Prison Reform: The United States Prison System

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The United States prison system is an institution which has undergone dramatic changes in its history from being a short detention center between a criminal and their true punishment, to what was thought to be a place of repentance for wayward souls to be rehabilitated so they could reenter society without committing crimes again, to a place of overcrowded conditions, corruption, and prisoner abuse that existed solely for the sake of punishment. Since the prison system reached that point, there have been numerous attempted reforms of the system, and while they all ultimately failed at their goal of completely overhauling the system, they have all at least partly contributed to what we see in the United States prison system today. The main aspect …show more content…
When that system eventually failed the prison went through a period of overcrowding, which is still in effect today, corruption, and prisoner abuse. With the first attempted prison reform in the mid-nineteenth century came the ideas for what we today would consider a form of prisoner rehabilitation in prison, skills training, education, and therapy. This paper examines, most significantly, the evolution of the prison system from what we consider a jail today, to a system of incarcerating offenders for varying lengths of time based on the offense where rehabilitation through isolation and religious repentance is the goal. The focus on this time frame is due both to the transition being the first large scale effort at rehabilitating prisoners, no matter how flawed the method, and due to time constraints. While the goal of the rehabilitation of prisoners in the United States has changed throughout history, the methods of rehabilitation are what have significantly evolved over time due to changes in the American way of …show more content…
The prison system in place was never designed to contain that many prisoners so the system became highly inefficient. With this inefficiency came many activities such as corruption and prisoner abuse that were able to be hidden and continued on without repercussion. This was soon followed by attempts at reforming the system with policies of treating prisoners humanely and providing them with tools to help better themselves such as skill training, education, and therapy, more modern forms of rehabilitative measures. Though this attempt soon failed due to the rampant overpopulation which the reformer’s programs of rehabilitation simply could not keep up with. This pattern of overpopulation and prisoner abuse followed by failed attempts at prison reform continue to this day, though as evidenced by prison rehabilitative measures today, skill and job training, education, and therapy and counseling, the reforms over the years have made some impact on today’s attempts at prison
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