Introduction
Corrections are one of the key areas of the criminal justice system (CJS) in any country. It serves as part of the CJS, offering homes for criminals guilty of offensive acts that limit their liberty and curriculums. Corrections provide reentry initiatives that assist individuals who have been released to assimilate back into the public. The programs aid in finding them housing, resources, and jobs to establish them, thus limiting the chances of an individual committing more offenses in society (Sparks & Gacek, 2019). The research paper explores corrections, describing their historical perspective and needed changes and narrowing them down to the correction process’s financial side.
Historical Context of Corrections and Where It is Now
The correctional process and laws were introduced into Americans’ lives during the colonial period. Since then, the corrections field has constantly been changing, evolving, and modifying itself to make it better. Therefore, its history comprises different reforms formed to create corrections for what it is now.
The establishment and enhancements of the correctional process have been a continuous process. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the correctional process was reformed based on the belief in the capability of offenders to rehabilitate and rethink (Fuller, 2020). By World War I, stringent discipline replaced employing educational and rehabilitative strategies.
Nevertheless, penitentiaries were later initiated for separate person incarceration for correction. During the time, harsh labor was regarded as an influential mechanism for encouraging behavioral modification in inmates. The Cincinnati Declaration, Auburn system, Pennsylvania system, and other reforms applied to change and influence the corrections. The correctional process attained new characteristics with the movement of philosophical concepts toward positivism and the establishment of human rights (Birch & Sicard, 2021). They included introducing Mark’s structure, which permitted inmates to reduce their sentences by good behavior and labor and parole, probation, and community corrections.
The corrections have been mostly state or federally-run prison facilities in the US since its inception. However, from the late 1980s, in America, some states moved into the idea of private prisons, in which they indulge for-profit firms to operate their prisons to manage costs (Burkhardt, 2019). This has made the prison system of today a correction process predesigned and built to warehouse lower economic and underdeveloped communities.
Based on the current social order, people are incarcerated for their free labor and economic benefit in terms of money by the private prisons. Where else may a person get a full day’s work for up to 20 cents per hour, and these hours have indefinite years (Byrne et al., 2019)? These prisons have made slave labor in this twentieth century. It is not meant to rehabilitate the prisoners as it appears.
Further, for-profit institutions benefit from increasing incarceration rates that emanate from the reforms in procedures and laws that demand escalated penalties for minor and non-violent crimes. Companies are using prison labor and not upholding similar requirements and standards that those working outside prisons are, thus breaching prisoners’ rights. Firms have been made to benefit from the law subversion (Klein & Lima, 2021). Organizations are benefiting from free labor in prisons and the prison privatization process.
The private prisons acknowledge that their model of business is reliant on the massive numbers of people in incarceration, with the primary aim being to generate profit. Hence, they cut compromises on their prison services because their bottom line generates money. The capitalist mentality, vital for companies to remain in business, is intrinsically mismatched with human rights (Gunderson, 2020). The current corporations have made items out of people and prisoners, and due to their low social status, prisoners are specifically susceptible to abuse.
Moreover, when a person is incarcerated, the main aim of this imprisonment is to rehabilitate that person so that they can return to society as an improved and better person. It implies that prisons must be places where prisoners receive counseling, treatment, education, and therapy (Harris et al., 2019). Nonetheless, when the main aim is not on prisoners’ rehabilitation but instead on profit, prisoners’ human rights are breached. Companies are permitted to house their plants in prisons and utilize the endless supply of employees who cannot form unions and earn slave wages, which inspires firms to lobby for longer sentencing and cruel punishments as it is to their advantage (Gunderson, 2020). This is for private prisons such as GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, as they profit when the prison beds are fully occupied.
Additionally, corporations lobby for laws and stringent incarceration policies as their model of business relies on increasing the correctional process for the aim of making a profit with no consideration for justice. Hence, allowing companies to utilize prisoners to generate income is unfair, and it is counterintuitive to believe that any constructive rehabilitative action may be taken under such circumstances (Klein & Lima, 2021). In this case, when profit is the bottom line, it contributes to inhuman situations for prisoners. Article 29 of the US Constitution mainly explains that it is just the state with the power to punish criminals (Appleman, 2020). Therefore, allowing private companies to house, impose punishment, and profit from incarceration is incorrect.
Private Versus Federally Managed Prison Institutions
Despite the support of corrections process privatization on the grounds of cost-saving assertions, no evidence shows private prisons are more cost-effective than federally-run facilities. It makes sense, therefore, to assert that a private corporation cannot operate corrections more economically than the government does, having not to compromise on the rehabilitative program safety (Appleman, 2020).
Thus, private prison institutions offer neither benefits nor disadvantages compared to those managed publicly. It has been noted that state-run prisons have even slightly overtaken their private colleagues based on several complaints raised by prisoners and skills training. It leads to questioning the move for privatization of the corrections system in the US and other parts of the world today. A state-level cost examination survey report 2014 discovered that private prisons surpassed the cost of state-managed counterparts in Florida, Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Georgia (Byrne et al., 2019). In addition, private prisons tend to hold individuals longer than state-operated prisons.
Further, private institutions favor medium—and low-security prisons, which propose they cost more than state prisons. Private prisons are focused on reducing costs to improve their income margins; hence, they tend to provide fewer initiatives for prisoners than federally operated prisons (Burkhardt, 2019). State prisons provide many programs for prisoners to solve underlying mental health issues and learn proficiencies they may utilize after discharge, making them less likely to return to criminal activities.
Need Changes and Means of Employing Them
There is a need to reform sentencing approaches and other policies that lead to prison overcrowding. Longer prison terms are not better in transforming criminal behaviors than shorter terms. Therefore, policymakers should support measures that eradicate needlessly cruel sentences that benefit private prisons. Moreover, they need to change policies that keep prisoners imprisoned long after they are no longer at risk because of health or age (Klein & Lima, 2021). Moreover, prisons need to support options for prison as mental health and drug courts fight the underlying cause of crimes and decrease recidivism. The state has to spend more on public intervention, education, and treatment instead of persistent expenditure on harsh sanctions and incarceration that only benefit private institutions.
Additionally, money spent on changes must be considered investments in long-term resolutions. Public officers must ask whether the funds being used today will provide long-lasting benefits like enhancing public safety, guaranteeing safer prisons, depressing recidivism, and decreasing mass incarceration. In this investment, private prison institutions, which rely on keeping prisons full to keep their business, should not be considered.
The states need to reform rules that make it challenging for people to find a house and job and access fundamental services because of their convictions. This will aid in decreasing recidivism and allow former prisoners to return to society after discharge successfully. Prisons need to ensure the safety of prisoners and staff, which implies retaining and attracting highly experienced and competent prison workers by providing sufficient benefits and pay(Harris et al., 2019). Prisoners should get suitable mental and medical health promptly.
Conclusion
A significant part of corrections is to assist criminals with prisoner reintegration or re-entry into society through probation or parole. One may assert that planning and arranging a fair and healthy correctional system is a severe process and challenging. However, it is often crucial to remember that prisons must support those individuals who make blunders and not dehumanize or break them. Still, private institutions have turned them into a money-making bottom line. Hence, several changes need to be made to make it appealing so that these corrections may become a system of making criminals better.
References
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Birch, P., & Sicard, L. A. (2021). Prisons and Community Correction: Critical Issues and Emerging Controversies. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
Burkhardt, B. C. (2019). The politics of correctional privatization in the United States. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(2), 401–418. Web.
Byrne, J., Kras, K. R., & Marmolejo, L. M. (2019). International perspectives on the privatization of corrections. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(2), 477–503. Web.
Fuller, J. R. (2020). Introduction to criminology: A brief edition. Oxford University Press.
Gunderson, A. (2020). Why Do States Privatize their Prisons? The Unintended Consequences of Inmate Litigation. Perspectives on Politics, 20(1), 1–18. Web.
Harris, A., Smith, T., & Obara, E. (2019). Justice “cost points”. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(2), 343–359. Web.
Klein, D. E., & Lima, J. M. (2021). The Prison Industrial Complex as a Commercial Determinant of Health. American Journal of Public Health, 111(10), 1750–1752. Web.
Sparks, R., & Gacek, J. (2019). Persistent puzzles. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(2), 379–399. Web.