Prison life and strategies to decrease recidivism Essay

Prison life and strategies to decrease recidivism - Essay Example With these facts in mind, this research seeks, among other things, to further look into the daily happenings at a typical American prison. And more importantly, it also seeks to address the need to prevent recidivism and to reintegrate offenders into society. In his book â€Å"Crime and Punishment in America† (1998), Elliott Currie tells us that the American approach to violent crime is out of balance and just plain wrong. Despite America’s heavy reliance on jails and prisons as deterrents to crime, at that point in time, it still held the worst level for violence among the developed countries. The idea of America being soft on crime, he says, is a myth. Whatever some may argue, the fact is that crime’s response to punishment is unpredictable. He goes on to quote John DiIulio, who explains that the money spent to put a criminal behind bars prevents two or three more from committing crime. Also, according to James Wilson, despite the expense involved in maintaining prisons, the benefits, in terms of crimes avoided, far outweigh the cost. The problem is that, even after 25 years as of his writing (and in fact, even to this very day), the vast amount of cash spent on prisons has done little to make violent crime respond consistently. And despite this, the American public still insists on the effectiveness of the penitentiary system. As an example, Currie cites the female inmates sentenced on the most minor of offenses, such as drug charges or property crimes connected to such dependencies – and how their imprisonment has left multitudes of children parentless. In this case the system fails to account for the greater costs involved: substitute care, welfare dependency, and even possible delinquency and/or drug addiction. Another more direct example is how the lack of serious vocational training in most prisons leads inmates to leave it even more ill-prepared for the