The United States is an achievement-oriented nation that expects its citizens to act purposefully and productively. To do otherwise is considered impulsive, irresponsible, and sometimes evidence that the person is no longer in control. The main concepts shaped the future of corrections are protecting function, social obedience and effective crime control. The criminal-justice system serves a real function in protecting people. If you are afraid or threatened, there is a place to call. Dangerous people should not be allowed to continue to hurt others who live in our communities, and while the system is not always effective in apprehending and incarcerating them, it does what it can. Success could only be realized by establishing a police state in which strict surveillance of the citizenry is maintained and swift sanctions are executed with little regard for individual rights. The American people would not tolerate this. Formal controls are too far removed from the meaningful aspects of everyday life to influence our behavior directly. The attitudes of peer groups, families, and perhaps even neighbors are more influential on behavior. Consequently, the system will never effectively control crime not through deterrence, or incapacitation, or rehabilitation. The future of corrections is to find the best way to control crime through public participation and social consciousness.
Crime control will implemented in a manner consistent with beliefs about criminality. The crime control strategy of the criminal justice system is correct in assuming that personal gain is the primary motivation for crime. This philosophy of crime control incorporates a relatively simple idea of cost-benefit. Offenders are assumed to be attracted to criminality by the benefits they may receive and are deterred from such activity by threats of criminal sanctions which pose potential costs that outweigh any benefits to be derived. If the gains fall short of the potential losses, it is assumed that people will refrain from the activity. Yet if the gains from crime exceed any potential losses, then crime makes sense. Rational choice is thus an important factor in criminality as well as in its control.
Assimilation, not coercion, is the important factor in obtaining obedience. We learn what behaviors are acceptable and why, and in the course of these experiences also come to recognize the mutual benefit of restraint. Compliance will become voluntary and automatic. Law-abiding behavior becomes similarly patterned by custom and habit. Compliance generally becomes second nature. The utility of coercion and socialization is seen in child-rearing. With very young children, coercion is the only effective control. If the child goes into the street, she is disciplined and told that if she does that again she will be punished again. Punishment is used to instill recognition of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. But parents realize that until the child recognizes the dangers and internalizes the rule of not entering the street, no threat, however great, will assure that the child will not reenter the street. Until then, surveillance and reeducation are necessary. Yet as the child grows older, coercion becomes less effective. Order in the household seems to be achieved only by voluntary compliance. Threats and punishments continue to be used, but they work only when the child agrees to their use. In extreme situations, it does not matter what is threatened or how severe the punishments are. Eventually every parent must forego coercion. Societies find themselves in much the same position as households with teenagers: without voluntary compliance order will not be attained. Threats of sanction tend to be effective only when they are generally accepted; otherwise, people simply seek ways to get around compliance, or they may openly defy prohibitions. Only a strict police state that maintains constant surveillance and rigid discipline can control a society prone to deviance.
References
Newburn, T. (2007). Criminology. Willan Publishing.