Luka Chikvinidze,

candidate number 5083

Should prisoners focus more on rehabilitation than punishment?

A man wakes up to the jarring sound of an alarm piercing his ears and reverberating through the

cell. Ignoring the yells of prisoners and guards alike, he goes down to the cafeteria for his food that will

be hastily made, unhealthy, and potentially downright dangerous. The work is grueling. Hygiene is non

existent. Deaths aren’t uncommon, usually by suicide, or health issues from the harsh conditions of the

prison. This is the life of the average inmate living in a prison in the majority part of the world that

chooses to punish its prisoners over rehabilitation. Such a system has been called into question by many,

who vouch for gentler conditions. but do their cries hold any real weight? Should our prison centers

maintain the punishment status quo, or give way to a kinder approach to rehabilitation?

No matter how you look at it, there are issues with our prison system. 68% of convicts released

in 2005 reoffended within 3 years (prison policy.org, 2019). The purpose of prison is claimed to be

rehabilitation but clearly fails in this regard, which calls for a change in what we focus on when it comes

to inmate correction. According to Bloom and Bradshaw (2021, p1), “the reasons for for prison

rehabilitation failure are clear. The prevailing philosophy in prisons is based on punishment, which

psychology has demonstrated in countless studies, exacerbates fear, anger, aggression, deception, and

often proclivities for depression and suicide”. With such harsh treatment it really is no wonder that a

majority of released prisoners go on to reoffend within a few years of freedom. A system that focuses on

inciting fear rather than bettering criminals will instead make them unsuitable for functioning in society,

coming out with no knowledge of how the real world works, no opportunities to achieve a stable life,

and being conditioned to be treated and treat others harshly, which puts our society at risk.
Thus, it's easy to see the need to change focus on rehabilitation instead, which would give inmates the

chance to learn to live independently and make healthier decisions for themselves (CJ US JOBS, 2020).

Conditions would be improved, as is now prisoners often don’t have access to a clean pair of underwear.

Programs would target an individuals specific needs, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, that prisons

fail to address (Murphy P., 2020). This would strive for a system where inmates have their basic needs for

hygiene and comfort met. Better cells, more access to clothes, toiletries, sanitary items. Healthy meals

with balanced macronutrients, and access to correctional therapy, aka “cognitive behavioral therapy”,

which while is currently implemented in prisons, is faulty since it focuses on guilting prisoners and

reciting CBT maxims instead of helping prisoners rehabilitate (Bloom and Bradshaw, 2021, p1).

Improving conditions so that inmates have better mental health and thus be able to focus on becoming

valuable members of society, paired with better therapy to give them the resources they need for

rehabilitation would increase the rate of prisoner correction and reduce prison readmission rates, which

improves our society and fixes an almost dystopian system built on torture, as seen in Norway, who 20

years ago made a change in their prison systems to focus on rehabilitation more than punishment,

dropping reoffending rates significantly (Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, 2020).

improving rehabilitation makes logical sense: reducing reoffending rates reduces crime as a whole in

one of the groups most likely to perpetrate. But it also makes economic sense. Rehabilitation programs

that have proven more effective than prison sentences, such as community sentences, often cost

fractions of what a prison sentence would cost, with better reform rates. Less sentences and cheaper

sentences reduce the need to spend taxpayer money on incarceration, which in turn can go to necessary

services such as healthcare and education. Turning the focus of prison away from punishment can also

help better prisoners in ways outside of mental improvement: more priority could be given to educating

perpetrators while in prison, giving them the ability to earn a college degree while incarcerated. The

reason why reoffending rates are so high is because our current system as is ruins the ability of offenders
to function in society: they come out of jail with less understanding of the real word, a massive splotch

on their record and no opportunities to live a normal life, so they have no choice but to turn back to

crime. Educating them gives offenders more opportunities than they may have had before, and a path

for them to go down after they’re released from prison. According to Eudamonia, 2020, prisoners who

earned a college degree in new york were half as likely to reoffend. An entire 50% drop that turns

criminals and crooks into citizens that provide genuine value to our country. Its important to remember

that crime is not just a mental issue: people do not offend purely because they’re mentally troubled, its

also an issue of necessity. Human instinct is to survive, even if you have to scratch and bite, so people

turn to crime as a last resort when there is nothing else they can do, thus improving opportunities is the

very same as reducing crime. The very basis of the human species is evolution: to improve, advance,

make more efficient; so what reason do we have to ignore a system that is so obviously superior morally

and economically? With so many benefits its clear that the only thing holding such a change back is a

refusal to evolve and a desire to cause pain for the crimes they’ve committed: the current punitive

system punishes for the sake of justice, which as a concept is simply doublespeak for revenge. But in

what system, except a dystopia, is the primary goal of a legal system to seek revenge, to inflict harm? Is

our concept of justice any more just than an act of vigilante reprisal?

But even then, isn’t justice still important? It gives solace to the victim and those close to them, who

have done no wrong and been done an injustice by the perpetrator. Are they not entitled to the righting

of that injustice? “Prison is the symbolic and physical embodiment of punishment that severs criminal

others from the rest of society….This psychological dissociation is a necessary part of the criminal justice

response to crime because it provides members of the public with a sense of separateness that reaffirms

their identity and status in society, and gives them something tangible yet distant to focus on when they

feel anxious about crime.” (Shirin Bakhshay, June 2023) Victims of the crime often undergo serious
anguish due to the criminals actions. Punishing the criminal and achieving justice helps in the healing

process of that crime. It gives them closure that the offense done to them has been accounted for, and

they can feel safer knowing that the one who committed the crime has been removed from society and

punished. Why should the criminal be prioritized over the solace of the victims, who are innocent, and

the safety of our communities.

Crimes deserve punishment, and by choosing to abandon justice and not punish a criminal, you instead

deny them mercy, since the price for the crime will never be paid for and will instead follow them for the

rest of their lives; promoting rehabilitation abandons justice by abandoning ““the concept of Desert,”

the principle that justice exists only when people get what they deserve” (Ryan Hammill, 2016.); those

who break the law have gained an unfair advantage by doing wrong, and only by administering the

proper punishment for their actions will that advantage be undone. According to Ryan Hammil),

punishing criminals is actually more merciful to them than rehabilitation: denying them punishment

denies them the chance to right their wrong. Without punishment, their crime will never be repaid and

will follow them for the rest of their lives, but punishing them provides them for a path for redemption:

that their wrong has been righted, and having taken accountability for their actions gives them the

chance to rebuild their lives and reintegrate into society. Denying them punishment is depriving not only

the victim, but the offender as well, of justice. a society without justice is a society without fairness, and

undermines the very purpose of having laws: to be fair.

What incentives will exist for aspiring criminals to not commit crimes if they know they will not face real

word consequences? If they know, that by law they will never be given their due? Either they will get

away with it, and benefit from their crimes, or they will be caught and shown mercy in the form of
rehabilitation. There is no longer an incentive not to commit a crime, no longer any fear to demotivate

them. Crime should never be profitable, and we must always keep the risk greater than the reward,

otherwise the people will realize that they can benefit from harming others with no downside, and thus

the logical consequence is that crime will increase, which goes against the very concept of rehabilitation.

and public unrest will grow as they realize that they live in a society overrun by criminals that do not get

what they deserve. The friends, the families of the wronged will instead seek to fight for the justice that

was denied to them by their government. What is the point of even having a government that does not

protect us? Does that not violate the very reasoning behind the ‘social contract’, where you must give up

some freedom in a society to be given security? Therefor punishment must be given, it is a necessity.

Think of the very ways we raise our children: if they misbehave, we ground them, we take away their

electronics, and the children who were denied a childhood where they face consequences for their

actions grow up to be spoiled. They know they may do as they wish and so they do at the detriment of

others. If you misbehave, you get grounded. If students break school code, they’re given detention or

suspended. If workers break company policy, then they are fired. We face punishment for our actions in

every aspect of our lives. It is the basic fact of our society, and so it must be the basic fact of the law

Thus, as with all conflicting issues, its essential to find a balance. As is now, there is a great

diversity in how the different countries of the world handle their prison systems, but the ones that have

achieved the greatest success seem to be the ones who focus more greatly on rehabilitation than the

rest; Norway and Germany all have enviably low recidivism rates, and both focus on rehabilitation far

more than what is considered standard. When given such concrete evidence, it’s a reasonable conclusion

to make that the status quo needs a change and rehabilitation must be considered more heavily than we

do now. “Norway’s prison system is expensive. However, prison reform is more affordable than it may

initially appear in the United States” ( Dahl, G. B., & mogstad. M) .Improving our prison systems helps

the least fortunate: those down on their luck, or mentally unwell. And as Maya Angelou once said, if a
chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn’t it also true that a society is only as healthy as its sickest

citizen? Everyone deserves basic human respect and the chance to improve, and we must make it the

norm to give it to them. we must especially target our rehabilitation towards those at high risk of

recidivism (United Nations office on Drugs and Crime, 2022, p4). however, we must not forget the

importance of administering justice for the solace of the people wronged by those who breach the law,

and the deterrent of punishment against crime; what good is low recidivism rates if more citizens are

encouraged to offend? Change must happen, and it must be towards rehabilitation, but it cannot be too

extreme as to abandon justice in the process.