Rehabilitation vs. Retribution in Modern Prisons

Many scholars have argued that prisons are becoming more punitive and less focused on rehabilitation. However, it is important to note that the trajectories of individual prison systems can follow wildly different paths.

Criminal rehabilitation is a unique process that helps offenders change their lives without damaging their mental state or turning them against society. This approach also minimizes the risk of recidivism.

Retribution

Prisons are notorious for their violence, and abuse of incarcerated people is widespread. Prison officials routinely break laws protecting prisoners, including the right to life and liberty. Inmates can be stabbed, raped or murdered by other inmates, as well as be tortured, beaten, starved and deprived of sleep. A culture of corruption and impunity allows guards to get away with such violence because they are not held accountable.

Retributivists argue that prison is necessary to communicate censure to criminals. They also use the principle of lex talionis, which requires punishment that is proportional to the wrong committed.

Retributivists argue that a retributive system must avoid inflicting excessive suffering, especially on innocent people. They also take a consequentialist view of punishment, believing that it is intrinsically good if the guilty receives the punishment they deserve. However, Kolber points out that retributivists must justify their intention to inflict the subjective experience of hard treatment, and not just its consequences.

Punishment

Punishment aims to serve justice by making the offender pay for the crime they committed. However, critics argue that rehabilitation has a much wider objective and may be a better way to address the problem of crime. Rehabilitation focuses on reforming criminals and helps them become law-abiding citizens in the future.

Rehabilitation is designed with help from experts, including psychologists and criminologists, who understand that punishment alone cannot eradicate crimes. Therefore, they design rehabilitation programs that meet the needs of each offender.

Retributive justice is not about vengeance or retaliation, but about forming the basis of a fair sentencing system. It is also important to remember that it is the government’s duty to protect its citizens, whether through retribution or rehabilitation.

Education

The debate over the role of punishment versus rehabilitation as an effective penal approach to offenders is longstanding. Proponents of rehabilitation advance a number of affirmative arguments. They argue that rehabilitation, unlike retribution, allows offenders to work towards integration into society and can help them overcome psychological problems such as substance abuse or aggression.

They also argue that rehabilitation enables offenders to develop occupational skills, thus making them less likely to reoffend upon release from prison. They believe that rehabilitation is more humane than retribution, as it focuses on the offender’s suffering and not just on their guilt or remorse.

These arguments are reinforced by a growing body of evidence, including research such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and criminogene studies, which demonstrate that the pessimistic view of rehabilitation prevailing in prison policy is mistaken. Education in prison is not merely the simple adaptation of educational content to prison environments, but rather an attempt to address prisoners’ fundamental needs for meaning and self-development.

Rehabilitation

There is no consensus about what rehabilitation actually entails. Those who pay for it, those who provide it, and those who receive it all have different interpretations. Those who have the most influence, however, tend to be those who define it. This editorial aims to find an empirical definition of rehabilitation, using data from systematic reviews of programs that have been shown to be effective.

Until the 1970s, rehabilitation was an important part of penal policy. It included vocational training, education and psychotherapy. It also allowed prison officials to release or further detain offenders based on their assessment of whether the offender was making progress toward rehabilitation.

Scholars have attributed the decline of rehabilitation to a number of factors. One argument is that it reflects a general trend toward disbelief in the malleability of human nature, with criminals depicted as racialized super-predators who are unable to be reformed (Martinson 1974). Another is that it reflects growing distrust of welfarist policies by the public, with politicians becoming increasingly worried about appearing “soft on crime” and cutting correctional programming.