Chapter 9

Correctional Services

Catalogue

• The Social Problem of Delinquency and Crime

Scial Work and Corrections

Case Examples

Chapter Summary

Exercises

【 Key Points 】

• 1.Corrections, turned out to be a medical terminology then it was introduced to social domain becoming a judicial term.

• 2.Correction means a process that the national authorities and relevant staff implement various measures and means to make the offenders or the people who have criminal tendencies get correctional services ideologically, psychologically and behaviorally, thereby reintegrating into society, being a normal social member.

• 3.Community treatment is the main field of correctional social workers. It means put the criminals into community, under the help of social organization, nongovernmental organization and social volunteers, the special national office corrected their criminal mentality and bad behavior in the term of court verdict, judgment or decision, and impel them return society.

【 The Social Problems of Delinquency and crime 】

Delinquency and crime have become major social problems of current society. They not only bring big challenges to social security, but also cause irreparable damages to numerous families. Globally, more than 8.75 million individuals are incarcerated, with almost two million of these individuals incarnated in the United States. With 686 per 100,000 of the U.S. national population incarcerated in 2001, the United States has the distinction of having the highest prison population rate in the world.

Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Bluebook 2010 indicated that the criminal and public order caseloads have substantially grown in China. The annual numbers of criminal cases amounted to 5,300,000 and the growth rate of more than 10 percent. The numbers of public order cases have reached to 9,900,000; the growth rate was up to 20 percent. Meanwhile, murder, robbery, rape and other serious violent crimes have increased sharply.

【 Social Work and Corrections 】

Correctional service is the product of human penal concepts update and modern prison systems reform. Penalty, as the counterpart of the offenders, is a means to deal with criminal activities. In the history of human being, there was always existing a system or process to punish or rehabilitate the criminals.

At the first beginning, punishments especially corporal and capital were the common ways to be offered to the offenders, hanging, branding, banishment and other kinds of physical penalties were utilized to “punish the culprit and be a lesson to others”

Until the end of the eighteenth century , the bourgeois idea of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” was considered into penalty system---the incarceration system came into general use. Instead of penitentiary system was developed. A Boston shoemaker, John Augustus exploited probation as a substitute for imprisonment who earned the title of “ the father of probation ”

In 1925 , the American Congress passed Federal Probation Law, which made correctional social work was established in the whole U.S.

Corrections ， turned out to be a medical terminology then it was introduced to social domain becoming a judicial term. It means a process that the national authorities and relevant staff implement various measures and means to make the offenders or the people who have criminal tendencies get correctional services ideologically, psychologically and behaviorally, thereby reintegrating into society , being a normal social member. The process of corrections is a total process of rehabilitating the offenders.

The Social Work Dictionary defines corrections as “the legal specialty that seeks to change and improve the behaviors of convicted law offenders through incarceration , parole, probation, and ideally educational programs and social services.”

Corrections and Social Worker

Correction is a total process of helping the offenders or the people who have criminal tendencies to be rehabilitated, while social workers play an extremely important role in this process.

Social workers, as caring professionals, work with people to enhance their competence and functioning, to access social supports and resources, to create humane and responsive social services, and to expand structures of society that provide opportunities for all citizens.

Their basic target is summarized as follows “The correctional process has come to mean the administration of the penalty in such a way that the offender is ‘corrected’, i.e., his current behavior is kept within acceptable limits at the same time that his general life adjustment is modified. This is concerning to two methods to realize that target:

• (1) working with the correction objects to make them have a better of themselves and one’s own

• understanding through exploring strengths and resources to help them,

• (2) Modifying environment to bring about a healthier and more supportive social climate for correction objects to live in, such as providing some help with inadequate housing conditions, job placement or economic stresses.