Criminal Justice Mini Paper

According to the American Psychological Association, rehabilitation of criminal inmates is what works and punishment does not. They suggest that in the days since “rehabilitation was a key part of our U.S. prison policy” to today, there has been an “explosive growth in the prison population, while having at most a modest effect on crime rates”(APA, 2003).

“Somewhere between 15 to 20 percent” of prisoners are mentally ill and prisons today are not set up to deal with the mentally ill. Therefore, after their initial sentence is over, with little to no rehabilitation, they are released to re-offend. Prisons today need to spend more time on rehab programs such as job training, psychotherapy, educational, substance abuse, etc. They need to look at an inmate’s mental health specifically and treat them accordingly if they fall under the category of mentally ill.

On the flip side, if a prisoner still has years on his sentence and no chance of a direct parole, but has clearly been rehabilitated there are probably a few factors that need to be looked at before considering an early release. One of these being the type and severity of their crime; for example, the Florida man serving a 20 year sentence for aggravated assault and child endangerment for firing a warning shot to ward off his daughters boyfriend with whom she was having a heated fight. He has no hope of parole, however his crime and the severity of it should qualify him for an early release as long as his past history is clean.

If a man stabbed and killed two people when he was 18 and got a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 or 20 years, I would expect that there would be no early release exceptions made for someone with a crime that severe.

References

Benson, E. (2003, July). Rehabilitate or punish? Retrieved from

http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab.aspx

The Parole Process: An Early Release from Prison. (n.d.). Retrieved from...