Rehabilitation Paper - Essay Example

While referring back to the origin of the rehabilitation of the prisoners, it was the enactment of the Penitentiary Act in 1779 by British government that introduced the custom of rehabilitation of the prisoners and criminals. Thereafter, evidently imprisonment emerged as a form of correction rather than punishment. The technique and mode of rehabilitation varies according to the nature and type of offence committed. The prisoners are given educational as well as vocational training to learn various skills so that they can use it outside the prison once their term of imprisonment is over; and such rehabilitation takes place both inside the prison and outside the premises as well (Prison rehabilitation, n.d.).

In the American prisons, rehabilitations found to be an effective mode of minimizing stress, aggression, and mental disorders amongst the prisoners. Studies prove that the prison inmates who learned rehabilitation techniques and participated in training activities were reformed and the number of those who returned to prison shrank to 30-35% which was far greater than other kinds of measures adopted to reduce the animosity among the inmates. The rehabilitation programs conducted outside the prison premises help to bring down over crowding in prisons.

The vocation training they received made them competent to live the rest of their life without being dependant on others. Probation and parole are two means available for the prisoners to get out of their confinements and enjoy the fragments of freedom for a limited period. Probation and parole are more or less similar in function but are connected to different sections of the criminal justice system. Probation is generally imposed in lieu of jail incarceration and is increasingly being used in California as a tool to reduce jail crowding in a wide variety of situations.

As per the Probation Law of 1976, (cited in Sangco, 1995) probation can be defined as a court-imposed approval that envisages to releases a convicted offender into the society under a conditional suspended sentence; and this practice is due to the assumption that all the criminals are not dangerous and they will rightly react to the treatments. Usually probation is given to an offender whose conduct and behavior is amicable in the prison premises (p. 1). When the term of his probation is over, he is asked to come back to the prison for the rest of his punishment.

During the probation, if the offender proves himself fit for a social life, he may also get negotiation in his imprisonment. On the other hand, parole is a conditional release from state prison by the Department of Corrections. It is the early release from prison or jail under certain conditions and under strict supervision when a portion of the sentence has been completed. The practices of parole envisage that the offender has articulated his assent to abide by the rules and regulations of the prison environment and also shows respect and assistance to the social norms and practices.

In this case also he has to come back to the prison once the stipulated days are over. As everyone knows, people are not born as criminals but it is the circumstances that make them commit offences. Probation and parole have great importance in this regard. A person who has committed murder on the pressure of