Effectiveness of Prisons

As early as 1974, wretched rehabilitation programs were already considered ineffective as far as cut down recidivism (or the act of a released convict to return to crime) is concerned.This belief was brought about by the fact that majority of the studies which were conducted for the purpose of evaluating the efficacy of various rehabilitation programs learned about no positive or meager positive results. In an denomination entitled What WorksQuestions and Answers About Prison Reform, Robert Martinson, a sociologist, cited statistics which proved that umteen of the rehabilitation programs being implemented in the countrys prisons failed to evince encouraging results.He, however, registered some reservations, citing the poor methodology being employed in such studies at the cartridge clip. According to him, it was also possible that because our research was so bad, the correct results of the studies were just not properly indicated.This perception somehow changed during the eig hties with the advent of meta-analysis a new statistical technique which utilized bigger sample sizes than those used by previous studies. This technique did manage to show that vocational, educational, behavior modification and other programs indeed had modest results which ranged from 10 15 per centum reduction in recidivism (Himelson, 2008).Religious Rehabilitation ProgramsAt almost the same time that criminal rehabilitation programs were losing their credibility, the Humaita Prison in Brazil was being off into a religious community. The practice caught the attention of Byron Johnson who was then the director of the University of protactiniums Center for Research and Urban Civil Society because it gained global recognition. He found out that the day-to-day operations of the Humaita Prison were glowering over to religious volunteers who saturated the prison environment with religious computer programing and instruction.In addition, family visits and spiritual mentoring were promoted. These innovative practices, Johnson learned, resulted to a recidivism rate of 16 per centum after three years. This was much lower when compared to the recidivism rate of 36 percent which was registered by a different prison which offered vocational training to its inmates (Himelson, 2008).