Correctional institutions are state bodies of the penal and correctional system. They are charged with organizing the correction of convicts, preventing the commission of new crimes, ensuring law and order in their activities, and engaging convicts in work. Correctional institutions include:
- Penal colonies of the public, strict and special regimes;
- Settlement colonies;
- Educational colonies for juveniles sentenced to imprisonment;
- Prisons;
- Medical correctional institutions;
- Medical and preventive institutions;
- Pre-trial detention facilities.
The Prison Department pays great attention to rehabilitating criminal prisoners, including various resocialization programs, allocating educational resources, and vocational training for inmates. People have concluded that repair is more important than punishment in the last decade. Rehabilitation helps prevent recidivism and sets an ex-offender on the right path.
The specifics of social work in correctional institutions is that this work should not end with the end of the sentence. As a social work client, an ex-prisoner needs resocialization and adaptation to the outside world, its rules, and norms. The problem of the growth of crime remains one of the global problems. High recidivism rates report that prisons fail to provide adequate preparation for life after prison (Ganapathy, 2018). Often, recidivism is committed in the first year after release because the ex-convict has various difficulties that push him to re-offend. Even a slight decrease in recidivism has significant social and economic effects. As a rule, convicts and drug addicts have insufficient professional levels, low motivation to work, poor health, the tendency to antisocial behavior, and violation of labor discipline. This category of citizens is in less demand by employers and is more often at risk of dismissal and discrimination in hiring.
All prisoners have different problems, but they all strive to reintegrate into society successfully (Gerton, 2021). All inmates have other issues, but all seek to reintegrate into society successfully, so rehabilitation therapists must develop individualized treatment plans for their patients. An effective method of rehabilitating offenders is farming and gardening in correctional facilities, with evidence of physical, social, and mental health benefits (Timler et al., 2019). Rehabilitation centers are divided into many departments to best meet each patient’s needs. There are drug rehabilitation units, alcohol rehabilitation units, a unit for convicted sex offenders, and a unit for convicted domestic violence offenders.
Few people think about the fact that the offender bears a double punishment. The first punishment is official (imprisonment), and the second is unofficial: placement in a violent world. Humanists advocate the liberalization of the prison regime. The Netherlands and Norway have a peculiar view of crime and punishment. The concept of punishment is that prisoners should be able to choose a life without crime. Prisons operate on the principle that criminals have been deprived of their freedom but not the rest of their rights. In Dutch prisons, prisoners have wide access to the highest standards of provision. The rooms are equipped with televisions and refrigerators. Prisoners go through their journey in stages, starting at a high-security closed facility, moving on to lower-security prisons, and ending under home supervision (Larsen et al., 2019). In the Netherlands and Norway, prisons are often empty, and recidivism rates are several times lower than in other states. As many countries as possible should follow the example of Norway and the Netherlands if they want to reduce crime. Only by giving people a choice, not a sentence, can the criminal be re-educated by showing him that there is another way.
The main inmate rehabilitation unit is the drug rehabilitation center. These are the people who are most likely to end up behind bars. More than half of the state prisoners in the United States have drug addictions (Haviv & Hasisi, 2019). Drug rehabilitation programs are individualized, based on testing that helps determine the degree of dependence, physical health, and personal characteristics.
Turning to the concept of “social rehabilitation,” it is worth noting that this is a set of measures to restore the lost social ties and functions of people in a difficult life situation, including those who use narcotic and psychotropic substances for non-medical purposes. Social rehabilitation of convicted and drug-dependent citizens is carried out through social adaptation.
Adapting an inmate to freedom should begin in the colony and logically end in the adaptation center at liberty. An inmate who has served 3-4 years in the settlement falls out of society. After all, progress and life do not stand; still, everything grows and moves at lightning speed. Many prisoners have lost socially useful ties to freedom and have nowhere to go. Many have problems with housing, documents, and work, many have no family and loved ones, and if someone stays, they do not want to help the offender.
Thus, prisoner rehabilitation is the only way to put a person on the right path. With the help of such programs, people can help former prisoners avoid relapse and adapt to social life. Prolonged incarceration affects a person’s personality and makes it difficult for them to return to normal life in society. Positive changes in the character of prisoners, such as increased conscientiousness and the ability to cooperate, should be a point of reference during rehabilitation programs. After all, people may be faced with a choice. The first is to punish criminals more severely and get people who are unable to adapt to life in society. The second choice is to design and create conditions in prisons that improve the personality of criminals and help them reform.
References
Ganapathy, N. (2018). Rehabilitation, reintegration, and recidivism: a theoretical and methodological reflection. Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development, 28(3), 154-167.
Gerton, H. (2021). Rehabilitation or Punishment: An Analysis of the Goals, Architecture and Effectiveness or Contemporary Prisons (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon).
Haviv, N., & Hasisi, B. (2019). Prison addiction program and the role of integrative treatment and program completion on recidivism. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 63(15-16), 2741-2770.
Larsen, B. K., Hean, S., & Ødegård, A. (2019). A conceptual model on reintegration after prison in Norway. International Journal of Prisoner Health.
Timler, K., Brown, H., & Varcoe, C. (2019). Growing connection beyond prison walls: How a prison garden fosters rehabilitation and healing for incarcerated men. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 58(5), 444-463.