Effectiveness of Prisons

As early as 1974, criminal replenishment programs were already considered ineffective as far as reducing recidivism (or the act of a released convict to return to crime) is concerned.This belief was brought about by the fact that absolute majority of the studies which were conducted for the purpose of evaluating the efficacy of various rehabilitation programs showed almost no optimistic or meager positive results. In an article entitled What whole kitQuestions and Answers About Prison Reform, Robert Martinson, a sociologist, cited statistics which proved that many of the rehabilitation programs beingness implemented in the countrys prisons failed to show encouraging results.He, however, registered roughly reservations, citing the poor methodology being employed in such studies at the time. According to him, it was also possible that because our research was so bad, the correct results of the studies were unspoiled not properly indicated.This perception somehow changed during t he 1980s with the advent of meta-analysis a new statistical technique which utilized larger sample sizes than those use by previous studies. This technique did manage to show that vocational, educational, behavior adaption and other programs indeed had modest results which ranged from 10 15 percent simplification 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 turned into a ghostly community. The practice caught the attention of Byron Johnson who was then the director of the University of Pennsylvanias focus on for Research and Urban Civil Society because it gained international recognition. He prepare out that the day-to-day operations of the Humaita Prison were turned over to unearthly volunteers who saturated the prison environment with religious programming and instruction.In addition, family visits and sacred mentoring were promoted. These innovative practices, Johnson learned, resulted to a recidivism rate of 16 percent after ternary 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).