Alternatives to Prison: Why Imprisonment Doesn't Work and What to Do About It

Crime is a disease that infects our lives with hardship and heartache. Throughout the ages man has developed laws to keep society healthy and criminal sanctions to satisfy the breaking of those laws. Criminal sanctions serve one or a combination of four different purposes: rehabilitation, retribution, incapacitation, and deterrence. Arguably, all four contribute to maintaining public order - the ultimate goal in a society founded on a "social contract" ideology.

In the last thirty years, prison has become a pet project for us in the United States. The number of prisoners in state and Federal penitentiaries had hovered around 200,000 since the 1940's. Then between 1975 and 1980, it rose to 300,000, and between 1980 and 1995 it began an astonishing ascent that brought the total behind bars to a solid million.[1] As of 1997, 645 out of every 100,000 United States citizens lived in prison - a national incarceration rate second only to the Russian Federation.[2] With such an extraordinary number of persons in our prison system, one might expect that it is a very effective means of maintaining public order; else we wouldn't use it so extensively. With that thought as our mini-thesis let us examine the evidence and compare prison against the four purposes of criminal sanctions.