Prisons

The Purpose of Prisons

The U.S. criminal justice system is an interacting system composed of law enforcement, criminal courts, and correctional facilities. Whereas these institutions and organizations all serve particular purposes, prisons seek to realize four specific goals: to act as a deterrent among individuals considering delinquent activity, to isolate/incapacitate offenders from the general public, to rehabilitate offenders so as to prevent future transgressions, and to punish offenders for prior offenses.

Research regarding the effectiveness of these goals has been beset by conceptual and methodological complications. For example, studies are inhibited by federal and state variations in criminal laws and procedures as well as by the fact that many crimes go unreported or do not lead to arrests. Moreover, the void of diverse data sources and measurement problems limit researchers' ability to assess motivations among nonoffenders, one-time offenders, and career offenders as well as other important assumptions about the sources of delinquent activity.

Nevertheless, existing studies provide limited support for the success of deterrence techniques. In particular, these approaches appear to be most successful when the certainty of arrest and incarceration is high. Rehabilitation techniques include mental health treatment (e.g., psychotherapy, psychotropic medication, vocational/educational training) and specific offender programs (e.g., violent, gang, sexual). In addition to variation in the quality and availability of such programs, studies are unable to determine why certain treatments are more or less effective for certain offenders than for others.

The death penalty is the most severe punishment used in the criminal justice system. Currently, more than two-thirds of all states have capital punishment statutes. Lethal injection is the most common method of execution, followed by electrocution and lethal gas. Hanging and firing squads remain permissible in some states. Overall, studies have shown that the death penalty fails to deter criminal activity; however, its supporters emphasize its effectiveness as a form of punishment and retribution.

The Prison Population

Data from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics and U.S. Bureau of Prisons indicates that the total estimated corrections population is approaching 7 million. This number includes offenders in prisons (state and federal) and jails as well as those on probation or parole. In 2006, the racial composition of federal prisons was as follows: Whites (56.4%), Blacks (40.2%), Hispanics (31.5%, which can be of any race), Asians (1.7%), and Native Americans (1.7%). Women represented 6.7% of incarcerated offenders. It is important to note that the distribution of offenders in state prisons and local jails closely matched this distribution, although there are fewer Hispanics (15.0%) and more women (12.7%) in jails.

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