The main purpose of a prison sentence is to punish - Research Paper Example

The price of crime is a ‘time-out’ of public life, the cost of having acted against the interests of the people of a city, state or nation. Because the definition of punishment has become rolled into some sort of benefit to the future, it no longer serves its true purpose. There are good reasons that rehabilitation is included in the goals of the state in approaching the consequences of crime. However, prison is punishment, but as it has been confused with other elements of the justice system, the social ’identity’ of prison has become a poor infusion of too many ideas that are not being well managed.

The reason that this topic is being discussed in this essay is that other compensations should be in place for victims and should be used in order to rehabilitate, but because these concepts have been rolled into the prison system, none of the goals of incarceration are being fully reached and that is leaving the public vulnerable to future crimes. According to Brinkerhoff et al (2008), there are four reasons to punish: “retribution“, “prevention“, “deterrence“, and “reform” (p. 136). However, none of these concepts are part of the definition of punishment. . 124).

Both of these definitions, however, are centered on what they mean for the future. Punishment, according to the dictionary, is “the penalty for doing something wrong“. In confusing the purpose and definition of punishment with a product that benefits society or the future means that its purpose has become convoluted with multiple opinions and purposes that create long, drawn out sentences that do not serve the purposes of anyone in the process. According to DeLisi and Conis (2010), “to thirds of the prisoners released from prison will recidivate within three years of their release” (p. 236). This decreases after a five year prison term, but that is correlated to offenders aging out of their crime rather than because prison has had the effect of deterrence or rehabilitation.

There is no real evidence that prison has any effect on recidivism (Delisi and Conism, 2010, p. 236). Prisons are also a breeding ground for making offenders more disillusioned about society and for creating a focus on criminal life. In neglecting incarceration as a cost for a crime and imposing long sentences in the belief that it will lower crime rates, society has created breeding grounds for individuals who have little hope in having a positive contribution to society after time in prison.

In trying to create a identity for prison as a place to find rehabilitation, deter and prevent crime, as well as provide retribution, none of these goals are being met. There has been a concerted effort, through rolling all of these concepts together, to best serve society. According to Blakely (2005), “rehabilitation is concerned with the long-termed success of the inmate” (p. 10). Marx has suggested that bourgeois life has become consumed with the idea of cost