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Summary: The Effects Of Alienation In Prison

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A lot of research has been put into the effects of imprisonment and the variables that influence how an offender adapts to confinement, what some of the consequences of confinement are. Some of the variables that contribute to how an offender will adapt and socialize in prison, would be how they were raised and socialized before prison, the environment that the prison creates for the offenders; and the influences that offenders face in prison and the Cliques that they associate with and the support they have from within the community. Prison conditions need to be modified as well as the practices of most prisons in the United States, integrating more programs that will prepare an offender for a successful reintegration into society, as well as to insure a successful long-term adjustment to parole. …show more content…

These studies have shown how probable it is for someone to become institutionalized and how they adapt to life in prison. The structure of prison life forces alienation on these offenders and the studies show how this forced alienation, the length of sentencing and the social structure of prison’s, affect the degree that an offender becomes institutionalized.
Beginning several decades ago several factors have modified the nature of imprisonment and the criminal justice system. Many of the challenges offenders face to survive in prison and how they reintegrate into society once released have changed as a result (Haney, 1998). Many negative trends affect the nature of imprisonment. The increase in the number of those that are incarcerated is one of the biggest trends that are having a negative impact on American corrections

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Owing to the fact that these inmates are considered to be a danger to the prison population, their ability to participate in certain activities inmates are allowed, the privilege of these activities are taken away and inmates are isolated as punishment. Whenever a person is isolated form social settings and human interactions they often develop social disorders and mental illnesses. “When anyone, mentally ill or not, does not have enough social contact, it affects them mentally and even physically. Loneliness creates stress, taking a toll on health. Other things affected can be the ability to learn and memory function.

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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.

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In 1971, 1 out of 12 Americans were incarcerated. Since that time, the prisoner ratio has exponentially increased; today, that ratio is 1 out of 51. With that number continuing to rise, many problems result out of it. Prison overcrowding is a growing problem in the United States. The number of people being taken in has regressive effects on the purpose behind imprisonment.

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First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That 's institutionalized.’ A prison should aim at retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. I am very well convinced that prison has served its first three purposes by depriving offenders’ freedom, but the

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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.

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Alienation within a vast society creates a substantial gap between groups of people today. Particularly in the prison system, the prisoners themselves have become subject to isolation from the rest of the country’s free and interactive people, as well as its new ideas and cultural developments. In Theoretical Perspectives on Alienation in the Prison Society: An Empirical Test, author Charles W. Thomas describes how, upon entry, prisoners are rashly accused of attending the prison system on more than one occasion, and after, “they are stripped of personal possessions, individual decision-making prerogatives, many legal rights, and in short deprived of their identities as individuals.” In Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, Robert Neville’s alienation

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Inmates preparing to reenter the outside world after serving their sentence are highly stigmatized by society in social environments such as the workplace. Incarcerated individuals have broken social and cultural norms, but most harmful; a law that was set in place. Consequently, many believe the state should intervene as well as proceed with caution when pondering if reintegration into civilization is the appropriate choice. This presents the question; what factors impede the reintegration process and how can it negatively impact mental stability?

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The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

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The literature answers the issues of incarceration rates increasing by giving us the product such as legislative decisions that were the primary reason that led to the increase of charging and imprisoning more offenders as well as increasing sentences, limiting prison release, and expanding the prison capacity. Higher incarceration rates were not the sole reason for the increase in crime. Prisons were continuing to be built even though crime had been declining. Later resulting in the sharpest decrease in crime in American history. Essentially every states incarceration rate was increased by 150 percent from 1970 to 2000, and the median state increasewas 390 percent, which was taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2012.

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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).

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The United States prison system has seen a significant rise in prisoners over the past few decades. Currently, the rate of incarceration outweighs the rate of new cells being built. Because of this, prisons become more crowded every day. Crowded prisons fester with hate and pent-up aggression. Those who step out of line are met with swift discipline usually in the form of solitary confinement.

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These are not the kind of people that should be prisoner not for their own good, but also to the other prisoners in the facilities. Many inmates in prison are being sent in with disorders that are need special attention, and if sent to facilities in isolation and overcrowding, they will exit with an even worse condition than how they went in. In “Are too many with psychiatric problems behind bars?” , At age 16, Kalief Browder was falsely accused of stealing a backpack and sent to New York City 's notorious Rikers Island jail after he was unable to post bail. He spent three years at the facility — two in solitary confinement — before being released, never having gone to trial. Like many inmates who have endured solitary, the once sociable

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