, will spend some time in prison in their lifetime (ibid).…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Punishment Philosophy Punishment is seen as one of the pillars of life and society. Yet the view of punishment is deeply intertwined with the different philosophies of punishment that have become norms throughout time. While many see punishment through polarized lenses of retribution and vengeance, it should be utilized as a positive tool towards rehabilitation which in turn turns the heart away from sin.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The basis of using incarceration as a crime control method is the ideology…

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this essay I will discuss two approaches to punishment which are retributivism, also known as non-consequentialism, and utilitarianism, also known as consequentialism. I will then analyse three justifications of punishment within the utilitarian approach which are reform and rehabilitation, individual and general deterrence and incapacitation. Retributivism is a sociological perspective of crime which looks at the different forms and changes in punishment. It is a backward thinking approach as it does not look at future consequences of punishment and is mostly concerned with offences already committed and getting ‘justice’. This approach is considered similar to ‘an eye for an eye’ as it is based on the idea that if we inflict harm on another…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Pressing for Prison Reform The prison system is just as corrupt as the prisoners inside them. We live in a world where it is deemed acceptable to punish a criminal by taking away their humanity, and only release them when they find it themselves. We must reform the flawed prison system; only then can we correct the criminal way of life. Today, it is not uncommon to hear intrusive and abhorrent events that happen behind bars, including excessive violence, sexual harassment, health violations, and misconduct of legal power.…

    • 1793 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prison Reform Essay

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Support decreased for rehabilitate programs and increased for keeping offenders incarcerated; many people subscribed to the idea that keeping criminals off the streets is the surest way to keep criminals off the streets is the surest way to keep them from committing more crimes. As a result, the federal government and a growing number of states introduced mandatory sentencing and life terms for habitual criminals. They also limited the use of probation, parole, and time off for good behavior. ”(Gale 2007)…

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    I will also be defending Jeremy Bentham’s position, and the utilitarian view of punishment. To begin, Immanuel Kant was a firm believer in the term retributivism.…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Prison Reform

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    There are four main purposes to prisons: Retribution; the punishing of a criminal serves as an act of revenge for the victim and society. Deterrence; corrections are intended to discourage offenders from committing future crimes and make the rest of society think twice about breaking laws. Social protection; by limiting the freedom of offenders, society prevents them from committing additional crimes. Rehabilitation; during the nineteenth century, prisons emerged as places in which to reform criminals so that they could return to society as law-abiding citizens (Roberts, 2006). However, the American prison system is not functionally capable of significant prisoner rehabilitation.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    crime rate has dropped. Since the 1990s, homicide, burglary and theft have all dropped; violent crime has dropped 40%, and motor vehicle theft by 60% (Farrell, Tseloni, Mailley, & Tilly 2011). Now, the growth in incarceration can be attributed to “increases in decisions to incarcerate and increases in time served, rather than increases in offenses or arrests.” (Schoenfeld 2012, p. 323) This shows that mass incarceration has not contributed to reducing crime; in fact it may have more negative effects than positive ones.…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Once balance is restored, the chances of the prisoner re-offending are diminished (Inayatullah, 2011). In contrast, there is the punishment model. Inayatullah (2011) states that the argument is that all the rights are given to the offender and the victim has none. Therefore in this approach, the best way to reduce present day and future crimes is to keep serious offenders in jail. Evidence shows that twenty-five percent of criminal activity can be reduced by lengthy prison sentences.…

    • 1674 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays