Rehabilitation and Punishment of Criminals
Channel: Help Open
Date: 2022-08-28

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Do we have a moral obligation to rehabilitate or punish criminals?
The US prison population has been growing since the 1970s and is now the highest per capita rate in the world (Cullen, 2018). More than two-thirds of prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release, with more than half of them in their first year after release (Northwestern University, 2022). Legislators and psychologists are racing to find a solution to unsustainable prison population growth as living conditions worsen. Punishment has been the traditional approach to prison management, but some European prisons have been successful with a focus on rehabilitation instead.
This video will present both approaches to the issue of prisoner treatment backed up by research as well as my opinion on the subject and what I believe to be the most effective and moral solution.
Punishment
Natural Law would determine that the right way to handle a criminal offense is for the offender to pay back what they have cost society. This is intended to prevent society from leaning into lawlessness by giving severe consequences to illegal behavior. Punishment maintains respect for the law, defends social norms, and protects people from violent crimes.
Legal punishment follows a set of rules so that it is a justified penalty for the crime. Criminal laws must therefore have a punishment for breaking them or they lose their ability to maintain good order. The threat of harm is justified by two ends: deterrence and retribution. Deterrence means that the punishment prevents crimes from being committed in the future. Retribution means that criminals pay for the crimes they have committed.
The consequentialist reasoning for punishment is that crime is prevented through deterrence. While it may have negative outcomes for criminals, it has a positive outcome for society by reducing the likelihood of crimes as a whole. As stated before, natural law maintains that a criminal should pay for their crimes to restore the damage they have done to society. The concern in this case is on what is right and not what reduces crime, because the criminals deserve their punishment.
Rehabilitation
A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research compared incarceration in Norway with that of the United States. Prisoners in Norway were considered to be broadly similar the those in the US, with the prison systems being the major difference between the two. Norway and other European countries have shorter sentences and focus on rehabilitation while the United States emphasizes punishment and long sentences for crimes. This graph shows the disparity in incarceration rates between the two countries from 1980 to 2014.
Recidivism is significantly reduced when prisoners are allowed to gain further education during their prison time, and they are more likely to find gainful employment after their sentence. The Northwestern Prison Education Program found a correlation between degrees earned in prisoners and their recidivism, where a higher degree earned resulted in smaller chances the individual would commit a crime in the future (Northwestern University, 2022). Educated prisoners have more attractive resumes to employers and have a smoother reentry to society since they can find gainful employment more quickly than if they didn’t have an opportunity to better themselves.
My Opinion on the Prison System
Incarceration creates an underclass with limited socioeconomic mobility. Convicted felons have less access to education and employment (Joiner, 2015). Our approach to justice should focus on rehabilitation to stop the cycle of criminal behavior before it becomes a greater problem. Inmates are people with protected rights and a future ahead of them, so it’s up to prisons to ensure that they have a chance to reform and succeed upon reentry to society.
Individuals with serious mental illnesses are jailed at a rate from fifteen to twenty-five percent, up to five times higher than the general population (Effective Health Care Program, 2012). Prisons have a moral obligation to treat these inmates and provide an environment where they can improve their health. While this practice may seem like a poor use of funding, it serves the utilitarian goal of maintaining order in society by producing well-adjusted and productive members of society after their time served in prison.