Title: The Prison Reform Movement | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: The Prison Reform Movement
The Prison Reform Movement
9: The Prison Reform Movement
WORDS TO KNOW
AIDS:
convict:
determinate sentence:
felony:
furlough:
halfway house:
incarceration:
indeterminate sentence:
inmate:
jail:
misdemeanor:
parole:
penitentiary:
prison:
probation:
recidivism:
work release:
Reform in colonial times
The nation's first prisons
"Moral terrorism" in the mid-1800s
Women and children, the poor, and the insane
Dorothea Dix
Post-war reforms
The Progressive Era
Progressive innovations
Chain Gangs
Riots and responses in the mid-twentieth century
Prison Categories
More strife behind bars
A changing approach
New century, same old problems
For More Information
BOOKS
WEB SITES

Content: Although experts have long agreed that many criminals should be punished by imprisonment, they have differing ideas about which crimes merit imprisonment, what length sentences should be, and how inmates should be treated. In American society, imprisonment is seen as serving multiple purposes. Primarily, incarceration is regarded as a punishment for criminal offenders, taking away their liberty and their ability to control their own lives. Such punishment gives crime victims, their families, and society a sense of retribution, or justice. A criminal must pay for the acts he or she has committed. That payment comes in the form of a loss of personal freedom. Locking up criminals also serves to protect the public. A burglar, rapist, or murderer can no longer harm society while serving time behind bars. Many experts believe that imprisonment, or rather the threat of it, keeps would-be criminals from committing crimes because the fear of punishment is so great. Finally, throughout history many criminal justice experts have viewed incarceration as an opportunity to provide counseling and training to offenders so that they can be reformed, or changed for the better, and rehabilitated, or prepared for a return to normal life.