Source: (1999) United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders 26-1.
The paper studied measures to facilitate the reintegration of offenders into society. It examined these measures primarily from a social development perspective, with emphasis on the role of social institutions such as the family and the community within the Philippine experience. The paper observed that the goals of a humane criminal justice system were best served if offenders were reintegrated and rehabilitated by means other than incarceration, for a number of reasons: (1) imprisonment led to other problems related to an offender’s stigmatization and desocialization; (2) prisons fostered the development of subcultures among prisoners that tend to harden them; (3) corrective actions and treatment were better achieved in a natural environment where offenders could highlight and experience the areas of their lives they wanted to change; (4) the community provided a network of relationships and a range of activities that enabled offenders to improve their social skills and enhance their social functioning; (5) offenders could continue being responsible for managing a home, budgeting resources, deciding family matters, etc., which helped them maintain self-esteem; (6) implementation and evaluation of rehabilitation and reintegration plans could be monitored more closely; and (7) community-based treatment eliminated the need to maintain an entire prison bureaucracy.
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