Butterfly Effect Essay

6. Butterfly Effect: Ex-convict and Society

Although butterfly effect is a theory which came from meteorological sciences and by the initial work of American meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz to highlight that small cause may have large effects (Lorenz, 2001). In criminology, this theory can be used to describe the accumulation of abusive childhood experiences, dysfunctional family or social environment which is conducive for the burgeoning of any crime, which escalates into a major event e.g. becoming professional criminal.

On the other hand, this theory can also be applied to understand the turning of a first time offender into repeat offender in the absence of any kind of support from the family in terms of emotional and psychological support

Giordano, Cernkovich and Rudolph, (2002) argued that to change or to desist from crime, offenders first develop a “general cognitive openness to change” and keep the belief that ‘change is possible’. If they will not decide by themselves that they have to change nothing can change them .Once offenders make the decision to reform themselves, they interpret the potential “hooks” for change such as intimate relationship with the partner, family or a job offer. This shift involves the formation of a new identity that provides direction and acts as a filter for decision making such as whether a particular act is consistent with their new identity. The last step says, the cognitive transformation happens when offenders reinterpret their past criminal behaviour and no longer sees their criminal behaviour opportunistic, viable or personally relevant. The Cognitive Transformation Theory is theoretically important because it suggests that how offenders- their attitude and behaviour, have been shifted from anti-social to pro-social

India has witnessed many prison reforms in 20th century. The impact of which can be seen in the recent development in the prisons of India in term of starting vocational training units inside prisons, recreational facilities for the inmates and other skill development programs. The knowledge of information technology provide to the inmates has been also one of the forward. Recently, ex-convicts of Gurgaon (now Gurugram) has developed an software called PHONIX, which is used for documentation of the profiles of prisoners related to their custody records, jail hospital records, canteen records etc. Gurgaon Jail also appreciated by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. The Indian prisons have showed many developments in the area of rehabilitating of prisoners in the last two decades (NCRB, 2015). However, to reach to this point there were a chain of prison reforms happen in India and which has given new meaning to the prison i.e. from being ‘house of captives’ to ‘correctional institution’ (NCRB,