CORRECTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Correctional Environment

Correctional Environment

Introduction

Correctional environment also known as prison environment in United Kingdom and other European and some African countries refer to the place where a person sentenced to imprisonment spends his or her life till the completion of the tenure. Prisons or correction centers are not considered a good place to stay some part of life. If a choice would have been given to prisoners to choose from a correction center or some other places, they would definitely opt for any other place but this one. This is due to the fact that prisons are designed to make a culprit realize that he or she has done wrong which is not acceptable and appreciated by the society. However, correction centers in past were often used synonymous with university of crime, as a person sentenced for a specific term of his life in prison comes out as a better criminal and a threat to the society. However, this has changed since there are number of measures have been taken to make prisons places where people can realize they had been a cause of harm to the society. In relation to this, the following discussion will attempt to identify how the corrections environment has changed in the past decade, and what is the most significant change. Moreover, the future implications which are relative to this change will also be examined.

Why Correction Center Exists?

The concept of individual liberty is not related only to the right to move freely in the society, but especially to all possible actions of individual, such as the freedom of expression or contract with whoever is convenient. The basic principle of human freedom in societies is guided by the principles that the right of other person in the society must also be ensured. Every freedom has limits that need to be clearly established which in United States are established by the US constitution (Atherton, 2010).

Individuals, who for various reasons do not obey the limitations of basic freedom to form a society, are constrained in their freedom to move freely and a penalty is imposed upon them restricting their freedoms. The right of freedom provided by the United States constitution can be revoked to protect larger interests, like the safety of a community and the right to punish the state. Those who do not qualify to live freely in the society are sent to correctional centers to rectify their behavior (Blackburn, 2013).

In US prisons, the high walls surrounded with barbed wire limit two antagonistic worlds, that of freedom and confinement. The doors closed, the prohibitions, the restriction of inmate and the impossibility of living with the social environment outside the prison are some of the aspects that define the prison as a correctional institution. According to Geoghegan (2012) correctional institutions have features like occupying part of the time and the interest of the members, and have closing tendencies. By the author's classification, the penitentiary establishment is housed on the third type of correctional institutions, which is one organized ...