Benefits of Keeping Offenders out of Prison Environment
The U.S population currently is about 5 % of the world’s population but holds 25 % of the world’s prison population. This means that the U.S has four times more prisoners incarcerated today than it was in the 1980s due to the War on Drugs. According to the National Institute of Justice, over 75 percent in the U.S are re-incarcerated just within their five years after being released. The main reason why this is happening is that most U.S prisons punished offenders instead of rehabilitating them. Today, only 27 percent of the state prison offer college courses and merely a quarter of the state prisons provide alcohol and drug dependency, awareness and counselling programs. This paper examines why the privileges of keeping offenders out of prison environment outweighs the anticipated risks to the community.
There are several advantages of keeping offenders out of the prison that out weights the anticipated risks to the communities they live in. This includes reducing the number of ex-offenders who have health and psychological problems. Correction facilities have always been criticized for the role they play in the life of offenders once they leave in court. Offenders struggle with multiple health problems such as asthma, hypertension, diabetes and heart diseases once they arrive at the correction facilities (Nitish et al., 2017). Most offenders experience difficulties while trying to adjust to their new way of life while in prison. In the end, the community is at the receiving end of offenders after competing serving their sentences. After arriving from prison, most ex-offenders cannot afford their medical bills; this calls the community to intervene and help to fund medical costs and ensure the health status of the ex-offenders is stable. Diseases like HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C, STDs like gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis are common at the prison. When offenders are released, they come back with these diseases to their respective communities. With time, a community is infested with these diseases, something that could have somehow been minimized by having these offenders retained at their communities ( Frase, 2019) .
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According to Nitish et al. (2017), family breakups is also another advantage that the community can benefit from by having offenders rehabilitated within his community. According to studies, it has been discovered that most offenders are middle of low-income earners. This means that their families entirely depend on what these breadwinners earn daily. It, therefore, implies that incarcerating such individuals will affect the wellbeing of the families that these offenders are supporting. These affect the quality of the offender’s family both at school and at home and in most cases, women decide to call off their marriage hence increasing the number of single mothers ( Gerlinger & Turner, 2015) . This, in turn, affects the well-being of the community since it is forced to take care of those who remain behind, particularly those women who choose to stay and wait for their husbands to serve their sentences.
Offenders are likely to continue living a healthy life if he is retained at the community. Although several studies have captured individual reports on substance use among offenders, little or none reveals the dependency of substances in prison. It is true that incarcerated individuals struggle so much with substance reliance when they are back to their communities. A recent done across all the federal prisons indicated that only 15 percent had hard convictions at their time of arrest compared to 84 percent who were illegally using drugs at the facilities. At the same time, only 40 percent of these inmates receive drug treatment while in prison. Another research conducted at the community level by Gerlinger and Turner (2015) indicated that only 8 percent of offenders on probation use illegal drugs. What this means is that maintaining offenders at the community is much better than sending them to prison. Those offenders who go prison turn out to be thugs, drug dependents or even worse than how they were in their communities.
Basic survival is another challenge for ex-convicts once they are released from prison. Nitish et al. (2017) found out that offenders are a diverse population, but they portray similar traits: low education levels, low income, disrupted family life, employment experience and low levels of skills. Considering all these, offenders who are coming back to their respective communities are in dire need of the primary needs, i.e. clothing shelter and food, legal assistance, and personal support. This can be avoided if the same offenders could be given the necessary support within their communities while serving their sentences. Some of the activities offered at community levels can assist the offender in realizing their mistakes and making peace on time and also pay for the damages they may have caused while taking care of their families. According to a study done in Minnesota offenders who were on probation and took part in educational opportunities worked at their communities and indicated low recidivism rates
In conclusion, studies have revealed that keeping offenders out of prison helps them to reform hence reducing the chances of recidivism. Even though prison rehabilitation programs at the beginning cost a lot to actualize, studies have demonstrated that these projects decline the recidivism rate hence diminishing the jail populace. With fewer individuals in prison, correction centres need less cash to operate, thus requiring less money from taxpayers ( Frase, 2019) . Since instructive, professional, and drug rehabilitation programs minimize the probability that prisoners will re-outrage, they likewise permit ex-convicts to contribute positively to their communities; hence, boosting the economy. On the other hand, criminologists have indicated that rehabilitation classes held communities help to reduce recidivism.
References
Gerlinger, J., & Turner, S. F. (2015). California’s Public Safety Realignment: Correctional policy based on stakes rather than risk. Criminal Justice Policy Review , 26 (8), 805-827.
Frase, R. S. (2019). Suspended Sentences and Free-Standing Probation Orders in US Guidelines Systems: A Survey and Assessment. Law and Contemporary Problems , 82 (1), 51-79.
Nitish. J. Sameer. H, and Serguei. N. (2017). The Economic Impact of Prison Rehabilitation Programs . Retrieved from https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/2059-the-economic-impact-of-prison-rehabilitation/for-students/blog/news.php
