Sociology of corrections
Typically, there are four justifications for punishment that are still used today in the United States: Retribution, deterrence, incapication, and rehabilitation. There are many ways of reaching these justifications besides prison today, which are made to help the current problems in the criminal justice system. There are many different views about the effectiveness of these justifications, and with all of the problems in the criminal justice system many questions are left unanswered today, such as......How well do the realities of the correctional enterprise concur with these justifications of punishment ? Reality in this aspect generally means the rate of recidivism for a given offender. According to Marquart and Sorensen, "It may be possible to manipulate certain gross features of the existing, conceptional prison system- such as length of sentence and degree of security- in order to affect these recidivism rates. " (Correctional Contexts, Roxbury Publishing company, 1997, pg. 299 ) The recidivism rates for any given offender depend upon a lot of variables, one of which being, time of sentence. One harsh reality of the correctional enterprise is that the majority of the correctional institutions in the United
The current problems in corrections completely intensify the burden of decision making when it comes to the criminal process. This is one of the main reasons that we have so many new approaches for punishment rather then using incarceration. "Probation, restitution and fines, community service, substance abuse treatment, day reporting, house arrest and electronic monitoring, halfway house, and boot camp" ( American Corrections, West/Wadsworth, 2000, pg. 6 2-63 ) all of theseforms of punishment are available to help the courts decide something else to do with offenders rather then imprisonment. "Currently there are 4 million American's under some kind of correctional authority, and 1.8 million are incarcerated" ( Class discussion, September 7 ) With the serious problem of correctional institutions being over crowded, it doesn't help the institution itself, as well as not helping the inmate. This is not including the amount of money that it costs just to keep one person incarcerated for a period of time. With all of this in mind, come all of these new punishments that help relieve some of the burden of decision making on the correctional world. In my opinion, imprisonment is absolutely philosophically justified. When a given individual breaks the laws mandated by society, he/she needs to be punished. I personally believe in the middle eastern philosophy of "an eye for an ey
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 937
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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