Justice and Rehabilitation Theme Analysis

In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, the U.S. criminal justice and correctional systems neither dispense justice nor provide rehabilitation—the novella shows how these high-minded ideals have nothing to do with how the systems work in practice. The novella’s plot turns on an initial injustice: Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of double homicide on circumstantial evidence because the prosecuting district attorney wants to use the high-profile case to further his political career. Once inside prison, Andy suffers further injustices. For example, prison rapists repeatedly assault him, and when he resists, prison staff punish him with solitary confinement for fighting. Even prisoners who actually committed crimes should not be punished with repeated sexual assaults, yet the novella implies that this happens regularly in the Shawshank prison—the narrator, Red, casually admits he’s speaking from experience when he describes how prisoners like Andy stanch their bleeding after they’ve been raped. Moreover, the novella suggests that prison doesn’t rehabilitate anyone, for two reasons. First, prison culture actually pushes both Red and Andy to commit crimes: Red gets a reputation for smuggling contraband, while Andy starts laundering money for prison staff. It’s implied in Red’s case and explicit in Andy’s that they undertake these crimes in part to secure protection from further sexual assaults. Second, because so many prisoners are paroled at such an advanced age, they are too institutionalized, sick, or senile upon release to prove that they can act as rehabilitated, contributing members of society. Thus, in the novella, both the criminal justice and correctional systems fail in their stated purposes.