Correctional Reform in the United States - Assignment Example

? Running Head: Correctional Reform in the United s First The concept of correctionalfacilities reform was started in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1787 when a group of Christian men formed the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons or as, it was later to be called, the Pennsylvania Prison Society, whose aims were to improve the conditions under which prisoners were incarcerated at the Walnut Prison in Philadelphia. The group was formed after they had seen the conditions at the prison deteriorate to such a degree that there was a massive public outcry. Since then correctional facilities reform has been an on-going process, with challenges and successes that this process has endured over a long time. Introduction The prison reforms carried out by the Pennsylvania Prison Society were in many ways way ahead of their time and form the foundation of a lot of modern correctional facility design, function and purpose. The first prison built as a result of the reforms initiated by this society resulted in the first facilities with individual cells for prisoners including a flush toilet in each one (even before there was a flush toilet in the White House) and the first use of the modern shower. The prison was seen not as a place of punishment but more as a place for those found guilty to perform a kind of penance for their crimes, hence the name “Penitentiary” was coined to represent a prison. These reforms did not happen by accident but were as a result of sustained pressure from right thinking members of society and became the basis of today’s correctional systems (Lynch, 2011). 1. The main group that was associated with this change was the Pennsylvania Prison Society, whose members came from different Christian faith that were resident in Philadelphia. The group included professionals, clergymen, merchants and other leaders in the society. They were mainlyQuakers by religion and their interest in prisons was in a large way influenced by the fact that they had endured religious persecution that frequently included imprisonment thus they had already formed an interest in prison conditions and the treatment meted out to prisoners in these establishments. 2. The reforms were desired because of the public outcry over the treatment of prisoners. In the 1700s, prison services were established with three major objectives –reforming the prisoners so they came back to being useful and viable members of society once again, prevention of further crimes by showing to all and sundry and especially the lawbreakers that crime did not pay and thirdly to protect the public and other members of society from criminals and other such offenders. However, the resources to adequately house the prisoners were never adequate. As a result, jailers who were not paid a regular salary before the reforms would extort money from the prisoners while at the same time selling them alcohol, cigarettes and making them pay for every service provided in the prisons. The prisoners ended up having to sell their clothing and pay huge bribes during their stay in the prison. Prisoners were supposed to serve hard labor along the streets of Philadelphia especially while awaiting their sentencing and the sight of them chained together, many of them nearly naked; walking the streets of the city caused a great public outcry. There were also reports of prostitution taking place in the prisons as well, under the watchful eyes of bribe-taking jailers. That, coupled with the widespread sale and consumption of alcohol in the jails resulted in a lot of violence and fights that led to injury, death and a generally low quality of life for the inmates in the city’s jails. These are the reasons that caused the need for reform (Lynch, 2011). 3. The reforms that were initiated were largely successful. There was improvement in especially the public perception and the public attitude towards prisoners, who were seen as members of society who may have taken a wrong turn in life and who, as long as they were remorseful and willing to undergo the legal sentences that were imposed on them should be treated in a way that made it possible for them to rejoin society at the end of their sentences. By initiating prison visits the Society inculcated a sense of responsibility on society while at the same time providing an incentive for the prison warders and those who ran the prisons to clean up their act and realize that they could not get away with providing prison correctional services that were wanting. The reforms were also successful in ensuring that the state and government authorities allocated enough money for the development of prison facilities and that the costs that this would incur were realized from the outset and the funding levels adequate for the proper implementation of correction facilities reforms were availed. The Society was also successful in encouraging the research into the kinds of prison facility designs that would be most effective in ensuring that the prisons were able to meet their mandate of reforming prisoners as well as providing them with exercise facilities, reducing the violence and overcrowding as well as providing vocational training and education facilities. The reforms that were initiated in Philadelphia also resulted in reforms in other parts of the country as well as other parts of the world and they have also ensured that correctional facility reforms remain front and center of all development in the country and that they continued to receive the requisite priority and importance (Greenleaf, 2011). 4. One of the influences of the system has been in the classification and separation of inmates by gender. Before the Pennsylvania reforms, men, women and even juveniles were all kept in one big, insanitary unit. This lack of classification resulted in a lot of violence, abuse and sexual mistreatment of inmates. It also resulted in the bad influencing of juvenile inmates by their older more hardened and experienced prisoners. Separate correctional facilities have therefore been created for men, women and juveniles. Within the prisons there has also been classification of the inmates by the types and severity of their crimes. This too goes a long way in ensuring that the hardened criminals guilty of violent and other such crimes are kept away from petty offenders and ensures that those relatively new to the correctional system are therefore not negatively influenced by the more experienced prison veterans. Prisons were also classified by being maximum or minimum security depending on the kinds of prisoners that they are meant to house. This also ensured that petty offenders are in lower security facilities that would be easier to manage while the more “hardcore” inmates were imprisoned. Another influence that the system has had on the correctional facilities today includes the development of solitary confinement for the prisoners that require it, those who are of a violent nature or those who break prison regulations. Those in solitary confinement are kept away from the rest of the prison population not only for the safety of others but also to ensure that they are observed and supervised more closely by prison authorities. The other influence has been in the design of prison facilities. The prison designs that were inspired by the Pennsylvania Prison Society have been adopted for use not only in the rest of the United States but also by other prisons in Europe and other parts of the world. One of the other improvements in the sentencing and correctional facilities that has continued to this day has been the continued use of alternative methods of punishment and the use of non-custodial or probation sentences to ease the overcrowding in prisons (Abadinsky, 2012). 5. Some of the influences of the Pennsylvania Prison Society influences on correctional facilities have however changed. The idea of having every prisoner in individual was a revolutionary and groundbreaking one, originally based on the idea that the prison was meant to be a place of penance a place where the inmate would stay in solitude and silence and think about what it was that had brought them a theme and in this way start on the journey to remorse and reformation. The Society wanted each prisoner kept away from the others and to ensure that no communication took place between the prisoners. However this has changed due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the idea of keeping each prisoner by himself and having no contact with any others was found to have deleterious effects especially on the mental well-being of the inmates (Woodham, 2008). Newer research found that the inmates would benefit from some regulated interaction with others and therefore it would be better for the cells to be shared rather than individual units. Also the practicality of housing each prisoner in a single unit with the increasing prison population was too expensive to implement in all prisons. Conclusion All in all, the Pennsylvania Prison Society – which is still in existence today and is actually frequently called the oldest non-profit organization in the world – proved that it is important to care for prisoners and that it was all in a societies’ benefit to have them being treated in a humane and compassionate manner. It therefore sets the tone for ensuring that societies and governments not only set aside adequate funding for the establishment and maintenance of correctional facilities and their continual improvement but also for research into ways of improving them. There are still a lot of reforms that need to be made in the country that has more inmates that any other in the world (Human Rights Watch, 2012). References Abadinsky, H. (2012). Probation and Parole: Theory and Practice (11th .Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Greenleaf, S. (2011). Prison Reform in the Pennsylvania Legislature. University of Pennsylvania Law Review PENNumbra, 160, 179-193. Retrieved June 15, 2013, from http://www.pennumbra.com/essays/12-2011/Greenleaf.pdf Human Rights Watch. (2012). In United States Country Summary. Retrieved June 15, 2013, from http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/unitedstates_2012.pdf Lynch, J. (2011). Cruel and Unusual Prisons and Prison Reform. Colonial Williamsburg Journal. Retrieved June 15, 2013, from http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer11/prison.cfm Woodham, C. (2008, October 1). In Eastern State Penitentiary: A Prison With a Past. Retrieved June 15, 2013, from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/eastern-state-penitentiary.html Read More