Land Of Incarceration

The Land of the Incarcerated
“The land of the free and the home of the brave” is a timeless saying that truly resonates with United States citizen’s and sums up the morals this country was founded on. The land of the free may not be as free as people think, as Americans find themselves in an era in we have the largest prison population in the world. Due to judicial stipulations such as minimum sentencing laws most crimes have the same punishment regardless of the circum These people are first time non-violent offenders who may be headed for prison. The times are changing and so should the way we handle our prisoners.
A privatized prison is a prison, run and overseen by a private contractor. This contractor is in charge of maintaining a certain

The United States is one of the only countries in the world in which you can make money off of putting someone else into prison, without calling it what it is, in other countries this is simply called slavery. Slavery has been illegal for many years and that is why private prisons should also be illegal, it is essentially being paid to own another human being. While these people may have committed crimes they have committed crimes against the state and so should be held accountable by the state and not a third party contractor. These contractors do not care if you are rehabilitated and in fact it would be better for their business if you weren’t. Therefore; the privatized prison system is more of a trade school than a rehabilitation center. Often, non-violent offenders go into these centers for petty crimes such as; possession of drugs, receiving stolen property, or shoplifting. These non-violent offenders come out hardened by the other inmates, with knowledge of crimes and how to commit crimes that those offenders never had the intent or means to commit. Good non-violent people are pulled into this vicious system every

A county judge sent children as young as twelve to juvenile detention centers for things such as, mocking someone on myspace, receiving a stolen moped without knowledge it was stolen, and shoplifting DVD’s from Walmart. (1) Judge Mark Ciavarella is a convicted felon and former county judge who received $2.6 million dollars from a private juvenile detention center in return for sending juveniles there. (1) Judge Ciavarella’s actions are a perfect example of why capitalism has no place in the judiciary branch. Judges should be impartial and have fortitude in matters such as this, although this never would have occurred in the first place had this private juvenile detention center never been established. Another scandal like this will happen in the future, because of the amount of money these centers make they have a lot of influence and become very engrained in our