The middle ground of Punishment and Rehabilitation

Introduction

Punishment is the natural discourse taken by the authorities in order to deal with crime. Punishment is handed out to criminals in order to teach them a lesson through which they could reform themselves, and is primarily aimed at preventing them from indulging in nefarious activities in the future. The main objective of punishment is to make recompense, restrain, rehabilitate and undermine (usually through incarceration-in order to cut off the wrongdoer's access to potential victims). However, out of all these objectives, only recompense is part of the definition of punishment, while the other objectives are not guaranteed outcomes. Therefore, it is very important to know which of the justifications for punishment is most appropriate, and helps the criminals realize the perils of crime and makes them see the error of their ways. It is pertinent to note that while incarceration could prove to be beneficial in some cases, rehabilitation tends to work in most cases mainly because it is generally a process whereby an individual learns to reform him/herself through a comprehensive program, aimed at integrating the individual as an acceptable member of society.

Description and Analysis

Steven Patrick et al. identified that perceptions of the inmates of medium security prison are different from one another. It is identified that their perceptions regarding punishment and rehabilitation highly depend on the environment of the prison. It is common knowledge that many criminals deserve to be put behind bars (for varying periods of time, depending on the nature of their crime) as a result of the crimes that they commit, in order to ensure public safety (Patrick et al. 47). Society cannot afford to have criminals on the loose, who could pose serious risk to the public. Therefore, it is, at times important to imprison criminals, which serves as a means to protect the life, property and honor of the general public, by separating the offender from potential victims. Moreover, without prisons, society would be at the behest of dangerous criminals who would leave no stone unturned to create a situation of anarchy and lawlessness. However, empirical data available to us is mixed on whether imprisonment prevents crime. According to some researchers, prison capacity is inversely proportional to crime, in that increasing prison capacity decreases crime rate.

Eric Lambert et al. argue that organizational commitment is the most important element of effective organizations. Correctional staff of the prison should have organizational commitment in order to support and understand the punishment and rehabilitation of the prison. It was found that support for rehabilitation was associated with higher levels of organizational commitment while support for punishment was related with lower levels of organizational commitment (Lambert et al. 85).

Adam Kolber argues that there are two types of prisoners, sensitive and insensitive. If the severity of crime is similar of both, they will be getting the same kind of punishment. However, the perception of them regarding the punishment or rehabilitation would be different according to their level of sensitivity (Kolber, ...