The criminal justice system main goal is identifying and catching people who break the law to punish them so that the society can be secured and protected. Many times, areas of corrections are over looked due to changes but the fact still remains that their priorities include rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence and incapacitation. I will focus on evaluating the past, present, and future trends of corrections and afterwards discusses the budgetary and managerial impact that future trends have on the criminal justice component (law enforcement, courts and corrections).
There are quite a number of trends that corrections have used in the past, and are currently using and will continue to use in the near future (Sheet, 2015). In the past, criminals were being subjected to cruel and dangerous punishment which included flogging, public humiliation and mutilation as there were no prisons and jails. In the recent days, correctional facilities are focusing on rehabilitating criminals. This has been achieved through community-based corrections to help the criminals to be functional in the society. It is also cost effective as compared to housing them or putting them in jail as they foot the bill. A community correction is effective as whoever does not follow the rules is sent back to prison or jail. A bill has been currently passed in California (AB 109) to reduce the number of inmates and to lower the rising cost of housing an inmate. “The state expects to reduce the prison inmate population by about 14000 in 2011-2012 and approximately 40000 upon full implementation in 2014-2015” which will in return lead to states savings of about $453 million and up to $ 1.5 billion in 2011-2012 and 2014-2015 respectively ( Stojkovic, Kalinich and Klofas 2014). Statistics has it that in three years time 63.7% of the inmates were returned back to prison and only 36.3% was successful which suggest that the solution is only short termed.
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The current challenges being faced by prisons are overpopulation and high management fee. Assembly bill 109 has tried to eliminate the overpopulation problem but it will not last long as there is this tendency of a prisoner to reoffend thus being taken back to prison (Sheet, 2015). The alternatives to jail or prison are also not recommended as they are all funded by the state.
In the future, the departments of corrections and rehabilitations should encourage programs that are funded by organizations that are into helping rehabilitating criminals or the victims should be made to pay for their services ( Stinchcomb, 2011 ). Another option is having a self-sufficient prison. It will make the inmates work for whatever they have in order to cut down costs of prisons. Using death penalties is also helpful as there is no severity of having it as one is going to be in jail or prison until he/she dies of natural causes. Our correctional system should not pay so much money for one to rot in jail instead they should pose enough threat to these criminals as most of them will never be functioning citizens and often admits that they deserve to be behind the bars as illustrated in Lock Up, MSNBC.
The overpopulated correctional system and realignment bill 109 has given the police more problems. This is because there are many criminals back on the streets thus the departments need to stretch themselves to budget for the re-offenders back to the system, a simple way of controlling the streets. In this situation, the criminals will again be put in the court systems which are overcrowded. It worsens the problem as there will be more cases which will results into bigger caseloads thus slow down the system that is already slow.
References
Sheet, F. (2015). Trends in US corrections. The Sentencing Project .
Siegel, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2013). Introduction to criminal justice . Nelson Education.
Stinchcomb, J. B. (2011). Corrections: Foundations for the future . Routledge.
Stojkovic, S., Kalinich, D., & Klofas, J. (2014). Criminal justice organizations: Administration and management . Cengage Learning.
