Why do they call it Dept. of Corrections?
I wonder why they call a county jail, or a state prison "Dept. of Corrections ? They used to be called so and so county jail, or so and so state prison, or bureau of prisons or penitentiary. But now everything is corrections this, or corrections that. A county jail corrects nothing, it’s usually just a holding facility for those that haven’t gone to any kind of trial yet, and can’t make bail, or they’re in there for some short sentence for some piddly offense. The state prison doesn’t actually correct anything either, as all it does is hold people for a much longer period of time, as a punishment for a more substantial offense. Do they use the word corrections, to just try to clean it up and make it sound better ? Why not just call it what it is ? Anybody have an opinion ? I’m looking for serious answers here, not wisecracks from the teenagers. Thanks.
Pretrial jails are most often termed detention centers or jails; state prisons are generally termed penitentiaries, prisons or correctional centers.
The stated goals of most people working in the prison business are rehabilitation (correcting bad behavior), incapacitation (keeping them from harming society for the duration of the sentence), retribution (punishment or vengeance), restitution (making them pay victims or work off their debt to society) and deterrence (scaring people so that they will avoid criminal activity because they do not want to go to jail).
The single best sounding goal from a political stand point is rehabilitation, so they go with the somewhat deceptive title of corrections.
Nobody took the old phrase penitentiary serious because the only thing that people in prison regret is that they got caught. They are no longer dwelling upon the error of their ways in silence as was once required in the dungeon days. It is hard to get community approval to build a prisoner in their neighborhood.
There is also the old theory of labeling which was taught years ago that you were not supposed to give them the bad self image, so the terms of convict or prison were avoided. Pretty silly, but true.
The prison personnel generally try to come up with plans to give the inmates some career options because they want to believe that redemption is a possibility, but the odds are not good at all.
On the other hand, can we as a society abandon any hope of redemption of some of these people? Also, there are still some prison industries which do make money and teach skills. I know of products being made for government use and also that call operator systems work from jails. These permit inmates to make money; learn skills and they can make restitution payments on schedule.
I am not blind — I have done a lot of work in this area, but surely, we must make some effort to provide some training, education and skills beyond the criminal skills that they develop while trading notes in the jails. If they are disposable, why are we keeping them alive? If they are worth feeding, are they not worth spending some effort to educate and train?
Think about this as the designer of an ethical society? In that light, what options do we really have?
Not knowing your state, I will add some program resources from the federal side…
They try to rehabilitate correct prisoner’s behavior. Corrections sounds better then jail. My opinion is jail doesn’t work but its the only choice.
References :
You bring up some good points on the meaning of the different name changes, Jail,Prison, Penitentiary, Corrections, Detention facilities.
It is true that there are many places that are just like you said "Warehouses".. It’s kind of interesting, America wants a tough on crime and it seems that they are not really interested in correcting behaviors because it is seen as being soft on crime and the criminals don’t have nothing coming.. there are many good facilites that war making a difference in lives in the system but we need to do something across the board, from the East Coast to the West Coast.
We are seeing and will be seeing more people returning to custody because we do not want to spend the money to give the inmates the tools they need to change and straighten their lives out.
Until we as a Nation start truly investing in correcting, we will continue to be human warehouses
References :
Hello Dave. Good points you have above here. In 1957, the Bureau of Prisons adopted "Department of Corrections" as a subtitle, thinking that they are going to attempt to rehabilitate incarcerated felons to help reduce recidivism. At this time, prisons used what was called "Crime and Punishment". When you were convicted of a felony, you were kicked off the face of the planet. You had no rights, you worked in a prison factory making products that were sold on the open market to help reduce the public burden of incarceration. You had little to no benefits or privileges, food was minimal and you had NO legal redress available and was not allowed to file motions in court in your behalf. The recidivism rate in this time period was 15%.
In the middle 1970’s, the liberals took over the penal system .We literally have new programs every month now. The prison factory is gone. Inmates ( not allowed to call them cons, they might be offended) sit around all day watching 60 inch color tvs that the taxpayer supplies or working out in the taxpayer supplied gyms or sitting in the legal library that is mandated for each prison pouring over legal volumes searching for a loophole to overturn their cases. For quite a while, we also had "jailhouse lawyers" who filed motion after motion since it didn’t cost them a dime. Two motions I recall from my prison in the past: 1. The chowhall only served smooth peanut butter and his digestive system needed chunky peanut butter. Lawsuit filed for $25,000 for pain and suffering. Denied. 2. The stainless steel toilets caused inflammation of the hemmorhoids of another inmates. Filed for $50,000 for pain and suffering. Denied.
Although you might think this is ridiculous, each and every case has to be examined in court for validity. This was costing the American taxpayers millions of dollars a year and tying up the legal/court systems very badly. In Ohio, at least, we had a law passed that if a lawsuit was found to be frivolous, the filing agent had to pay the full amount of the motion including the lawyer’s fees for the state who examined it.
State prisons are mandated today to offer the tools and training for rehabilitation. Mandatory testing for educational background is done during intake. If an inmate does not have a high school diploma, he is mandated to attend classes in the prison to get his G.E.D. The prisons offer training in vocational trades ( electrician, plumbing, carpentry, groundskeeping, etc) so the offender has some training in a legal job in the hopes he will not reoffend.
Unfortunately, no one can force a person to rehabilitate. The vast majority of inmates attending mandatory GED classes sit there daydreaming and failing their tests. Vocational training is actually used, but I personally believe it is done out of boredom rather than attempting to rehabilitate themselves. Inmates sit around now doing nothing and our recidivism rate is an astounding 84% and shows NO signs of slowing.
Unless and until the legislators can see and understand what has happened with this "Hug a thug" philosophy, the Department of Corrections will continue to be a cottage industry without honestly reducing the recidivism rates.
I hope this helps and you can find it useful
References :
20 years as a Corrections Officer in a max prison
Pretrial jails are most often termed detention centers or jails; state prisons are generally termed penitentiaries, prisons or correctional centers.
The stated goals of most people working in the prison business are rehabilitation (correcting bad behavior), incapacitation (keeping them from harming society for the duration of the sentence), retribution (punishment or vengeance), restitution (making them pay victims or work off their debt to society) and deterrence (scaring people so that they will avoid criminal activity because they do not want to go to jail).
The single best sounding goal from a political stand point is rehabilitation, so they go with the somewhat deceptive title of corrections.
Nobody took the old phrase penitentiary serious because the only thing that people in prison regret is that they got caught. They are no longer dwelling upon the error of their ways in silence as was once required in the dungeon days. It is hard to get community approval to build a prisoner in their neighborhood.
There is also the old theory of labeling which was taught years ago that you were not supposed to give them the bad self image, so the terms of convict or prison were avoided. Pretty silly, but true.
The prison personnel generally try to come up with plans to give the inmates some career options because they want to believe that redemption is a possibility, but the odds are not good at all.
On the other hand, can we as a society abandon any hope of redemption of some of these people? Also, there are still some prison industries which do make money and teach skills. I know of products being made for government use and also that call operator systems work from jails. These permit inmates to make money; learn skills and they can make restitution payments on schedule.
I am not blind — I have done a lot of work in this area, but surely, we must make some effort to provide some training, education and skills beyond the criminal skills that they develop while trading notes in the jails. If they are disposable, why are we keeping them alive? If they are worth feeding, are they not worth spending some effort to educate and train?
Think about this as the designer of an ethical society? In that light, what options do we really have?
Not knowing your state, I will add some program resources from the federal side…
References :
http://www.bop.gov/inmate_programs/placement.jsp
http://www.bop.gov/inmate_programs/index.jsp
http://www.bop.gov/inmate_programs/itb_employing_ex_offenders.jsp