IS PRINCIPLED PRISON REFORM POSSIBLE?

• NCJ Number: 141949
• Author(s): D Golash
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 19 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Presented at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting at New Orleans, November 6, 1992.

Annotation

After identifying the constructive and destructive purposes of imprisonment, this paper proposes a strategy for humanitarian prison reforms.

Abstract

The primary goals of prisons may be divided into the constructive and the destructive. Constructive goals aim to gain some good either for the inmate or society. The primary constructive goals of prisons are crime prevention and inmate improvement. Destructive goals seek only to ensure that the inmate suffers. Those concerned with prison reform generally argue for constructive goals; those opposed argue that the achievement of these goals interferes with the achievement of the destructive goal of suffering. The case for principled prison reform rests on a number of necessary conditions; either incapacitation or rehabilitation can be implemented in such a way as to provide a net balance of social benefit over inmate suffering; the social distribution of desert is such that those incarcerated generally have at least as much of the good they deserve as do others, and the state has legitimate moral authority in the eyes of those punished; those imprisoned deserve to suffer; and the point at which social benefit exceeds prisoner suffering will be lower than the total amount of suffering deserved by each offender. Prisons are likely to continue regardless of their moral status, and improvements can be made in them. There are two approaches that can be taken. One approach is to accept that prisons pose an essentially destructive influence and that the best that can be done is to ameliorate its effects on the sufferers. Another alternative is to assume that the prison is justified and that efforts should be made to eliminate conditions that do not further the perceived purposes of imprisonment. Among the reforms desirable under this strategy would be the elimination of conditions that lead to arbitrary differentials in suffering. It is essential to the integrity of prison reform that its advocates prepare and defend their proposals on the basis of a defensible view of the ultimate purposes of prisons. 11 references