[외국제도연구]미국의 교정제도：회고와 전망

The Correctional System in the U.S.

This paper was focused on the pressing issues of the U.S. correctional system and its development. The outlines of the paper is as follows： Chap. 1. Introduction Chap. 2. The Development of the U.S. Corrections：Penitentiary/Re- formatory/Women’s Correctional Facilities/Reforms of the Progressives/Rehabilitation-Medical Model/Community Model/Crime Control Model Chap. 3. The Current Situation of the U.S. Corrections：The Structure of the U.S. Corrections/The Features of the U.S. Prisoners Chap. 4. Issues in the U.S. Corrections：The Increase of Incarceration Rate/Prison-Commercial Complex/Remote-controlled Stun Belt Chap. 5. Concluding Remarks The findings can be summarized as follows：The history of American corrections represents the flow of correctional models which reflect the sociopolitical value in those days. The corporal punishment in the colonial days was abolished after the Declaration of Independence, and then incarceration became a major criminal sanction. America has experienced several correctional models such as penitentiary, reformatory, women’s correctional facilities, reforms of the Progressives, rehabilitation-medical model, community model, crime control model, etc. and now is searching for a new model for the future. The U.S. correctional system consists of institutional confinement (e.g., penitentiary, jail, etc.), community treatment (e.g., probation, parole, etc.) and intermediate sanction (e.g., halfway house, education-work release, etc.) American correctional policy seems to be shifted back and forth between incarceration and community treatment. The focus has been changed by the function/dysfunction or the action/ reaction thereof, in other words, through the dialectical path of thesis- antithesis-synthesis. The increasing number of prisoners with HIV/AIDS, mentally ill prisoners, long-term prisoners and elderly inmates is the challenging problem in the U.S., and in South Korea as well.