Incarceration In Australia Essay

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Australia is experiencing a rise in the use of incarceration in all states and territories, with the national imprisonment rate increased by 6 percent from 196 prisoners per 100,000 adult population in 2015 to 208 prisoners per 100,000 adult population in 2016 (Australian Bureau of Statics, 2016). While, the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate about 608,300 populations in 2005, decreased 2.3 percent from 2014 (The New York Times, 2016). The reason why this happens is that the American federal prison system is in crisis that caused by too many people are sent to prison. In this case, the prison system released thousands of nonviolent drug offenders to relieve stress and save money. According to these data, I begin …show more content…

Based on a study that tracked 404,638 prisoners in 30 states in 2005, Bureau of Justice Statistics found that recidivism rates are high among released prisoners, especially among property offenders about 82.1 percent76.9 percent (Durose et al., 2014). Besides this, incarceration might also cause the physical and psychological problems. Before 17th century, torture was historically taken for granted as part of justice (Scott, 1995). Until the humanism development, "cruel and unusual punishment" came to be condemned (Scott, 1995). With the evolution of punishment practices, torture is forbidden in international law and domestic law in most countries. It is revealed by Luban & Shue (2011) that punishment practices, law enforcement abuses and interrogation methods might be labeled as torture in the United States. However, during the real application, although the physical torture is few, the definition of “severe mental pain or suffering” is confused and falsified to avoid the repression and prosecution of mental torture (Luban & Shue, 2011). Many victims suffer from this kind of psychological torture is difficult to prove and often bring serious consequence, such as PTSD. In this case, incarceration not only fail to reduce the recidivism rate, but also leads to more severe

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