Work in Prison Should be for a Purpose

Work in prison should have a positive value as a part of a system of rehabilitation. It should not be something added to a prison sentence to make it harder and more unpleasant. It should not be something added to prison sentence, to make it harder and more unpleasant. It should not be a privilege to save the prisoners from the demoralizing effects and misery of endless unoccupied hour. Those magistrates who clung to sentences of hard labor doubt less, looked upon strenuous work as an addition punishments.

This point of view is widely accepted as right and proper, but it ignores the fact that unwillingness to work is often one of the major causes of criminality. It has been said that the purpose of prison work is a program of rehabilitation. Workers can classify it into two folds; training for work and training. To send prisoners back to the outside world, more than ever convinced, is that labor is an evil to be avoided, and is to confirm them in their old way of life.

 The prisoners that is to say, needs to be trained in habits of industries; but over and above this, he will gain immeasurably if it is possible to rouse in him the consciousness of self mastery and of purpose that the completion of any what while piece of work can give to the doer. He may find a pride of achievement in something more satisfying, and socially desirable by putting conscious efforts and time on a dignified work than crime. But this thing can only come when the work itself has a purpose and demands an effort on the individual.