Goals Of Corrections
In my opinion, I view the aspect of incapacitation as one important goal of corrections. This is because the best way to prevent an offender from committing a crime is to eliminate them from the society. Such elimination cuts off contacts between the offender and opportunities to for crime. This is done by physically restraining the offender from the society a move that leaves the society safe and secure. When the offender is under such restraint, it become possible for them to concentrate on how they can change for the better. This also creates room to accept training to become self reliant even after they are released (Maahs and Vito, 2011).
Incapacitation is highly effective especially when it comes to execution and solitary confinement. Other methods of incapacitation include imprisonment, maiming and exile. In all this ways, an offender, a suspect or a person accused of a crime is first removed from the society or remains under the critical observation by the law a move that may cause them to stop their offensive nature for fear of getting in the wrong hands of the law.
To qualities that characterize the goals of incapacitation are heterogeneity and persistence. This can be evidenced in that offenders in any given year are likely to be the same persons in the next year and so on. This means that the majority of the offenders belong to a distinct population which then results to their distinction from the law abiding majority (Maahs and Vito, 2011). For such a subpopulation, involvement in crime is driven by observable elements like age, race, sex, population density and socioeconomic status as well as population density.
With such observations on marked and predictable interpersonal differences in criminal involvement means that by incapacitating the high rate offenders will result to the curbing of more crimes than the incapacitation of other offenders. This also means that it is possible and easy to identify the high rate offenders provided one has the right information concerning their past behavior and other traits.
Some of the technical issues associated with incapacitation include predicting the effects on crime rates of increasing or reducing number of criminals and improving the accuracy of the identification of high rate crime offenders. Incapacitation also facilitates the evaluation of any policies offering alternative sentencing through the execution of the polity that will most reduce crime on the basis of the current capacities of prisons. In the case of alternative prison capacity allocation or selective incapacitation, the more selective it is, the more effectively high rate offenders can be identified.
Another goal of corrections is rehabilitation (Maahs and Vito, 2011). After a criminal has been eliminated from the society where he or she is exposed to opportunities to commit further crime, the next goal is rehabilitation. With rehabilitation criminal will be enabled to the chance to restore useful life through education or provision of therapy.
Some offenders are willing and ready to change their lives. This means that such offenders when subjected to the right education or therapy will manage to get back to the right track of being useful and productive persons in the society. This means that although the offender was taken to the correctional institution due to commitment of crime, they will get back to the society as changed persons who pose no risk to the society. In this case crime is eliminated. Additionally, rehabilitation involves personal willingness and efforts in order to pull through. This means that for one to accept rehabilitation, they are willing to leave their offensive ways.
References
Maahs, J., and Vito G., (2011). Criminology: theory, research and policy. Jones and Bartlett publishers. USA.
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