The present paper aims to discuss the role of prisons in the resocialization of the people kept in the incarcerated after their turned out to be guilty of committing some offence and the announcement of sentence against them from the court of law. The study will be conducted in the light of Conflict, Structural functional and Interactionsit perspectives in order to define and determine the role played by prisons in the rehabilitation of the offenders.
The Paper.
It is a fact beyond suspicion that every social establishment of the world has introduced law and judicial systems in order to maintain order within its jurisdiction. As a result, the individuals found guilty of committing crimes are arrested, tried at the court of law and if found guilty, the criminals are restrained in the prison houses in order to punish and penalize the offenders on the one side, and protect the society by discouraging the criminal acts on the other (Siegel, 2008:471). The prisons are regarded to be reformative centers, which serve as the platform responsible for the education, training and resocialization of the prisoners, so that they could lead a normal life like other law-abiding citizens of society (Macionis, 2008:138). The prison administrations have introduced several rehabilitation programs for the moral uplift of the prisoners, where the education and training sessions are conducted within the prison houses on regular basis, so that the criminals could give up deviant behavior and offences after getting released from the prison. Somehow, the critics have always demonstrated serious reservations about the miserable plight of the prisoners, where a large majority of the former offenders tends to commit the similar or even different crimes in the wake of their setting free from the jails. Hence, the environment of jails is declared to be responsible for turning the individuals into habitual offenders because of their stay with criminals.