After looking for research topics in one of my criminology classes I became more interested in how effective rehabilitation programs are in America's prisons. According to the article I found the United States has the largest percentage of imprisoned citizens compared to all other countries. One major goal of prison is to rehabilitate criminals into being productive citizens. Prison programming can be easily linked to psychology and law in many ways. One reason I chose this specific article is because it makes readers aware of the criminal theories that can be often applied to psychology. An example is the social-conflict theory created by Karl Marx. He believes crime occurs because the stress that lower class people experience when the upper class uses their power. This theory can be used for prison programming in the fact that prisoners would be taught to be obediant to the powerful meaning to obey the laws of the government if they are released into the public. Another theory behind the rehabilitation of prisoners ignores the rehabilitation process all together. Structuralists and functionalists view prison as a success already because it allows people to recognize who is "bad" and who is "good." The people who agree with this theory believe it does not matter if a prisoner is rehabilitated because they will forever be labeled as a criminal by others. This article is wrapped up after explaining the symbolic-interaction perspective which states that a person would only learn to be deviant if they are around people who teach them to be deviant. This theory could prove to be an advantage or disadvantage for prison programming. Either an inmate learns from other criminals or prison staff to be deviant or is rehabilitated by taking advantage of positive life skill programs within the prison. All theories that are introduced in this article have their positive and negative sides to them. Everything depends on the specific deviant behavior that occurs. Yet, understanding these theories and more can help programming move a step in the right direction. Also, it is obvious that one must understand psychology to understand why and how people act the way they do and also what keeps a person from doing that again. Prison rehabilitation deals a lot with behavioral and social psychology. Read for yourself to learn some more information.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/307778/prisons_in_america_their_effectiveness.html?cat=17
Leave a comment