Correctional Theory?

As many of you know, I have been taking Introduction to Criminal Justice this semester. I find judicial processes interesting and I have enjoyed this class; however, some things bother me exceedingly. In particular, I am referring to Correctional Theory. This was the lecture topic this morning, following Monday's field trip to Red Onion, a super maximum security Federal prison. Correctional Theory has the goals of maintaining order, deterring, and rehabilitating convicted offenders in order to change their behavior patterns.

In class, people were discussing the trip and what they saw and their feelings in response to the experience. Dr. Farmer was also talking about many of the prison procedures and what they are intended to accomplish. During this, I became even more upset. For a long time I have had problems with the fundamental idea behind prisons as a method of punishment for criminals. Today though, I am disturbed enough to the point where I need to talk about it.

On a presuppositional level, prisons go against God's Law. In the Bible, prisons were used as a holding tank until judgment could be passed. Hence, prisons themselves were not a form of punishment per se. The point here was for restitution and reconciliation. Things were to be made right between the person offended and the person committing the offense. If a person stole twenty dollars, he was to return twenty dollars (plus a bit more depending on some other circumstances) to the person he stole from. This meant that the victim was recompensed instead of never seeing his money again. Today, the thief would go to court, possibly jail, and the victim not only never sees his money again, but ALSO has to pay taxes to maintain the jail for the thief to reside in. In essence, he is stolen from twice.

Even more than this, I am furious with the idea that man can "play God" and attempt to rehabilitate criminals into upstanding persons. Humans are not animals. We are created in the image of God. Large prisons run the "Pavlov's Dog" experiment on the inmates on an expanded scale. Conditioning is used to train people to stay away from this or that. Life sentences! All these prisons take hard earned money from us to maintain facilities to keep offenders. People don't understand why others commit crime. Have they never heard of sin? These actual crimes are only manifestations, or symptoms, of a deep-rooted heart problem.

Now, I realize that some will argue that Biblical law principles are harsh. This often comes from Exodus 21:24 where it is written, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." This is again quoted by Jesus in Matthew 5. The argument runs something along the lines of "So if someone steals then you cut off their hand?!?!?! That's not right! That's terrible!" What people don't bother to do is read the entire passages. These statements are taken out of context and misunderstood. In these verses, God is putting in place the Maximum Penalty for any given crime. If someone accidentally injured another person's eye, causing him to lose his sight, then the injured person would put a price on his eye. The offender would try to make restitution for the offense. How much was the eye worth? The victim would decide this. He would name a price, or work, or some way that the offender could make right what he had done. The victim was not allowed to demand MORE than an eye in payment for his own eye. SO, if the offender decided that he could not pay the price named by the injured man, he would let his own eye be injured. There are no instances that we know of, of this actually having to be used. The purpose of this was to say, thus far you may go in demanding repayment, no farther. Again, the point here was not to get revenge, but for reconcilation to take place between both parties and the former relationship to be restored. The whole concept of reconciliation between offender and offended party is completely ignored by our correctional system.

One may wonder, how do people misunderstand the "eye for an eye" passages? Well...they don't understand the context or the principles and precepts involved. Secondly, they mistake this for something else. The Q'ran and Shari'a Law. According to the laws of Mohammed, if someone Steals, his hand is to be cut off. The penalties just get worse from there. This is blatantly unbiblical. However, Allah never claimed to be a merciful god. Removing one's hand removes one's ability to make an honest living. And this is the Minimum penalty, unlike the law of God where actual injury of a limb or body part was the highest, and final resort. The God of the Bible is Merciful, Forgiving, Loving, Just, and Holy. Allah is referred to in the Q'ran as the "Possessor of Men's Necks." Throughout the Q'ran, references are continually made of the severe penalties to be brought to bear on those who do not believe or on those who fall away from Allah. This is a punishment driven faith. Islam and Christianity are, at their very roots, antithetical to each other. (And this is but a bare scratching of the surface on one issue.)

The Correctional Theory, at heart, holds fast to the idea that humans are on the level of animals. Man in his almighty pride can train others into the "real man." Through conditioning, Utopia can be brought about. Again...this is a symptom of where we are at as a culture. Godless. Irreverent. Ungrateful. Selfish. Greedy. We cannot just deal with the symptoms. The real disease must be faced. Until men again fear God, there will not be a real decrease in crime rates. It has been proven that criminals, after serving prison time, enter the real world again...and often go back to crime. Prisons are a deterrent to law-abiding people. This is similar to gun control laws: they just take the means of defense out of the hands of people who obey the law. Gun control laws announce to other people, "Hey! No one here can defend themselves." Have you ever wondered why the media doesn't talk about attempted school shootings? Because it proves them wrong. Because the gunmen were stopped By People Who Had Guns. The weapon itself is not bad. How it is used determines that. For instance...look at water. It is necessary for life, yet in too much water people drown. Can we have some water control laws please?

Prisons are an unreal environment. Despite all the conditioning, it does not fit offenders for an honest career outside its walls. You can change the icing on the cake all you want, but it won't change the cake! In spite of anything man has done, God never gave us leave to treat each other without dignity and reduce our fellow men to the level of animals. Not to mention, how just is it to take our tax money to support these people in prison? Make restitution for more minor events...make judicious use of the death penalty for those crimes that deserve it. At the very least, it eliminates repeat offenses. In history, people were executed publicly. Why? Because it was a SEVERE deterrent to others. No one wanted to end up in that position. Statistically here in America, crime rates have grown as the death penalty was removed. How is pardoning the offender showing justice or mercy to the offended?