Prisons Cannot Rehabilitate (From America's Prisons: Opposing Viewpoints, P 38-44, 1991, Stacey L. Tipp, ed. - See NCJ-159858)

• NCJ Number: 159862
• Author(s): T Mathiesen
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: Greenhaven Press
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article argues that prisons not only fail to rehabilitate inmates, but actually contribute to increased criminal tendencies among them.

Abstract

The empirical data suggesting that prisons do not rehabilitate come from three sources, i.e., studies of treatment results, knowledge of the actual organization of most prisons in the U.S. and other countries, and sociological studies of the prison as an organization and of the prisoners' community. Overall, findings from these studies shows that not only does the goal of rehabilitation remain unrealized in prisons, the chances of rehabilitation are reduced, on a long-term basis, among inmates who have entered into a so-called rejection syndrome, in which they reject the rules of the society that has rejected them as members through the act of incarceration.