Rehabilitation (penology)
Rehabilitation is the process of re-educating those who have committed a crime and preparing them to re-enter society. The goal is to address all of the underlying root causes of crime in order to decrease the rate of recidivism once inmates are released from prison.[1] It generally involves psychological approaches which target the cognitive distortions associated with specific kinds of crime committed by individual offenders, but it may also entail more general education like reading skills and career training. The goal is to re-integrate offenders back into society.
For legal rehabilitation for lack of corpus delicti, see Exoneration.Legislation[edit]
Europe[edit]
As established by the Council of Europe committee of ministers, "a crime policy aimed at crime prevention and the social reintegration of offenders should be pursued and developed".[3]
"The European Court of Human Rights, also, has stated in various judgments that, while punishment remains one of the aims of imprisonment, the emphasis in European penal policy is now on the rehabilitative aim of imprisonment, particularly towards the end of a long prison sentence. ... A prospect of release is necessary, because human dignity requires that there must be a chance for a prisoner to atone for his offence and move towards rehabilitation. A review system is also needed because, over the course of a very long sentence, the balance between the grounds of detention (punishment, deterrence, public protection and rehabilitation) can shift to the point that detention can no longer be justified."[2]
Criticism[edit]
Some criticisms of rehabilitative systems are that they can authorize lengthy restrictions of liberty (to allow time for diagnosis and treatment) and broad assumptions of governmental power over offenders' personalities. Moreover, due process concerns can be implicated by a lack of traditional safeguards of defendants' procedural rights in rehabilitative processes. Some rehabilitative programs, such as drug courts, have also been criticized for widening the net of penal control by sentencing more defendants to prison for violations of treatment regimes than would have gone to prison in the absence of those programs.[27]