Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The effects of overcrowding prisons
Effects of prison overcrowding
The effects of overcrowding prisons
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The effects of overcrowding prisons
Prompt 2 First Draft Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to social, economic, and political problems. Angela Davis is a journalist and American political activist who believes that the U.S practice of super-incarceration is closer to new age slavery than any system of criminal justice. She defines the PIC as biased for criminalizing communities of color and used to make profit for corporations from the prisoner’s suffering. In her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? , she argues that the prison systems are no longer in use and out of date since prisons just keep increasing as each become more and more populated.
Those who find themselves sentenced to time in a penitentiary, jail, or prison are at risk of either being broken or strengthened by the time they spend behind bars. There is a great debate of whether or not the prison system in the United States is positive or negative. The following will briefly highlight the positives, negatives, and possible alternatives for our nation's prison system. First, there is a long list of negatives that the prison system in America brings. The prison system is filled with crime, hate, and negativity almost as much as the free world is.
Just imagine the city of Houston being populated with nothing but prisoners. This is how badly the prison system has gotten overcrowded since the 1980's, and it is only going to get worse. Overpopulation has affected the lives of prisoners inside and outside of prison with a plethora of reasons that cause more harm than good. The only way to solve these problems is to reform the programs inside prisons and to reform the laws in the justice system. Prison reform is needed in the current rehabilitation programs inside of prison since little effort is used to implement a correct recovery for the convicted.
Beside restorative justice, mass incarceration acts as another solution to decrease the amount of crime, yet it should be limited. There has been a longstanding debate over the effectiveness of correctional institutions. Some argue that incarceration deters offenders while others argue that the experience of being incarcerated causes individuals to continue in their life of crime. According to Bruce Western, a professor of sociology and director of the Malcolm Wiener Center, the drastically increase amount of incarceration resulted from problems such as harming prisoners, families, and social groups. He indicates, “Black are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, and large racial disparities can be seen for all age groups and
The prison system is able to change it just takes the government not being as stubborn. They outlaw the death penalty. If the death penalty was still used the prisons would have about ⅔ of the inmates left then what is has now. As seen here ”people talk about how the death penalty is not a deterrent. Well, we do it so infrequently.
Ok, so let me get this right imprisonment is supposed to reduce crime in two ways: it takes criminals off the street so they can’t commit new crimes (incapacitation) and it discourages would-be criminals from committing crimes (deterrence). If this is correct then I see why our prisons are so overpopulated. It is my belief that overpopulation of our prisons is due in part to a large number of those incarcerated are for nonviolent crimes (property crimes, drug related offenses, public order) and not so much violent crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault) that many people believe. Of the nonviolent crimes, drug related offenses are the most prevalent. So why is this so?
V. PRISON REFORMS The main part of this research paper is the reforms for the conditions of prison and make prison a better place for prisoner and make an alternative for incarceration. The prison Reform for prevention of overcrowding in prisons: A ten-point method for reducing the overcrowding in the prisons all over the world, these points are1: 1. Collect and use data to inform a rational, humane and cost-effective use of prison.
Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.
Moreover, these private prison companies get its long-term profit, which increases by in increasing their man-days, with several political strategies (Ashton). Private prison companies rely upon the government budgets and concerns of overcrowding (Tylek). In 2009 there were 502 people in prison per 100,000, an increase of 722 percent since 1970. It went fro 196,429 to 1.6 million people in 2009 (Ashton). The number of people held in private federal facilities increased approximately 120 percent since 2000.
The United States has one of the largest prison systems in the world. According to the World Prison Brief, the United States has an incarceration rate of 639 per 100,000 people, which is the highest in the world. The prison system in America is made up of federal and
Thesis Hypothesis and Statement: Prisons in in the United States of America are definitely overcrowded, they are understaffed and I believe put very little effort on rehabilitation. The U.S. prison system was set up to rehabilitate prisoners so they can blend back into society as good people. But the factors as high crime rate and of course, mandatory sentences have caused a very high over crowding in our jail systems. This have caused a high increase in the budget deficit. Some citizens will say, where was the rehabilitation that we once used and it has all but now disappeared in our prison and jail system today.
criminal justice system are not getting desired results. Looking at the offenders well-being, physical and emotional state also provides us with facts about prisons and rehabilitation, as (Travis 2017) states that “Violence has increased and safety has deteriorated” so how is this affecting the prisoners surely not in a positive way? Prisoners mental health is already being affecting as punishment of their crime for example their shame in some cases, stigmatisation, pressure of drugs and isolation so if rehabilitation is not being offered as a consequence of staff shortage this is surely playing a part suicide rates. Prison is also in most cases not preparing offenders for life outside back in society, the public are seen to be at risk in some
The first correctional facility to be introduced in the United States was the Eastern Penitentiary, and was constructed to hold only a couple hundred inmates at max capacity. Despite arguments discussing a decrease in current prison population, studies have shown that prisons are actually overpopulating and causing safety concerns. Prison population increasing over the years has led to seventeen states holding inmates at max capacity level. For example, Illinois’s prisons are currently holding over 48,000 inmates when their facility’s design capacity was to hold only about 33,000 prisoners (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2015). There have been many strategies suggesting to lower the population, for example, sending fewer offenders for drug crimes
With poor prison management comes high violence rates; “violent prison conditions deter inmates from re-entering society successfully. ”(Wikipedia Prison Violence) Violence in prisons is the beginning of a long line of many other problems.
If incarceration truly worked then there wouldn’t be more inmates coming into the prisons then there are leaving out of the prisons. As stated in the article “a crime-prevention policy based primarily on increased imprisonment is at best inadequate, at worst, a clogged pipe of human beings”(Rogers) What this high turnover rate leads to is overcrowding in these institutions. No matter how much these institutions expand, it will never suffice because as soon as there is more room, they get filled with new inmates instead of making more room for current inmates. Coupled with this is the fact that the increase of inmates means more inmate per single correctional officer to look after.