Thursday, October 30, 2008
Punishment?
It is argued that prison is necessary over rehabilitation because punishment is essential to change people's ways and to create fear of disobeying the law. However, is rehab not punishment as well?? If someone is addicted to drugs, having to endure rehab can be excruciating as well. For instance, Amy Winehouse's husband was offered release from jail that would result in him immediately being emitted into a rehab facility. He declined this offer twice. It's hard to say why he continued to refuse rehab, however, many drug addicts don't like to face reality. The reality is that he needs help and a drug addicts mind is not willing to accept that fact. Often, they would rather be treated like a law offender rather than someone with a mental illness (categorized by their addiction).
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4 comments:
This is interesting... One would think rehab is million times better than jail!
The conditions, treatment, evertything... should be much more comfortable.
I know "withdrawals" are supposed to be excruciating, but I didn't know they were worse than jail time.
Oh well, maybe it's a question of personalities.
Your assuming the person arrested on the drug cause wants to reform. If I were a drug addict rehab would be horrible because I would actually have to stop. Jail has all the benefits of people with a common interest with me and an eventual release to doing more drugs.
Voltair,
What i mean to portray is exactly what you said, they don't want to reform. Which puts rehab on a higher scale on punishment than prison. Therefore, advocates of prison as serving to truly punish offenders should take into account that drug offenders often would rather go to jail so they don't have to be changed by treatment.
Yay! I am so happy you wrote this post. I agree that rehabilitation is a form of punishment, it just happens to be effective in more ways than just an attempted deterrence. People seem to think that rehabilitation is a way to let prisoners off easy it is asking much more of them than just throwing them in prison would.
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