Rehabilitation Model To Incarceration

To begin, we must first take a look at past forms of correction and see how we went from a rehabilitation model to a punitive model. In the 1930s, rehabilitation was the main objective for incarceration. This was based on the medical model, which “assumed that criminal behavior was caused by social, psychological, or biological deficiencies that required treatment“(Clear, 2015, p.21). In time, this idea of rehabilitation made prisons seem more like hospitals and focused on this healing and treatment of the inmates rather than punishing them. Treatments programs were still limited throughout the nation, but after World War 2 the programs increased greatly.