Rehabilitation

• The idea that punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend and can live a crime-free life. It focuses on various treatment programmes to change offenders future behaviour by addressing issues which led to their offending.
• Rehabilitation can be argued to be a treatment model: the way to stop offending is to find and identify the cause and find a solution, CBT. Rehabilitation takes away the desire to reoffend ; when ex-offenders are put back into society, they are unable to settle into the modern way of life due to having no autonomy when in prison (given food + uniform); in an unfamiliar environment they turn to crime. Rehabilitation helps prevent recidivism.
• Rehabilitation links to left realism and it treats crime as a symptom of illness since some of the causes are problems in society; eg marginalised people may not have access to healthcare, education or resources. Another problem would be relative deprivation. Rehabilitated prisoners are reintegrated into society with key skills and a way to live, unlike non-rehabilitated prisoners without key skills and who turn to crime for comfort.