Rehabilitation Realism

If a hospital were to surround one sick person with more sick patients, we only expect them to end up worse. Though when we lock away a criminal with other criminals, many are surprised to see them later return to a life of crime. Over the years countless resources have been put into rehabilitation services for prisons, but the results are always disappointing. It’s easy to point at the individual, but it’s more productive to point at the process. The common factor in all of these failings is the prison environment itself. The need for a successful program could never be found in a prison and is actively opposed by the environment that does exist within one.

According to “A Systematic Review of Criminal Recidivism Rates Worldwide: Current Difficulties and Recommendations for Best Practice,” taken from Plos One journal, recidivism is “…a broad term that refers to relapse of criminal behavior.” To look at how successful prison rehabilitation is, it is useful to analyze the recidivism rates of different countries. The same review explains that the rate of recidivism can be up to 50% in some jurisdictions, with one 3-year sample of U.S prisoners hitting 66%. Even in the current century when rehabilitation is implemented in many of these countries, their overall failure is clear. 

Rehabilitation centers are places that offer a positive environment,  set on creating better futures through hope and determination. In almost the complete counter to this, prisons overall are a place of punishment that destroys life and make it bleaker. In the report “‘The prison don’t talk to you about getting out of prison’: On why prisons in England and Wales fail to rehabilitate prisoners,” taken from Criminology and Criminal Justice, the faults of rehabilitation are communicated directly from prisoners.  One interview comments how themselves and fellow prisoners “ ‘….haven’t got their house anymore. They haven’t got a job and they’re out there thinking, ‘How am I going to survive?’ ” Prison doesn’t let their victims leave with hope, in fact, it takes hope away. These prisoners unsurprisingly end up being released with a ‘do what needs to be done’ look on life, even if it means going back to crime. 

Reentering society, a vital part of the rehabilitation process, is not a goal of prison. The isolated environment does not help this, nor do the programs. In The Prison Journal piece, “Rehabilitation Programs for Incarcerated Drug Offenders in Malaysia: Experience-Based Perspectives on Reintegration and Recidivism,” prisoners provided multiple common themes that they felt held them back from successfully getting through the process. 

Having gone through a few rounds of rehabilitation programs offered in prisons, they felt these did not prepare them to face the challenges of reentering and reintegrating into society. Again, failure to cope with these challenges caused them to go back to more familiar groups with whom they were previously involved and where they found belonging and acceptance.

Teaching a prisoner not to feel like an outcast, while currently incarcerated and separated from the outside world, is a near-impossible task. The goal of prison is to use isolation as a punishment, and this punishment will always be in the way of successful rehabilitation. 

Rehabilitation programs are only as good as the individuals running them, interacting with and supporting the patients on a daily basis. These people must be driven not just to do their job, but to truly help others get better. This is not the archetype for the common prison officer. Referring back to the Criminology and Criminal Justice article, the writers explain this relationship. Their job is to maintain safety, not babysit the prisoners to follow through on their program. 

From the perspectives of prisoners even where officers come with good intentions, cynicism can wear them down over time and initial support for rehabilitation among prison officers may become undermined by the realities of delivering rehabilitative interventions in unfavorable conditions.

 Even if they did give a true helping hand in rehabilitation, there will also be an undeniable power dynamic in place between a prisoner and an officer. Ben Crew describes this relationship in his essay “Soft power in prison: Implications for staff–prisoner relationships, liberty, and legitimacy.” Officers have the ability to make everyday life better or worse through small favors or punishments, and that never leaves the minds of those in the system. Prisoners Crew interviewed discussed being forced to put on a fake facade, saying it feels as though officers are to ““… ‘play mind games with you.’” From the prisoner’s perspective, they are constantly distrusting the people who are supposed to be guiding them. It would be like trying to trust a doctor who doesn’t seem to care if you get better or not. This then leads to problems for the officers, having to deal with prisoners not being honest and turning into “yes-men” to ease the situation, rather than to make themselves better people. 

Resources are another big problem facing prison rehabilitation services. Greg Newbold comments on this issue in his piece “Criminal Reoffending and the Failure of Corrections: Rehabilitating Criminals Ain’t That Easy,” Newbold uses the example of the Integrated Offender Management program that was meant to reduce recidivism by 15% over the course of two years by matching prisoners to specific programs. Though these results never came due to multiple problems of the program in real-life use. The program was complicated for prison staff, many had problems understanding it as well as managing it in their prison system time-wise. Even when a prisoner was matched to a proper program, the resources needed to address their needs rarely existed. Time and money are both needed resources that are lacking in prison rehabilitation. 

All the effort to rehabilitate prisoners comes with good intentions, but it is inherently an impossible task.  Not due to the programs themselves, but because prison is not an environment that can foster it. There will always be necessary powers not prevalent, such as resources or proper support, and there will always be antagonistic factors that only suppress the rehabilitation process. 

                        References 

Bullock, K., & Bunce, A. (2020). “‘The prison doesn’t talk to you about getting out of prison’: On why prisons in England and Wales fail to rehabilitate prisoners.” Criminology & Criminal Justice, 20(1), 111–127.

Cheah, P. K., Unnithan, N. P., & Raran, A. M. S. (2020). “Rehabilitation Programs for Incarcerated Drug Offenders in Malaysia: Experience-Based Perspectives on Reintegration and Recidivism.” The Prison Journal, 100(2), 201–223.

Crewe B. “Soft power in prison: Implications for staff–prisoner relationships, liberty and legitimacy.” European journal of criminology. 2011;8(6):455-468. doi:10.1177/1477370811413805 

Fazel, Seena, and Achim Wolf. “A Systematic Review of Criminal Recidivism Rates Worldwide: Current Difficulties and Recommendations for Best Practice.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science,

Newbold, G. (2006) “Criminal Reoffending and the Failure of Corrections: Rehabilitating Criminals Ain’t That Easy.”