My value is morality, which is defined as right and ethical behavior.
My value criterion is consequentialism, which is looking to the consequences and outcomes of an action. When we look to the consequences of an action, we can determine whether or not that action is moral.
I offer the following definitions for clarification:
the restoration of someone to a useful place in society.
(wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn Wordnet Princeton University)
used to express obligation (Merriam-Webster)
: punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act (Oxford
Dictionary)
: a series of organizations involved in apprehending, prosecuting, defending, sentencing,and jailing tho
se involved in crimes including law enforcement, attorneys, judges,courts of law, prisons
(dictionary.com)
Contention 1: Retribution is ineffective.
Subpoint A: Retribution leads to recidivism.
Recidivism is defined as habitual relapse into crime. Without rehabilitation programs, past offenders will not learn or change their behaviors, therefore leading to repeated crime. Coupled with the fact that retribution is ineffective, it is obvious that rehabilitation is the only suitable option.
Aitken, 09 Jonathan Aitken is a former Conservative MP who was imprisoned for perjury. His report,
¶
'Locked Up Potential', for the Centre for
Social Justice, is published today. He was speaking to Mark ¶ Hughes. Jonathan Aitken: The way we treat prisoners creates a conveyor belt of crime. A system based ¶ on punishment rather than rehabilitation won't work. MONDAY 23 MARCH 2009, ¶ http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jonathan‐aitken‐the‐way‐we‐treat‐prisoners‐
¶
creates‐a‐conveyor‐belt‐of‐crime‐
1651743.html
¶ But most offenders inside Britain's prisons are low on the scale of criminality and if we are ¶ interested in reducing offending rates and getting people into law‐abiding lifestyles, which ¶ currently we could hardly be doing a worse job of, then we need to consider reform.
¶
We have a system in which two thirds of prisoners are re‐offending within two years.
When you
¶ think that this is a prison system upon which we spend nearly £20bn a year, it's a very poor ¶ return.
Because our system is based on punishment rather than rehabilitation, we are simply
¶
creating a permanent conveyor belt of crime and offending, which in turn leads to prison
¶
overcrowding.
¶
People released from prison end up back there because they are not helped to integrate back
¶
into society.
The best way to do that is for them to get a job, but our current legislation only ¶ allows for criminal records to be expunged after at least 10 years.
¶ It makes it impossible for former prisoners to get jobs because if they are given an interview ¶ they are forced to admit that they have a criminal record. No one will then employ them, and
¶
they are dragged back into a life of crime…
¶
The sad fact is that the deficiencies in our system are making it difficult for prisoners to
¶
reintegrate into society and instead they are leading people back to a life of

crime. This will
¶
continue to be the case unless we look at reform. We need to move away from retribution and
¶
towards rehabilitation.
¶
Subpoint B:Rehabilitation is extremely effective at reducing recidivism
Cullen and Gendreau 1 writes 1
Even if interventions are effective with a range of other behaviors
, the question ¶ still remains whether they are able to reduce delinquent and criminal behavior.
¶
Lipsey and Wilson
(1993) listed 10 meta-analyses that were conducted on evaluations of treatment programs for offenders. In all cases, a positive effect size
¶
was reported
.
There was a tendency, however, for the treatment effect size for ¶ offender interventions to be lower than that for interventions targeting other ¶ outcomes for change. The lower effect size may reflect the difficulty of changing antisocial conduct and/or the lower quality of interventions with offenders ¶ (Losel 1995). Still, it is instructive to reiterate that every meta-analysis of
¶
offender treatment indicated that programs
, in the aggregate, reduced problem
¶
behavior. As such, there is no evidence that offenders cannot be rehabilitated
.
¶
Losel
(1995) has conducted the most comprehensive assessment of the metaanalyses of offender rehabilitation programs
. In a review of 13 meta-analyses ¶ published between 1985 and 1995, Losel found that the mean effect size ranged ¶ from a low of 0.05 to a high of 0.18.
This finding has been confirmed in an
¶
updated review by Redondo, Sanchez-Meca, and Garrido
(1999, 252).
The consistency of the positive effect of treatment in these meta-analyses is important
¶
because it suggests that this result, at least in broad terms, is not dependent on
¶
the sample of studies selected and coding decisions made by individual authors.
¶
Indeed, even meta-analyses conducted by scholars unsympathetic to rehabilitation produced positive effects
(see Whitehead and Lab 1989). Losel estimates ¶ that across all the meta-analyses, “the mean effect size of all assessed studies ¶ probably has a size of about 0.10” (p. 89). Using Rosenthal’s (1991) BESD statistic, this would mean that the recidivism rate for the treatment group would
¶
be 45 percent
, while the rate for the control group would be 55 percent.According to Losel (1995, 90–91), however, this
overall effect size might be
¶ underestimated. Treatment groups, for example, are often compared with control groups that do not receive “no intervention” but some other type of criminal justice sanction, which might involve some kind of treatment.
The use of
¶
dependent variables that are measured dichotomously and with official measures of recidivism also may attenuate the effect size. Thus, Lipsey (1992, 98)
¶
notes that official indicators of delinquency have low reliability because “it is
¶
largely a matter of chance whether a particular delinquent act eventuates in an ¶ officially recorded contact with an agent of law enforcement or the juvenile ¶ justice system.”
He calculates that when this fact in taken into account, the
¶
“deattenuated effect size” for the interventions “doubles”
(p. 98).
Through this evidence you can see that retribution is entirely ineffective. . as well as when looking back to my framework, it is clear that retribution carries far too many negative consequences to be considered. Rehabilitation solves for these consequences, particularly recidivism. When we prefer rehabilitation, we are achieving the best possible outcomes, which is the most moral action.
Contention 2: Rehabiliation is the most cost effective approach.
2
(
Teri Kron “Prisoner Rehabilition Versus Traditional Punishment” “http://terikron.wordpress.com/prisonerrehabilition-versus-traditional-punishment/)
Yet another factor to
consider when it comes to rehabilitation is its cost effectiveness
. The
Criminal Justice
Institute reports that of the estimated 440,000 individuals convicted of non-violent crimes
, the cost to jail one inmate for one year is $20,224.65
(Irwin).
A quick
calculation of these figures adds up to a staggering $8.9 billion annually.
Rehabilitative efforts
such as the Drug Court Program reduce these costs to
1
Francis T. Cullen and Paul Gendreau—2000. [Francis T. Cullen is Distinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice with the University of Cincinnati. Paul Gendreau is Director, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, and Professor of Psychology with the
University of New Brunswick at Saint John]. Assessing Correctional Rehabilitation: Policy, Practice, and Prospects. POLICIES, PROCESSES, AND DECISIONS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, Vol. 3. Criminal Justice. JS.
2 (
Teri Kron
“Prisoner Rehabilition Versus Traditional Punishment” “http://terikron.wordpress.com/prisoner-rehabilition-versus-traditional-punishment/)

tax-payers considerably
.
The estimated cost to imprison one inmate convicted of a non-violent crime is met in contrast with the estimated $4,300 cost of giving the same individual
drug treatment
(Drug Abuse Treatment).
Elizabeth
April 30,
Sending juveniles in trouble with the law to
neighborhood programs rather than detention centers is preferable
to most people in Illinois, who believe
it's less expensive and more effective,
according to a survey released Friday.
¶
"
The public is looking toward real solutions to youth crime, as opposed to short-term retribution or short-term answers that could be far more expensive in the long term," said David Whittaker, executive director of the Chicago Area Project
, which commissioned the study. "
When kids are locked up in detention centers, research shows they are not getting the support and help they need to turn their lives around."
When looking to the economic consequences, it is clear that rehabilitation is again the preferable method. It is inexpensive as well as effective, which cannot be said for retribution. When looking to consequences, the right choice would be to use a system which is cost effective and benefits society, which would be rehabilitation.
Contention 3: THE PUBLIC HAS CONSISTENLY SHOWN SUPPORT FOR REHABILITATIVE PROGRAMS
Besides being affordable and effective, the public has also shown tremendous support for rehabilitation above retribution. Combined with the previous evidence, the only valid choice for the criminal justice system is to value rehabilitation over retribution.
Francis T. Cullen [Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology, University of Cincinnati], “It’s Time to
Reaffirm Rehabilitation,” Criminology & Public Policy, 5 (2006): 665–672
To be sure, evidence of punitive attitudes toward offenders was not in short supply. But even at this time and in this context, the public remained supportive of rehabilitation both generally (Cullen et al.,
1988) and for juveniles (Cullen et al., 1983). Over the years, with some modest variation, this finding has been replicated repeatedly (for a summary, see Cullen et al., 2000; Cullen and Moon, 2002). In my own research, my colleagues and I have discovered time and again that the public favors rehabilitation as a goal of corrections, believes that treatment is particularly important for juveniles, and especially
supports early intervention programs (Applegate et al., 1997; Cullen et al., 1990, 1998; Moon et al.,
2000, 2003; Sundt et al., 1998). To supply just one example, in a 2001 national survey, we discovered that 80% of the sample thought that rehabilitation should be the goal of juvenile prisons and that over
9 in 10 favored a range of early intervention programs (e.g., parental management training, Head Start, afterschool programs) (Cullen et al., 2002a). I call public support for rehabilitation a “criminological fact” because over the course of a quarter century, it has been demonstrated in study after study. Just to reinforce this point again, a 2006 national poll sponsored by the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency found that “by an almost 8 to 1 margin (87% to 11%), the US voting public is in favor of
rehabilitative services for prisoners as opposed to a punishment-only system” (Krisberg and
Marchionna, 2006:1).

The general public’s agreement that rehabilitation should be preferred cements all evidence that rehabilitation should be valued above retribution. Seeing as that morality is right and ethical behavior, and recognizing that the outcomes and consequences of rehabilitation are right, ethical, and supportive of society, makes it obvious that you should look to the affirmative.