Can Prison Deter Crime?
“Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine”
- George Jung
The above quote was given by notorious international drug lord, and one of the most successful career criminal of modern times, George Jung, when discussing the flaws of the modern penal system. While subsequent to this original incarceration, George did also frequently state that he would never allow himself to be detained in prison again, it is obvious that the very mechanism intent on deterring him from such deviance instead served as a stepping stone in the advancement of his criminal career (Porter, 1993). This double edged effect of the detainment of criminals, identified above, brings into question the effectiveness of the most widely recognised method of dealing with criminal activity of modern times.
The physical confinement of deviants in society can be traced back to the writings of Plato discussing prisons in ancient Athens. Likewise, archaeologists and historians have combined to describe the ‘Great Prison’ of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (Morris & Rothman, 1998). The modern model of the prison that we would know today, with prison acting as a mechanism at the disposal of the court to a significant extent, is actually relatively young with its origins traced back a mere 300 hundred years to Western Europe and the United States (Coyle, 2005). In the 18th century, the Quakers developed this idea of transforming the prison into a sanctuary for reformation, whereby a criminal would be transformed through isolation, forced labour and religious instruction (Kontos, 2010). Though the methods and motivations of this incarceration have changed over time, the sheer longevity of employing physical detention as a response to behaviour deemed unacceptable by greater society, pays testament to its undeniable rational.
Despite general acceptance of this method across the centuries, questions of its effectiveness as a
- George Jung
The above quote was given by notorious international drug lord, and one of the most successful career criminal of modern times, George Jung, when discussing the flaws of the modern penal system. While subsequent to this original incarceration, George did also frequently state that he would never allow himself to be detained in prison again, it is obvious that the very mechanism intent on deterring him from such deviance instead served as a stepping stone in the advancement of his criminal career (Porter, 1993). This double edged effect of the detainment of criminals, identified above, brings into question the effectiveness of the most widely recognised method of dealing with criminal activity of modern times.
The physical confinement of deviants in society can be traced back to the writings of Plato discussing prisons in ancient Athens. Likewise, archaeologists and historians have combined to describe the ‘Great Prison’ of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (Morris & Rothman, 1998). The modern model of the prison that we would know today, with prison acting as a mechanism at the disposal of the court to a significant extent, is actually relatively young with its origins traced back a mere 300 hundred years to Western Europe and the United States (Coyle, 2005). In the 18th century, the Quakers developed this idea of transforming the prison into a sanctuary for reformation, whereby a criminal would be transformed through isolation, forced labour and religious instruction (Kontos, 2010). Though the methods and motivations of this incarceration have changed over time, the sheer longevity of employing physical detention as a response to behaviour deemed unacceptable by greater society, pays testament to its undeniable rational.
Despite general acceptance of this method across the centuries, questions of its effectiveness as a
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