The United States Of America,
the country that incarcerates half of the prison population in the world, and where the crime is not declining. What is really going on? Is this a sign of experimenting with bad policies or is this because the crime is so high here that "nothing works"in this country, as some of criminologists have stated.
We as a community are willing to pay so much taxes for building and maintaining prisons and its personnel, but when it comes to rehabilitation programs we kind of step back and feel like that's not out responsibility. I think these ideas come from a basic rule that we as humans sometimes like to deal with the "momenta" problems without thinking about the future. All we want is: "lock them up and through away the key", get them out the society and therefore if they are locked up they cant commit crimes, they cant hurt us,but then we forget that "they all come back" and when these individuals get back from prison, often they bring a huge baggage with them: drug habits, visual and in- visual scares, emotions etc. With all these problems,trying to fit in the society will be hard. On the other hand, the community doesn't make it any easy for them. Having a permanent criminal record, denying housing, work and other services we just set the path for them to get back to prion again.Then we can feel good ones again by saying "yup we knew it, nothing works". Stigma is another factor that makes it very painful for these individuals to reintegrate in the society. However we as community do not feel responsible for the crime they committed therefore why should we care, right? Well,i think the story is not as simple as that.I am huge advocate of rehabilitation because it is cheaper, and more effective. By rehabilitating these individuals don't assume that we are cuddling them, OH we ARE still punishing them but what we are doing is that we are preventing another crime to happen because everyone that goes to prison eventually gets out of it, unless they are "life in Prison, or death row". Therefore we should have a better approach of what do we do with then when they come back?
