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Are Prisons Effective Total Institutions or Do They More Commonly Fail in Their Goal of Resocialization?

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Are prisons effective total institutions or do they more commonly fail in their goal of resocialization? Please compare and contrast how a conflict, a functionalist or an interactionist theorist would answer this question. Finally offer your opinion

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.
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It is a fact beyond …show more content…

Hence, the environment of jails is declared to be responsible for turning the individuals into habitual offenders because of their stay with criminals. Theorists, psychologists and researchers have articulated different reasons behind the prisons’ being unable to play the active and powerful role of the reform house for prisoners.
The sociological conflict perspective views state of clash and struggle between haves and haves-not in all societies and cultures of the world (Turner, 1978:160). Being the essential part of society, the same conflict could also be found in prisons, where the strong, powerful and affluent prisoners treat the weak, feeble and poor prisoners to be their slaves. The haves not only force the haves-not to remain at their service, but also increase the intensity of criminal aptitude among them. Sexual exploitation serves as the most heinous crime practiced within the prisons, where the weak prisoners are assaulted, tortured and raped by the influential prisoners as well as the members of prison administration. Such a state of affair multiplies the sense of crime among the prisoners, which intend to carry on committing crimes after their release from prison in order to take revenge of cruelties inflicted upon them by the powerful stratum of society in jails. Somehow, it is not the case in every prison, as some of the prisons strictly discourage the exploitation of the weak at the hands of the

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