It should become apparent that although everyone would like to embrace all of the objectives of incarceration, it really isn’t possible for a variety of reasons.  Let me suggest two of the most important reasons:
1.       The citizens of the jurisdiction in question have gone through an intense process of enacting sentencing laws that reflect the majority feeling of the stakeholders.
2.       Fiscal resources are, in fact, limited and thus the outcome of policy has to be tied to those resources.
In other words, it is time to understand as aspiring correctional administrators that you cannot be “everyman” and represent all interests. You can be fair handed, but you have a duty to accomplish the mission and goals of the organization and the citizens that you serve.  It is easy to understand why one would want to protect the public, punish criminals, change the criminal behavior so they never returned to prison, and efficiently warehouse inmates until the sentence is concluded.  However, there just isn’t enough money in the world to do all of those things.  This is what prioritizing is all about. It is important for all administrators to understand what they believe to be the purpose of corrections and begin to be able to articulate that position effectively .    This leads to the week’s current discussion.  Please pick 1(one) of the five purposes of incarceration presented above  in the text that you most strongly believe to be the highest priority of incarceration and discuss why you believe that to be true. One purpose of this assignment is to make sure that you understand the proper academic and professional terms that are used in connection with this discussion, so make sure you use the professional terms that are included in the reading assignments.   If you select more than one of the five purposes of incarceration, you have done this assignment incorrectly