Prison reform is a significant issue for many Americans. The prison population is expanding at a phenomenal rate, often beyond the capacity of the existing system to accommodate the swelling ranks of the incarcerated. The focus for many is increasingly on rehabilitation as a means to reduce recidivism and consequently reduce the number of individuals who must be placed in prisons every year. In the early 1990s, the number of people jailed in the United States topped one million (Maxwell 34). By 2000, that number had doubled, and by 2003 more than 2.2 million people were living their lives in prisons (Sullivan 56; Coy 992). The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the role of the prison as rehabilitator is at all effective. Additionally, I will examine whether or not reforms are being made that increase the rehabilitative capacity of American prisons. In the end, it is my conclusion that the American prison system is not functionally capable of significant prisoner rehabilitation and that contemporary reform measures are increasingly blurring the Constitutional line that separates Church and State.

             At primary issue is the recognition that of the number of convicts released every year, 55% will commit another crime within a week of being released and almost 80% will be back in prison eventually (Maxwell 34). With such high rates of recidivism, many social critics and politicians argue that the American prison system should be proactive in rehabilitating prisoners while they are still a captive (no pun intended) audience. The concept that the prisons should rehabilitate prisoners has a relatively long history in the United States and can be traced back to the early 19thcentury. Before that, during the colonial period in the Americas, prisons were never constructed as permanent detention centers for offenders. Instead, prisons acted as holding tanks for individuals awaiting trial.