More handpicked essays just for you.
Mass incarceration paper introduction
The problem with mass incarceration
The problem with mass incarceration
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the documentary film Private Prisons, provides insight on how two private prisons industries, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group, generate revenue through mass incarceration. It is no surprise that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The United States represents approximately 5% of the world’s population index and approximately 25% of the world’s prisoners due to expansion of the private prison industry complex (Private Prisons, 2013). The number of people incarcerated in private prions has grown exponentially over the past decades. To put into perspective, the number of individuals increased by 1600% between 1990 and 2005 (Private Prisons, 2003).
The authors Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, writers, and filmmakers, published "The Prison Industrial Complex." This text discusses how the government and private corporations increase mass incarceration for profit. The text states, "For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing.
The demand for private prisons has grown tremendously over the years. The government has relied on prison privatization to help address growing issues of overcrowding and financial stress in public prisons. However, many believe that privatizing prisons has led to and will continue to cause legal issues for our judicial system. In this paper I will discuss three potential legal issues associated with privatizing prisons. Privatization of prisons affects inmates negatively by neglecting and violating their rights.
By the government allowing corporations to buy, and build new prisons gave that much more of an incentive to keep the prisons flowing with inmates. According to Vicky Pelaez “Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one.” (6) Once you get trapped inside this prison machine they can and will work for cents a day.
developed—the first institution in which men were both “confined and set to labor in order to learn the habits of industry” (LeBaron, 2012, p.331). Although prisons had been designed to enforce and promote punishment, retribution and deterrence, they have also fallen into the conceptual belief that they were in many instances, nothing more than a sweat shop for the socially-undesired. At this point in history, there was very little reform and an immense lack of regulation for prisons or for the proper way they should be ran. Finances. In modern-day calculations, prison labor has been rather beneficial to the U.S. government, bringing in an average of 1.6 billion dollars in 1997.
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.
The Prison Industrial Complex allows for the incentivizing of incarcerated people in America because of the appeal of profits. The shared interests of government and private prisons allow for the use of surveillance, policing, and imprisonment to exploit incarcerated people for labor. The United States criminal justice system is also rooted in racism.
Milakovich defines privatization as “a practice in which governments either join with, or yield responsibility outright to, private-sector enterprises to provide services previously managed and financed by public entities; a pattern especially evident in local government service provision, though with growing appeal at other levels of government” (2013, p. 39). This leads us to one of the issues facing the State of Florida: the privatization of prisons. The prison system in Florida has been slowly privatized and not much attention has been drawn to it until recently. A couple years ago, the state closed 19 prisons and many inmates were forced to move into old and rotting buildings. Some say that these privately owned prisons are more effiecient than state prisons and save money.
Many states allowed private prisons and prison privatization because “costs and overcrowding problems are the driving force behind the privatization phenomenon.” (Heritage.org). According to some sources, “it costs a private prison about $45,000 a year to house a prisoner, compared to the general cost of about $50,000 annually per inmate in a public prison, resulting in roughly $5,000 in savings per year.” (thecrimereport.org). “However, the Bureau of Prisons study found just a 2 percent average difference” (Cincinnaticriminalattorney.com).
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.
The controversy between state-ran prisons versus private prisons started in 1852, when the first U.S. private prison was introduced. Escapes, riots, and in-prison crimes happen substantially more in private prisons than in public prisons.
The privatization has a much more positive connotation due to its relationship with capitalism, yet thus far prison privatization has been a spectacular flavor but with considerable reform will be successful. While capitalism may be good for business, it does not appear to be a good fit for prisons. Many past studies and crimes against humanity have shown that the best-proven method to keeping a large number of people in order and under the control of their authority is by dehumanizing and using significant force as seen in the Stanford prison experiment. If private prisons were to employ such methods, it would decrease the number of guards necessary, but would certainly violate the rights of the inmates. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) state that private institutes employ 33% fewer correctional officers
These companies are not well regulated and costly, and support legislation that benefits their income. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact just the opposite, and are therefore wasting lives trying to earn more money. The abolition of private prisons in the United States is a necessary course of action to ensure the maximum health of the
The prison-industrial complex is a corrupt political system that consists of overpowered politicians whose sole ambition is exploiting poor, uneducated, and under-privileged Americans to make money. Although, it wasn’t initially the purpose when Rockefeller started the war on drugs, but he started something bigger than he could’ve imagined at that time. The prison system has been proven to be ineffective, and costly waste of resources. However, it probably won’t be abolished due to the cash flow that it brings to some of the largest corporations in the
The overall goal of the government is too, regulate prison systems and protect inmates/ prisoners. There is always room for improvement. Recently prison reform has been debated, as people are questioning the humane treatment of prisoners, and are curious here there tax dollars are going. The constitution covers various rights regarding prisoners to ensure their safety and wellbeing. The structure of all persons are controlled by the government, they run public, private, and state prisons.
