If we ever want our economy to recover and our citizens to prosper, we need to overhaul our correctional system immediately. The correctional system has three main goals: punish, protect the population and rehabilitate the offender. However, it is unclear how well the modern U.S. correctional system achieves these goals and whether the money invested in the correctional system might be better spent.
Perhaps the most obvious goals of the correctional system are to punish those who are found guilty of crimes. In theory, this is supposed to serve as prevention against one repeating criminal activities and as an example to others of why criminal activities should be avoided. Incarceration is the most common example of punishment in the correctional system, but the death penalty and lesser penalties such as probation are also designed to be punitive. However, the correctional system acts as being too lenient on those who commit crimes. They’re let into the prison/jail and are just free to live, something as far as harsh punishment needs to be put in action, or their mentality of jail being a “free ride” is going to remain the same. If there isn’t any other punishment being put into force, besides the fact that their sentenced to time in prison, the offender is basically getting over on the system. A basic day in the life of a prisoner is eat, sleep, working out, visits, community service, and communication with other inmates, and that’s not teaching them what they did was wrong at all. They need to be put in classes, as if someone gets a speeding charge they have to go to driving classes, not only because they committed a crime, Tantania Dixon but to understand what crime they have committed and why NOT to do it again, and the value of what can happen if it’s done again.
In addition to punishing a criminal, the correctional system is supposed to protect the rest of the society from