The Age Old Debate Of Punish Or Rehabilitate Prisoners !
The Age Old Debate Of Punish Or Rehabilitate
Debates over how to treat prisoners have gone on since imprisonment began, should the prison system leave inmates to fester in cells, with punishment and deterrence as the goal of incarceration!
In Spain, sport is being used in juvenile prisons to reintegrate young people and offer a better shot at life.
Sport is a powerful tool if used adequately and now they have the opportunity to prove it in a juvenile prison, in the Spanish Basque Country.
Their ambition is to implement a programme we called “Sport accompaniment for reintegration” that aims to lower reoccurrence tax helping these young guys through their reinsertion process.
Any young man can participate in the programme, but the idea is to focus on these with no solid familiar or social base and that could recidivate more easily.
The main goal is to help them through the reinsertion process by helping to acquire healthy habits and to create a solid social environment.
Prisoners will start to train in whatever sport they like under the supervision of a physical trainer. Once the teenager is training well, the physical trainer contacts a club or sport association from the young inmate’s village to ask for collaboration.
If the club accepts, the coach and some athletes will visit the teenager in prison to get to know him during some training sessions.
In the last phase of the programme, just some weeks before finishing the sentence, the young man will go out to train or to participate in competitions with his future club. The programme will end when the inmate leaves prison.
Apart from offering a familiar social environment, the programme has a second objective: it seeks to mentally prepare kids to face the stigma they will endure back in society.
In one hand, meeting the future coach and colleagues will help to diminish the stigma in the hosting club.
In the other hand, during the excursions they will face the stigma and this will be helpful to mentally prepare them for their comeback in society.
A pilot programme will be implemented in July, but for now they are setting up the definitive programme with the prison direction.
If you find this article interesting please visit another article by David Carmichael,
Published 6/9/16 by Mark McCluskey