CRJ 524 Week 3 Discussion 2

The public has a right to know is a statement that I have heard in regards to a number an of topics. The different media outlets provide the public with information regarding things that are happening in our local area as well s national news headlines. Correctional facilities are no different when it comes to the knowledge that the public has on those facilities. Correctional facilities are used to house people who have committed an assortment of crimes and are paying the price for those crimes. The people who are in those correctional facilities are still people and they deserve to be treated as such.

One of the moral pitfalls of a correctional facility is that they are in it for the profit and not the rehabilitation of the prisoner. This type of prison system receives their funds based on how many inmates are housed there and so they are able to cut costs in certain areas in order to make room to house more prisoners. This in turn does not help the recidivism fact at all and when prisoners are released they have a higher chance of returning to the correctional facility because they would commit the same or a different crime again. These types of correctional facilities also run a safety risk because they are cutting costs. Correctional facility employees receive a lower salary wage and also fewer benefits and this in turn causes a high turnover rate and that can leave the correctional facility’s operations vulnerable to inside and outside breaches.

Private correctional facilities are not looking to make better productive citizens they are looking to maximize their profits with little to no cost to them and that is not ethically right. The key word in the word correctional is correction and that should be goal when housing inmates.

References

Retrieved from: Banks, C. (2013). Criminal justice ethics: Theory and practice (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.