Correctional System and the Rehabilitating Offenders

The correctional system has a way of punishing offenders in this country unlike in different countries where you might get a harsher punishment for a crime that might seem more, petty and a lesser punishment for a crime that one would consider more of a harsher crime. In our system however not only are you innocent until proven guilty but you are also allowed to have a trial that can prove otherwise. The system might not always work out how we want it to, or expect it to but it is definitely a fair way of going about it. Offenders in this country get punished on the basis of how horrible the prosecutors think that your crime was and they are the ones that for the most part dictate the form of punishment you will receive. Now in this process the family may also have a say that is considered in all of this, then a jury listens to a trial and decide for themselves the extremity of the crime and what the punishment should be. There are also different levels of correctional facilities that you can wind up in you have the local, state, federal levels. The local level is for more of your petty crimes such as DUI, shop lifting, etc. The state level is for felony level offenders and the federal level is for big time and repeat offenders for crimes like bank robbery and arson. In some cases I personally think that some of the punishments could be a little harsher, it seems like a lot of these offenders get off a little easier than they should. There are definitely times though where someone does get screwed and they get a harsh punishment for something that should’ve been a case of self defense or some other form of defense. For the most part I think that if you believe in our system that it actually really can work to your benefit. If you are in the right than the majority of the time it will prove that. If you are in the wrong than it will eventually prove that as well. Our corrections system tries to rehabilitate offenders by several different means you have imprisonment which most of the serious crimes or repeat offenders get this. The length of imprisonment is decided by a judge and the length of the sentence is decided by the nature of the crime. There is also supervised probation. Which only about twenty-five percent of offenders are sentenced to some form of probation. This punishment means that you are under specific rules by a judge to be under direct supervision while maintain a somewhat normal lifestyle. The offender is also assigned to a probation officer where they required to meet with, to make sure that they are maintaining the standards set forth by the judge. Any violation of the rules and guidelines may send the offender back to jail without a second chance of probation. The next form of rehabilitation is house arrest, which allows you to live in your own house without going to prison but it enables the police to ensure that you are in your house because they administer an electronic bracelet that you must wear around your ankle until the completion of you r sentence. With the electronic bracelet you are only able to go a certain distance away from the box that they put inside your house which links to the police system. Parole, which is the smallest of the rehabilitation system and is very similar to probation where if you don’t follow the exact guidelines set forth by the judge and the court system then you are going to end up back in jail. One of the best ways that we can help offenders rehabilitate is by severe counseling. If we can send these offenders through extreme physciatric counseling and get them to let someone know why they are the way they are I think that could make a huge difference. Another way of helping offenders to rehabilitate is by letting them further their education, a lot of these offenders probably don’t have a great education at all and if we let them continue with higher learning then maybe it well give them a better sense of belonging to society or a sense of right and wrong. From there they might be able to help in programs that talk to other people such as youth or other offenders and help them to straighten their lives out. Although both punishment and rehabilitation can be effective in reducing crime, I think that punishment is the more effective route in reducing crime, and the reason I say this is because rehabilitating isn’t always going to work with certain offenders and then you have just wasted even more money by not only housing them but also treating them. I am a firm believer that if we had harsher punishments for things in this country than we would have less offenders. If we started handing out the death penalty a little more, and when we did if we didn’t let offenders sit in a cell for ten years before they got executed then I think more people would see that we were making an example out of these offenders and they would be more likely to do it. I also think that if we brought back some of the punishments they used in the older days, that they say are cruel and unusual that we wouldn’t have as big of a problem. I think that if we stoned people, or cut off a limb when they commit a crime of greater statute than some of these people would wake up and see that this is not a form of punishment that they would like. If we keep giving offenders three meals a day and we keep giving them a place to sleep they are not going to care and they are not going to stop committing crimes. If we go back to the days of the chain gang and put offenders on the side of the road to clean up trash. What I have been saying all along is that we need to send them through a certain training course and then send them overseas to fight for our country. Obviously what they want is to fight and hurt people so let them do it where it needs to be done and that is on the battlefield. If we did that I think that there is a lot of these hardened criminals that would curl up in the fetal position and cry for their moms.