Behavior and Treatment of Violent Offenders For and against

Rehabilitation and Repeat Offenders

Law enforcement and corrections officers have long considered the question of rehabilitation versus punishment as the most efficient and beneficial way to deal with criminals . From this has arisen the debate of what to do with repeat offenders . Repeat offenders who are not mentally challenged or adolescent present a problem for the criminal justice system . While a person who is arrested the first time for a crime may simply have made a mistake and learned from it , a person who repeatedly commits the same crime seems to be

less likely to be rehabilitated . Thus , the debate rages about whether or not rehabilitation is effective for repeat criminals

Even though it may not be effective , the pressures to rehabilitate prisoners and return them to the general population are numerous First , prisons are hugely overcrowded . Every state is experiencing this problem , and some systems arehaving to exit prisoners early and move women or juveniles into the prisons with men (Scobell , 1993

Next , people want to believe in the general good of human beings and the effectiveness of new programs to achieve this . Of course , burdens also stand in the way . Many prisoners are not high school graduates and with a felony record , they are not generally hirable in society . As a result , they are not able to make ends meet and return to crime . Others feel that some criminals , particularly sexual criminals , such as child molesters and rapists , are psychologically more difficult to rehabilitate . First , prisons are horribly overcrowded so many people are eager to believe that rehabilitation can work because then many repeat offenders can be returned to society . A task force at the Jacksonville Correctional center studied the rate of recidivism and found that reducing the rate by just 5 percent would free up 500 spots and save the system one and a half million dollars (Scobell , 1993 This seems like a very small number to achieve , and the result would ease much of the burden of overcrowding and lack of resources in the majority of prison systems

As a result , many corrections officers such as Howard Peters , Illinois State Corrections Administrator , believes that people in prison should be trained to become a law-abiding citizen to reduce their likelihood of returning to prison . Since one /fifth of repeat offenders are in prison for drug-related crimes , substance abuse programs are particularly important . In addition , inmates you return to prison have often failed to find work

Peters hopes that funding programs in prisons to help people get education and training for jobs . He says

The extent to which we can take people who are illiterate and teach them to be literate , at least above the sixth or eighth grade level increases their chances of being law-abiding . If we can take an unskilled person and give him or her a trade or at the very least an introduction to a trade , it increases their chances that they can get a job and be law-abiding . Otherwise , the chances are they...