Rehabilitation In The Prison System

Solution Criteria To address the many problems that correctional units face with the rehabilitation in our prison systems, the entire system needs to be re-evaluated and corrected. Many enforcement areas and jurisdictions lack the resources to handle the intake of inmates that they have. Finding alternative sentencing and community to inmate programs will drastically improve this area, such as prison overcrowding and the rate of recidivism. By reducing the population in jails and prisons with alternative methods, local, state, and federal agencies will see an improvement in the efficiencies and effectiveness of their programs within there jurisdiction. With the lower workload of the correctional officers in overcrowded correctional facilities …show more content…
Due to the court case Americans United for Separation of Church and State et al. v. Prison Fellowship Ministries there is a challenge as the case made it illegal for these faiths based programs from being funded with state funds. The only items that are allowed from states are those that the inmate is already allowed if incarcerated (2010). This is where the combination of faith based programs and community service programs can work together. Religious leaders in the area and who are involved with these programs would partner with community leaders to ensure that these programs are successful. The only involvement from the state or correctional institution would be to ensure that the program is being conducted legally and ethically per state and federal law as …show more content…
When working with an inmate that has a longer sentence such as fifteen or more years, standard release programs will have a lower success rate due to the lack of life skills that the inmate will have with the passing of time. As an inmate spends more and more times incarcerated, their life skills start to decrease. For example, and inmate that was incarcerated in 1986 that had received a thirty-year prison term would have been released this year, 2016, if they had served the full term of their sentence. During this time the inmate would have not had the opportunity to keep up with the changing technologies around them as well as changes to society in which they are being released to. This causes an inmate to have a greater struggle when being released and increases the risk of recidivism (Brewster, 2015). For these types of inmate programs that integrate life skills as well as education opportunities are key to an inmates’ ability to being successfully released. The most common programs that are provided are with outside programs that operate within correctional facilities that provide educational resources both with higher education and arts. During a study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy that surveyed all 50-states, they found that 68% of postsecondary correction education