Should criminals be punished with lengthy jail terms or using community service programs for instance?

Criminal is defined as a person who commits a crime or crimes (Crowther, 1995). The crime that made by criminals led to a criminal behaviour. Andrew and Bonta (1998) suggest four broad definitions of criminal behaviour. These four areas are legal criminal behaviour or actions that are prohibited in state and punishable under the law, moral criminal behaviour, which refers to actions that violate the religion issues and morality. After that, social criminal behaviour, which refers to actions that violate the custom and tradition and finally psychological criminal behaviour that refers to actions that may be rewarding to the actor but inflict pain or loss on others. These criminals should be punished with the community service rather than lengthy jail terms because it is certainly helpful to the criminal justice system in a time of budget and financial management, familiarize the prisoners with a community before reintroducing to them and prevent them from being a more dangerous person. One of the reasons for the prisoners to do the community service is because it helps the criminal justice system in a time of budget and financial management. This can be seen when the cost for the government, especially in the military and defence department can be reduced (Megat, 2010). For example, the government need not much of polices to watch out the prisoners who are being held in a prisons. So, this is certainly quite effective to the department management. Also, it reduces maintenance cost for the military (Hishamuddin, 2010). Thus, it saves the high cost of a prisoner's daily care. For example, at $55 an inmate per day, the sheriff s department made about $500,000 from renting its jail beds last year according McReynolds (Christopher, 1998). Analysis of the costs involve indicate the comparative cost of community service is unlikely exceed 34% of imprisonment alternative cost maybe estimated to be as low as 11-12% (Coulter, 2011). Another reason is familiarize the prisoners with the community before reintroducing to them. This is because when they didn t do the community service, they don t have the skills, effort or guts to communicate with the community which is hard for them when they released from prison. So, this community service helps them build their confidence and also their skills to get along with the community. Furthermore, according to Coulter (2011), community service allowed them to maintain ties with family and friends, which make them feel regret when they thought about their family. Also, increase the number of persons who could potentially be placed on community service (Coulter, 2011). Plus, it helps maintain the relationship between the prisoners and the community. Thus, the prisoners will not be alienated by the community and they will feel comfortable to join a society and make it easy for the community to accept them. One other reason is to prevent them from being a more dangerous person. This is because of the conditions of the prison itself. This can be seen when the prison made them more dangerous because of the environment and make the inmates even more dangerous while incarcerated. For instance, Thomas Silverstein, six years after he was jailed for armed robbery in 1977, had killed two fellow inmates and stabbed to death prison guard, Merle Clutts. He was cleared of a third murder (Early, 2001). So, from the news shows that lengthy jail terms actually doesn t help criminals to be a better person but vice versa. Furthermore, community services teach inmates to be socialized than a dangerous person. When they feel comfortable, secure and serviceable to the community, this will certainly help them to think logically and positively towards other people, so prevent them from being a more dangerous person. Besides that, prisoners will suffer from criminogenic effects by the lengthy jail terms, which is absolutely a bad effect to the prisoners. According to Baek (2003), prisons encourage criminal

behaviour among inmates. Such as, prisoners are faced with incidence of violence and are always concerned for their safety. If they didn t threaten someone at the very least, someone will threaten them (Tosh, 1982). Moreover, prisoners are exposed to a new culture (Tosh, 1982). So, they need to maintain outside links. For example, keeping in contact with family and friends becomes frustrating (Tosh, 1982). Also, according to Tosh (1982), they might be having stress if they lost contact with family and friends outside the prison and make them lose ability to think logically and acting beyond the scope of human being. In conclusion, criminals should be punished with community service instead of lengthy jail terms because it actually helps the inmates to be in the right path to become a better human being, teach them the right, better and effective way on how to communicate with a community after what they have done before and surely change them by cultivate of positive thinking into their self. Community service also helps inmates to get a better future with a better life and with better people around them. So, we should not think criminals as a human who can t change, but help with respect them as they want to compensate offense from what they have done before and at very least, this is the best way that we can help inmates make a change.

REFERENCES: 1. Tosh, J. (1982). The Pains of Imprisonment. California: Sage Publications. 2. Crowther, J. (1995). Oxford Advanced Learner s Dictionary of Current English, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. 3. Andrews, D.A. & Bonta, J. (1998). The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, Second Edition. New Jersey: Matthew Bender & Company, Inc. 4. Early, P. (2001, August 10). America s most dangerous prisoner. BBC News. Retrieved July 10, 2011, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1393970.stm 5. Christopher, S. (1998, March 12). Prisoners to work in community. The Journal Times. Retrieved July 10, 2011, from http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/article_a7d10e9d0d5e-507d-bd66-12ceb22d8a45.html 6. Coulter, C. (2011, March 22). Alan Shatter Bill encourages community service orders. Irish Times. Retrieved July 10, 2011, from

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