NCJ Number
78128
Date Published
1981
Length
182 pages
Annotation
Philosophies of imprisonment and ways to improve prison life are examined.
Abstract
In the foreseeable future, prisons will continue to be the symbols of justice and secure confinement for those who have committed heinous crimes and shown themselves to be extremely dangerous to the public. There is a widespread disillusionment with the effectiveness of prisons for changing criminal behavior and reducing crime. This has resulted from an exclusively utilitarian view of imprisonment, which is based in the assumption that criminals have no free will, but are subject to and responsive to their environment, which is the critical element in producing and changing human behavior. Based on this assumption, the prison has been labeled an ineffective environment for change, as utilitarians have pressed for community-based programs deemed more appropriate environments for change. Under this climate of utilitarian cynicism, the incentive for improving prison environments has waned while the population of prisons has increased. The remedy for the deterioration of life in prisons is to abandon the utilitarian penological approach in favor of a commitment to social justice for its own sake. Efforts to create a humane environment in prisons may not show a significant correlation with crime reduction, but they do manifest a society's sensitivity to human need and the humane treatment of all its citizens as important values in themselves. Based on this commitment to social justice in the prisons, the book's individual chapters focus on the handling of the dangerous juvenile offender, the control of gang violence in California prisons, prison architecture, the abolition of parole, and evaluation in corrections. Notes accompany each chapter, and an index is provided.