What is Wrong with American Prisons and Jails

Abstract

The faults of American prisons and jails are not to be laid at the door of any single group, neither of prison architects, administrators, correction officers, nor of the agents of criminal justice, but of the entire structure of public crime control, which is content to deal with society's manifold problems of economic, social and human relations largely in terms of punishment. Despite its lip service to theories of social control by education, American penology stands immobilized today with one foot in the road of rehabilitation and the other in the road of punishment, and here, to my mind, lies our major dilemma and problem.