Prison system

What are the main goals of the prison system? Most of us feel we understand the aims of the prison system in our own country, but when we take time to evaluate our own thoughts, it often becomes apparent that the current prison system has different aims according to the values of the current government, the political climate, and the reflected morality of the general populace. While most of us would agree that the prison system exists to incarcerate individuals who are found guilty of an action that their society deems criminal, what exactly are we hoping to achieve? And in what way does this huge government machine affect our lives? Let's take a look at some of the different possible aims of our current prison system.

Everybody has different ideas about what we hope to achieve by incarcerating criminals. Some people believe that the goal of incarceration should be punitive, some hope it will act as a deterrence. Yet another purported aim of the correctional system is the rehabilitation of the inmates over the course of their incarceration, while others state that we incarcerate criminals primarily in order to protect ourselves by removing them from society. It's clear that while we agree that incarceration is an acceptable way of dealing with crime, we don't necessarily agree about what the outcomes of incarceration might be.

It's also interesting to note that throughout the centuries, penitentiaries have been an extremely lucrative business for many governments, not in the least due to the practice of using inmates as cheap sources of labour. Governments may spend millions on maintaining correctional centres, but every one of us benefits from the boost they provide to our economies. If this surprises you, take a moment to think about how many people in countries like the US or Britain are gainfully employed by the penal system. Correctional Centres need guards, wardens, librarians, cooks, cleaners, teachers, psychologists and arts workers. And before these people are even employed, the penitentiary has to be built, a process which employs hundreds of contractors, from architects, to material manufacturers to construction teams. So it looks like the penal system does more for us than simply removing criminals from our midst.

Lastly, there are facilities that seem to seek to incarcerate people we believe to be a political threat, such as the US holding centres at Guantanamo Bay.

So what exactly is the role of these government agencies play in our lives? And are the roles they play reflective of our collective ethics? You decide.