ipl-logo

Recidivism In The Correctional System

1286 Words6 Pages

The United States has the highest imprisonment rate in the entire world along with a shockingly high rate of recidivism and lack of programs that will truly help law breakers in a way to prevent repeat offenders. Multiple criminal justice course issues can be summed as lack of funding, overcrowding, and repeat offenders. The overcrowding issues are related to departments not receiving proper finances that can no longer afford to properly train their officers which can lead to many accidents such as the Jamel Jackson case; Jamel Jackson was shot by a police officer because the officer had his taser and gun side confused. The Lack of funding also causes poor treatment facilities for offenders, such as drug programs and test that can help drug …show more content…

Understanding goals of the correctional system and its mission to correct the wrong doer is the key to making a change in the recidivism rates. “If prisons reformed criminals, illegal earnings once people were released ought to have gone down. But if prison was a "finishing school" for criminals, illegal earnings after serving time should have increased.” This is possible solution to some of the issues that go on in prison and can help lower the recidivism number (Neal Conan”. Giving prisoners hope in the outside world would lower the recidivism rate, because it will train them to be a part of society as a functioning unit rather than an entity. History always seems to represent past actions and that’s why we study actions taken by the criminal justice in the world today and all its influence upon the world. All we need do is examine past events to see just how deadly improper or no training can …show more content…

There are two types of prisons; private prisons and public prisons. Private prisons are nonprofit organizations that are funded by businesses or organizations, as state prisons are paid by the state tax dollars. Private prisons have the same rules as state prisons but can fluctuate with their own laws and regulations if they are humane to the prisoner.
“Almost 70 percent of all convicted offenders admitted to DOC have been sentenced to three years or less and most of those (47 percent) for one year or less. Connecticut has implemented a system of graduated sanctions. The network of sentencing options and alternative sanctions: (1) punishes and rehabilitates offenders whose crimes and/or criminal histories do not demand a prison term; and (2) assists in the transition of inmates from prison back to their communities. This model is based on the recognition not all offenders are the same, and only a few deserve the most intensive and expensive sanction -- prison -- and almost all offenders sent to prison eventually return to their communities. The committee found a workable, long-term solution to prison overcrowding must extend beyond simply adding prison beds. It must also address the cumulative impact of the thousands of criminals that eventually return to or remain in their communities. Until their

Show More
Related
687 Words | 3 Pages

Over the past 40 years U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, with the United States’ prison population increasing from 320,000 inmates in 1980 to nearly 2.3 million inmates in 2013. The growth in prison population is in part due to society’s shift toward tough on crime policies including determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, and mandatory minimums. These tough on crime policies resulted in more individuals committing less serious crimes being sentenced to serve time and longer prison sentences. The 1970s-1980s: The War on Drugs and Changes in Sentencing Policy Incarceration rates did rise above 140 persons imprisoned per 100,000 of the population until the mid 1970s.

Read More
1517 Words | 7 Pages

The deterrence theory suggests that “the severity of criminal sanctions dissuades other potential offenders from committing crimes out of fear of punishment. ”4 That is applicable to the individuals that are punished and to people in the community. Nevertheless, prison’s effectiveness is often questioned as an effective deterrent to crime. Studies have shown that longer sentences have a small effect on whether offenders commit crimes or not, and the National Academy of Sciences determined that “insufficient evidence exists to justify predicating policy choices on the general assumption that harsher punishments yield measurable deterrent effects.

Read More
1788 Words | 8 Pages

With drug treatment, more probation, and community service, inmates will get the true chance to change for the better without having to face imprisonment. Cullen’s research says “... Sometimes, longer stays can even increase recidivism” (Cullen). Sometimes, serving a long sentence for a small crime makes the inmates worse off instead of better. This is why alternatives to incarceration are so important not only for the inmates, but it helps with overcrowding. Although the alternatives solve mass incarceration, it does not solve the agendas being pushed out that cause a lot of people to be arrested.

Read More
1728 Words | 7 Pages

The current system that incarcerates people over and over is unsustainable and does not lower the crime rate nor encourage prisoner reformation. When non-violent, first time offenders are incarcerated alongside violent repeat offenders, their chance of recidivating can be drastically altered by their experience in prison. Alternative sentencing for non-violent drug offenders could alleviate this problem, but many current laws hinder many possible solutions. Recently lawmakers have made attempts to lower the recidivism rates in America, for example the Second Chance Act helps aid prisoners returning into society after incarceration. The act allows states to appropriate money to communities to help provide services such as education, drug treatment programs, mental health programs, job corps services, and others to aid in offenders returning to society after incarceration (Conyers, 2013).

Read More
136 Words | 1 Pages

When the American prison system began, it was believed that rehabilitation, the act of restoring one’s character, could be beneficial for criminals to start over. According to Tom Wicker, “The system…began as a reform impulse, the idea that if offenders were isolated, shielded from the public mockery that had accompanied hangings and the stocks, given time to repent, and worked hard, they could be turned away from crime and transformed into useful citizens” (xii). Criminals could become better citizens and have a positive outlook for a future if they worked hard and were secluded from the outside world. Although this idea seems more humane, it did not last long in the prison system because many people believed that any crime committed deserved

Read More
1709 Words | 7 Pages

What were once passion crimes are now random shootings (Powell). Police and Judicial workers have and are making inexcusable errors in their

Read More
1120 Words | 5 Pages

This creates problems because it adds to the eminence amount of tax dollars spent every year. In the article “The high price of incarceration in America” by Aimee shows that the average American taxpayer spends about $260 a year that is almost 80 billion dollars a year for incarceration (1). There have been many voters who have been trying to reduce the amount of mass incarcerations that have been going on since the 1980’s. The majority of prisoners who were released between 2014-2015 returned to crime but the rate that they were committing the crime and returning was dropped at an astonishing degree. In the article “Prosecutors Fight to Plan to Lower Drug Sentencing “ by Sari, Horwitz (1) shows how government officials are trying to cut back on the amount of long term sentencing for first time offenders.

Read More
474 Words | 2 Pages

As I mentioned above, since the War on Drugs era, the prison population has increased at an alarming rate. Overcriminalization has most of the responsibility for this problem. Along with the overcrowding of prisons, the obstacle of overcriminalization also brings sentencing reform to the table. It puts citizens that had no criminal intent in their actions and non-violent offenders in prison for unjust lengths of time. Serving

Read More
959 Words | 4 Pages

Our prison system is nothing more than a people mill, where more than hundreds of individuals go in for the crimes they commit, and they do not necessarily come out. Policymakers and the public see mass incarceration as a useful tool for a swift and stern justice system but mass incarceration, in fact, has a negative impact on crime and carries collateral consequences with it. Mass incarceration and

Read More
1828 Words | 8 Pages

Criminal legislation and incarceration have long been used as a means to control "powerless" and disadvantaged groups in America. These groups are socially and politically neglected and only receive attention when they are perceived to be a threat to the larger society and then the attention comes in the form of control and punishment (Page, 1993). The control generally manifests itself through crime legislation and the punishment through incarceration. By the end of 2005, there were more than 7 million people under some form of criminal justice supervision (Glaze & Bonczar 2006; Harrison & Beck, 2006a). With such a large and growing number of people under correctional control during a time in which crime rates had either fallen or were stabilizing raises important questions about the purpose and consequences of this institutional intervention.

Read More
1529 Words | 7 Pages

The punishment is that they are with us” (Paragraph 2). Instead, prisons focus on rehabilitation. Most citizens understand that in order to have long term effects, it take long processes that take a while to get used to. “The country’s well-education population [appreciate] that almost all prisoners will return to society. They understand [...] that the more the penal system can do within the small window of opportunity during a prisoner’s incarceration, the better it will be in the long run” (Paragraph 15).

Read More
679 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
662 Words | 3 Pages

The rising population in prisons became a major concern. In 2010, a prison reform expert explained that putting drug addicts to incarceration cost too much estimating eighty billion of dollars a year (Childress, 2014). Thus, congress's proposal is to shorten the sentencing of nonviolent offender. Some report explained that "there are many people serving time for violent offenses who haven’t actually committed violent acts and might be good candidates for reduced sentences." (Neyfakh, 2015).

Read More
1359 Words | 6 Pages

Private Prisons Many people in America have no idea that there are different types of prison systems. The two different types of prisons include state-ran and private. State-ran prisons are prisons owned and operated by the local, state, or federal government; however, private prisons are prisons in which individuals are incarcerated by a third-party organization that is under contract with a government agency. Private prisons are funded by the government and have the unique ability to do whatever they want.

Read More
2091 Words | 9 Pages

This approach also prevents overcrowding in prisons because it also deals with rehabilitative

Read More

More about Recidivism In The Correctional System

Related Topics

Open Document