CA 1 INSTITUTIONAL CORRECTIONS

MODULE 1
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CORRECTIONS

TERMS TO PONDER

▪ Correctional Administration - refers to the processes of managing the social, political, and
economic forces, pressures, and influences which are external to the correctional organization,
yet which impinge on or affect the internal operations of the organization, as the process of
managing the organization’s internal system for delivering correctional services and for goals
objectives and policies.
▪ Correctional Management - is concerned primarily with making use of available manpower and
resources to implement programs. Thus, most of Management’s time is spent on activities within
the organization. Managers are responsible primarily for implementing policy and for day-to-day
planning so their positions tend to be less political.
▪ Penology - is the study of punishment for crime or of criminal offenders. It includes the study of
control and prevention of crime through punishment of criminal offenders. It is a term derived
from the Latin word “poena” which means pain or suffering.
▪ Correction - is a branch of the Criminal Justice System concerned with the custody,
supervision and rehabilitation of criminal offenders. It is the field of criminal justice
administration, which utilizes the body of knowledge and practices of the government and the
society in the general involving the processes of handling individuals who have been convicted
of offenses for purposes of crime prevention and control.
▪ Separation - or containment is sometimes referred to as incapacitation, also termed as
incarceration. Incapacitation aims at making it permanently impossible to re-offend, while
incarceration aims at making it impossible only for a short while, with a hope that re-offending
will not occur upon release.
▪ Responsibility Model - stresses prisoners’ responsibility for their own actions, not
administrative control to assure prescribed behavior. Proper classification of inmates, according
to this model, permits placing prisoners in the least restrictive prison consistent with security,
safety, and humane confinement. Prisoners should be given a significant degree of freedom and
then held to account for their actions.
▪ Custodial Model – is based on the assumption that prisoners have been incarcerated for the
protection of society and for the purpose of incapacitation, deterrence and retribution. It
emphasizes maintenance and security and order through the subordination of the prisoner to
the authority of the warden. Discipline is strictly applied and most aspect of behavior is
regulated.
▪ Control Model - emphasizes on prisoner obedience, work and education.
▪ Rehabilitation Model – in this model, security and housekeeping activities are viewed primarily
as a framework for rehabilitative efforts. Professional treatment specialist enjoys a higher status
than other employees, in accordance with the idea that all aspect of prison management should
be directed towards rehabilitation.
▪ Reintegration Model - consistent with the perspective of community corrections, this model is
based on the assumption that it is important for the offender to maintain or develop ties with the
free society. The entire focus of this approach is on the resumption of a normal life.
▪ Total Institution Model - is one that completely encapsulates the lives of the people who work
and live inside the jail or prison. This concept of inmate treatment is probably an influence of the
broad goals of incarceration.
▪ Penitentiary Model - applies two systems namely, the separate and the congregate. The
separate system used solitary confinement and manual labor in which the prisoners were kept
separate from one another as well as from the outside world. The congregate system is one in
which the prisoners slept in solitary cells, worked together but complete silence is observed.
▪ Progressive Model - The New York’s famous Elmira Reformatory is described as the original
model from which progressive penology evolved. It was praised as a humanitarian “hospital” or
“college on the hill”, the model developed a new, liberating reformatory and produced a kind of
scientific penitentiary.
▪ Punishment - is restricted to such suffering as is inflicted upon the offender in a definite way
by, or in the name of, the society of which he is a permanent member. It is a form of disapproval
for certain behaviors, which is followed by imposing a penalty. It makes the offender stigmatized
and penalized. The offender may or may not actually suffer, under the intentional application of
punishment, depending on the circumstances it is applied and the toughness of the individual
offender.
▪ Retribution – punishment of the transgressor was carried out in the form of personal
vengeance. Since there were no written laws and no courts, the victim of a crime was allowed to
obtain his redress in the way he saw fit. Oftentimes, the retaliatory act resulted to infliction of
greater injury or loss than the original crime, so that the latter victim was perforce afforded his
reveries.
▪ Expiation or Atonement – is a form of group vengeance as distinguish from retribution which is
personal vengeance. Punishing the offender gives the community a sense of its moral
superiority, an assurance that virtue is rewarded after all. Hostile action against the offender
brings about cohesiveness in society.
▪ Deterrence – It is commonly believed that punishment gives a lesson to the offender; that it
shows other what would happen if they violate the law; and that punishment holds crime in
check.
▪ Protection – as a justification of punishment came after prisons, were fully established. People
believe that by putting the offender in prison, society is protected from his further criminal
depredation. Vicious and dangerous criminals are made to serve long terms of imprisonment to
protect the public from harm or against their dangerous behavior.
▪ Reformation – a justification of punishment which states that society can best be protected
from crime if the purpose of imprisonment is to reform or rehabilitate the prisoner.
HISTORICAL FEATURES
▪ Retaliation - was the earliest remedy for a wrong act to anyone. The concept of personal
revenge by the victim’s family or tribe against the family or tribe of the offender, hence “blood
feuds” was accepted in the early primitive societies.
▪ Fines and Punishment – customs have exerted effort and great force among primitive
societies. The acceptance of vengeance in the form of payment (cattle, food, personal services,
etc.) became accepted as dictated by tribal traditions.
▪ Securing Sanctuary – As early as the 13th century, a criminal could avoid punishment by
claiming refugee in a church for a period of 40 days.
▪ Torture and Transportation - In England at about 1468, torture as a form of punishment
became prevalent. Transportation of criminals in England was authorized. At the end of the
century, Russia and other European Countries followed this system. It partially relieved
overcrowding of prisons. Transportation of criminals was abandoned in 1835.
▪ Death Penalty - became prevalent as a form of punishment during the 17th and 18th Century. ▪
Gaols (jails) - were common as pre-trial detention facilities operated in England.
▪ Galleys - were also used. These are long, low, narrow, single decked ships propelled by sails,
usually rowed by criminals, a type of ship used for transportation of criminals.
▪ Hulks – abandoned warships used to house prisoners were utilized, converted into prisons as
a means to relieve congestion of prisons. They were known as the “floating hells”.
THE EARLY LEGAL SYSTEM
▪ Roman Laws - the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning
over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the Corpus Juris
Civilis (AD 529) ordered by Emperor Justinian I.
▪ Mohammedan or Arabic Laws – set of laws founded from the teachings of Islamic Prophet
Muhammad which established the Mohammedan principles of religion, doctrines, institutions
and practices.
▪ Anglo-American Laws – known as the common law - a system of principles and rules
grounded in universal custom or natural law and developed, articulated, and applied by courts in
a process designed for the resolution of individual controversies. It is the basis of all
Anglo-American legal systems.

Prepared by: Ricket Layug