Why We Need Rehabilitation Counseling in Jails and Prisons

Hello everyone and Happy Holidays! I am here to talk about something that has been on my mind as we are heading into the new year. That’s the fact that we need more Rehabilitation Counseling in Jails and Prisons. A lot of you are probably wondering what brought this to the forefront of my mind. Well as I was looking up ideas for my next Youtube video as to how well the United States did with mental health, one thing that was not on the statistics was Americans who are/were incarcerated. Incarcerate Americans and Homeless Americans are two of my most passionate populations that I look to either help or spread awareness on. So here are some statistics I found about Incarcerated Americans.

According to the World Population Review 44% of Americans who were released from prison will return within a year. Specifically in Illinois 17% of Americans will return to jail or prison within one year and 43% will return to jail or prison within 3 years. This brings Illinois recidivism rate to 39.9%. In regard to why the recidivism, there are a lot of reasons why Americans go back to jail. The reasons are, but not limited to, the following: poverty/lack of resources/socioeconomic status, institutionalization, lack of care for mental health and substance use issues, their environment or community they are going back to, disadvantage of employment opportunities and more. We must not forget that recidivism affects everyone and not just the American that committed the crime. Recidivism affects the families of both, or multiple parties involved, the community the crime was done in, the taxpayers and more in negative ways. Also, recidivism affects our outlook on other Incarcerated Americans as well in the form of generalization and over-generalization.    

For the reasons listed above as well as more reasons that were not brought up or mentioned, Rehabilitation Counseling is very much needed here in the United States, especially in Illinois. Rehabilitation Counseling will help with institutionalization, help with any mental health or substance use needs, help with finding resources, help with advocating for resources that do not exist in their area and more. All in all, we must do our part to take care of each other, regardless of our feelings towards another population. Doing this will help us move forward to a better community, state, and country.