Abstract
Rehabilitation is the optimal goal of the criminal corrective behavioral system. The criminal justice system entails several distinct phases that range from arrest, prosecution, trial, and incarceration. Statistics in the Tri-state indicate that a considerable percentage of American prisoners relapse to vice within three years after release from the prisons. This issue should be addressed immediately to restore justice in society by ensuring that prisoners undergo rehabilitation when still incarcerated. Minors contribute a huge percentage of the overall number of criminals in the US. However, rehabilitation efforts for minority males in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia have been unsuccessful due to various factors in the prisons and correctional centers.
Introduction
The justice system is one of the very important elements in any country. Nations administer justice in different ways to ensure that social order is upheld and maintained. The criminal justice system has the aim of controlling the behavior of individuals within a given state by providing laws and regulations that should be observed. All citizens operate under the dictates of the law because all people are equal in the eyes of the law (Neubauer & Fradella, 2013). Therefore, to ensure that given codes of behavior are upheld, various institutions have been established for criminals to receive an equal measure of punishment depending on their offenses. However, most institutions dealing with criminal justice like prisons and juvenile detention centers have shifted their attention to rehabilitation as opposed to retribution. This paper explores the unsuccessful rehabilitation in the last decade for the minority males in the tri-state area, which includes New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.
An overview of current trends of rehabilitation in the tri-state
The rehabilitation concept hinges on the assumption that criminal behavior emanates from various factors that include an individual’s psychological development, genetic makeup, and the surrounding social environment. Due to the differences among individuals, discrepancies in behavior arise including the likelihood of breaking the law (Hayes & Prenzler, 2014). Even though the US has approximately five percent of the world population, it contributes to a huge percentage of prisoners who have been convicted for committing varying crimes in society. Some of the crimes that have been common in the tri-state include robbery, rape, aggravated assault, and violent crimes. Many justice systems have been incorporated in the tri-state with an aspiration to reduce future cases of criminal behavior mostly among the minority males. Despite the efforts made by the United States to initiate a significant transformation aided by meaningful corrective reforms of rehabilitation and sentencing, the rehabilitation for the minority males has been unsuccessful in the past decade (Hayes & Prenzler, 2014). When focusing on the influence of racial disparities in the rate of incarceration in the US, current trends indicate that African Americans comprise approximately one million out of the total two and a third million of the incarcerated population. When the African Americans are combined with Hispanics, they comprised over fifty percent of all prisoners in the US in the year 2008. This scenario was shocking because both the African Americans and the Hispanics comprise only a quarter of the American population (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2014). Further trends indicate that African Americans contribute about a quarter of the juvenile arrests made in the US. These trends indicate that the majority of the criminal behavior is due to the minority males who mostly originate from the Tri-state area. This realization indicates that the rehabilitation efforts have been unsuccessful in the control of criminal behavior amongst minority males in the past decade (Cole et al., 2014).
Reasons for unsuccessful rehabilitation for the minority males in the tri-state
Failure of modernized design of prison system
In the Tri-state, the prison systems do not work as observed by several criminal justice experts. Most prisons and juvenile centers propagate approaches that are punitive to the criminals. The majority of these ways to restore discipline are very coercive and violent. The prison environment in the tri-state area is an explicit representation of the aggressive harassment and torture conditions that prisoners are subjected to. Prisons and juvenile centers do not incorporate and encourage the social learning principles that are of the essence when undertaking the rehabilitation process. They often dismiss the employment of pro-social behavioral characteristics and values that are effective in bringing about the anticipated positive transformation (Douglas, 2014). Although punishment is effective in restoring behavior, it may not work in the long term. Therefore, social and psychologically informed means of handling criminal behavior are essential. Most prisons have failed to incorporate social science into their rehabilitation system, which has resulted in increased cases of crime among the minority males in the Tri-state area (Douglas, 2014).
The Bill of Rights emphasizes fairness and thus no one should be accused of any action that does not amount to crime at the time when the action happens. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights denies savage punishment like the one exhibited in most prisons and juvenile centers in tri-state areas. As more prisons adopt the depersonalized punishment system by encouraging inhumanity and harassment in the correctional facilities, it becomes difficult to undertake effective rehabilitation measures (Hayes & Prenzler, 2014). The main objective of any criminal corrective system is to ensure justice to all, and thus violent and immense torture that minority prisoners are subjected to through dreadful punishment does not match the provisions of the rehabilitation process hence their failure.
Misunderstanding the causes of the crimes
For the process of rehabilitation to become fruitful in the long term, the causes that perpetuate a certain criminal activity should be established and understood. This mandate lies with the institutions that have been set apart to undertake various corrective aspects to the offenders. When the causes are established, the rehabilitation process becomes effective, which leads to a positive change in the behavioral characteristic of the prisoners. Various causes of criminal behavior attract different rehabilitation policies thus restoring the offenders efficiently. In case an individual is convicted of rape charges due to being alcoholic, the best way to restore corrective behavior would be to address the drunkenness problem. Misunderstanding and misinterpreting the causes that evidence criminal behavior is an abuse of the rehabilitation process in the prisons. This assertion holds because the causal element must be established before embarking on providing solutions. Many children who are growing up in the absence of their fathers eventually become more susceptible to criminal behavior (Neubauer & Fradella, 2013).
Since most corrective centers invest less time in establishing the causes of the criminal behavior, the rehabilitation programs, which are incorporated eventually, do not succeed in addressing the real issues surrounding this problem. Therefore, this aspect results in the ever-increasing cases of criminal activities in the Tri-state. Moreover, adequate research on the establishment of given contemporary determinants of criminal behavior is lacking. Juvenile centers and prisons fail to understand the cognate and behavioral characteristics that initiate given crimes, and thus it becomes difficult to undertake rehabilitation because some causes are static while others keep changing with time (Douglas, 2014). Since historical determinants of criminal behavior should be considered when undertaking rehabilitation efforts, they should not be the only aspects. Most rehabilitation efforts in the Tri-state regions generalize the personal qualities of the offenders while assuming that their acts were precipitated by similar determinants and this perception is erroneous. Such assumptions amount to failure in establishing the factors that influence the choices and decisions of offenders, thus frustrating the entire rehabilitation cycle.
Inadequate education
Skills development encouraged by education among the prisoners is a key element that supports efficient rehabilitation efforts. Most individuals convicted of various crimes, especially the ones affiliated with robbery and violent offenses, are unemployed, or they lack income-generating skills. Most juvenile centers and prisons in the Tri-state have scaled down the efforts of teaching prisoners job skills that would result in the identification of business opportunities after serving the sentence term (Cole et al., 2014). The prisons and the juvenile centers have failed to increase their staff members at the same rate as the criminal population. These discrepancies have amounted to reduced capacity of the institution to offer the prerequisite knowledge to the prisoners. Most prisoners who are released without specific work skills, which can earn them future incomes to cater to their fundamental needs, are likely to relapse to criminal activities.
A clear reason for recidivism despite the educational skills given to the prisoners through the various classes is associated with the lack of diversity in the range of skills being offered. Juvenile centers and prisons in the Tri-state area do not have diverse skills to the prisoners (Neubauer & Fradella, 2013). Some just offer heating, ventilation, and air conditioning skills to all prisoners. This move ignores the view that not all prisoners might become interested in such ventures after they have been released. A wide variety of skills ought to be included in the education system in prisons. Various skills such as carpentry, masonry, culinary, and agricultural skills among others ought to be essential when implementing the rehabilitation process. However, due to the failure of prisons and juvenile centers to uphold tight supervision measures that encourage prisoners to work and build skills, the rehabilitation efforts in the Tri-state region have been violated. This aspect results in numerous cases of offenders relapsing into criminal behavior due to their inadequate capability to re-establish their lives upon release from prison (Douglas, 2014).
Inadequate funding
For the implementation of any given process to amount to success, adequate resources must be inputted. Money is set apart to enhance the prisoners’ capacity alongside ensuring competence and effectiveness in the rehabilitation process. However, due to the declining budgetary allocations that have been witnessed in the past decade, the public safety and criminal justice system have been sidelined and denied priority of funding by the national government. Therefore, following the reduced budget allocations, various juvenile centers as well as prisons have been forced to forego some of the rehabilitation classes aimed at instilling life skills into the prisoners. The budgetary allocation is not enough to cater to the operational costs that have been incurred by the inmates to correct their behavior. The rehabilitation process is thus faced with financial deficits because the government funding is not adequate to cater to all the outstanding expenses (Hayes & Prenzler, 2014). Furthermore, the departments of correction in most juvenile centers and prisons in the Tri-state do not invest the limited rehabilitation resources appropriately, thus leading to its failure in the past decade.
Increase in the prison population
The population of offenders convicted of different crimes has been on the rise in the juvenile centers and prisons in the Tri-state area. This aspect emanates from the relapse of criminals after they have been released from the corrective centers. A successful rehabilitation process is characterized by declining numbers of the offenders’ population (Neubauer & Fradella, 2013). The criminal system incorporated in the Tri-state to deal with the crime of minority males in the past decade has paid less attention to coping with violent behavior that is considerably riskier than other crimes like trivial drug offenses. Inflated prison population results in increased budgetary needs thus burdening the state. The prisoners must receive drug treatment programs alongside education, thus burdening the prison administration in the process of embarking on the proper implementation of rehabilitation programs.
Conclusion
The criminal justice system acts as a vessel to restore social order in any given society. Juvenile centers and prisons are some of the examples of institutions that have been established to restore justice by ensuring that various offenders of the law have been transformed comprehensively. Currently, the justice system in most nations is trying to shift its efforts to encouraging rehabilitation efforts as opposed to punishment, which is retributive. However, rehabilitation efforts in the tri-state area have been unsuccessful in the past decade. The reasons for the failure of the rehabilitation efforts are attributed to insufficient funding, the increasing population of prisoners, and inadequate education. Other contributing factors include failures in the current design of the prisons and the inability to understand the causes of the crimes.
References
Cole, G., Smith, C., & DeJong, C. (2014). The American system of criminal justice. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Douglas, T. (2014). Criminal Rehabilitation through Medical Intervention: Moral Liability and the Right to Bodily Integrity. The Journal of Ethics, 18(2), 101-122.
Hayes, H., & Prenzler, T. (2014). An Introduction to Crime and Criminology. New York, NY: Pearson.
Neubauer, D., & Fradella, H. (2013). America’s courts and the criminal justice system. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.