From an incapacitative through retributive and to what it is today, the U.S prison system has endured. This institution has for years served as a tool for coping with evil and crime through various measures such as retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. However, some major challenges still exist. The overreliance on prison as the paramount means of handling the offenders has led to a system that is overburdened. Still, the history of the U.S jail shows an institution that has gone through changes and challenged its functions and practices in the effort to achieve justification and bring order in the
INTRODUCTION The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of the population than any country in the world (CBS, 2012). According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 2.3 million adults were incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013. There are an additional 820,000 people on parole and 3.8 million people on probation (Wagner & Rabuy, 2016) Jail and prison differ primarily in regards to the length of stay for inmates.
Kalief Browder was an African American man who was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. While waiting for his time to go to Trial, he was held on Rikers Island where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. Also during his stay at Rikers Island he was constantly beaten and starved. Three years after he was released out of prison he committed suicide. In this case like most, being locked up and treated inhumane later on drove him to take away his own life.
In conclusion, the prison suffers from weakness in many aspects which produced serious effects on inmates and staff. When you look at the prison staff you find people who suffer from lack of training, experience and interest in their financial affairs that led to security imbalance inside the prison. Moreover, the prisoners are suffering from health instability and forcing them to accept unacceptable food in order to reduce the costs spent on inmates that affected badly of the prisoner's behavior. The shocking part of this research is the presence of weapons and drugs in the possession of prisoners, which turned out to be a large part of weapons and drugs were smuggled with the guards' help. Private prisons care only about the income that receives
One of greatest threats to the United States today is terrorism. Currently, terrorist organizations are seeking to recruit human sources within the United States. “The danger to America’s security is, therefore, not the number of adherents to Islam in prison, but in the potential for small groups of true believers to instigate terrorist acts, either by other prisoners once they are released, or by existing cells in the community”(Hamm, 2007). One major concern is that U.S. correctional institutions may become a source for such recruitment. This type of recruitment is highly likely.
Based on a study that tracked 404,638 prisoners in 30 states in 2005, Bureau of Justice Statistics found that recidivism rates are high among released prisoners, especially among property offenders about 82.1 percent76.9 percent (Durose et al., 2014). Besides this, incarceration might also cause the physical and psychological problems. Before 17th century, torture was historically taken for granted as part of justice (Scott, 1995). Until the humanism development, "cruel and unusual punishment" came to be condemned (Scott, 1995). With the evolution of punishment practices, torture is forbidden in international law and domestic law in most countries.
Incarceration grounds itself in the complete subordination and demonization of marginalized communities. Firmly established in the ideological, political, and social life of the U.S., the prison industrial complex has generated an enormous profit through the exploitation of queer and gender non-conforming bodies. Eric A. Stanley and Dean Spade’s scholarly journal “Queering Prison Abolition, Now?” underscore the reproduction of gender roles and white supremacy both within and outside the prison walls. By examining the roles of power dynamics and scrutinizing how prison systems function through a queer intersectional lens, scholars can provide a discourse that counters the purported “rehabilitation” process of incarceration. Likewise, Angela
Deterrence and Recidivism Crime prevention is a key aim of the criminal justice system. Offenders are incarcerated in prisons in a expectation that they will feel punished enough to learn from their mistakes and not commit further crimes, this is called deterrence and is a main goal of prisons today (Daly, 2003). Prisons in their current form are often overcrowded, anxiety inducing, restrictive and have been found to exacerbate the mental health of offenders (Matthews, 2016). In saying this, research by Crank and Brezina (2012) suggests that some offenders find prison ‘easier than being on the street’. Crank and Brezina (2012) conducted a study where they surveyed a large group of inmates and questioned them on their views of being incarcerated.
INTRODUCTION In the future will high-max prisons uphold ethical standards and will the way they treat inmates affect how well inmates transition back into society Prisons, are questioned for their morality when treating prisoners. With self-isolation that some high max prisons have as a punishment for the inmates. Which people view as justified because many inmates are not mentally well. But self-isolation can break inmates' psych, making them more prone to their mental illness declining even more.
Offenders who are in prisons have committed more serious felony crimes. The public roles of prisons in our society are the custodial model that depends on the presumption that detainees are imprisoned to lock them up, punish them and prevent them from committing a crime. All this is achieved through security and discipline measures. Besides, prisons exist to dispense treatment to prisoners by offering treatment programs to inmates for them change their criminal behavior. Also, prison tends to integrate offenders by providing them effective training programs to prepare them for the existence into the society.
Once someone is arrested and sent to prison, most of us think they have done their punishment and learned their lesson. Unfortunately, this is not the case most of the time. Once these inmates are released most of them end up re-offending and going back to prison, this is called recidivism. It looks follows the inmates three years after they are released and sees if they get reoffend and go back to prison with a new sentence. The Bureau of Justice did a survey to see how many offenders went back to prison after they were released.
Inmates have already diverged themselves from the norms of society by showing and acting out. Prisoners who have: psychological illnesses, alcohol and drug addictions, and prior history pertaining to incarceration are associated to prisons and are connected to tendencies that are violent. Classification systems have been installed because of the prison systems recurrent violence. The role
A major part in the reasoning of this very high recidivism rate is that in society today, felons struggle to be accepted back in public society. After their release, it is hard to find a job, get loans, a home, and more. Leaving jail, these people are being set up to fail and return to prison for following their old ways, or making new ones to offend the law and end up back into a jail or prison. Even for the people who so badly want to get out and change to a better citizen, could be reeled back into a lifestyle or decision that will place them back in a prison jumper. Living in the United States it takes a lot of money to support one’s self, and exceptionally hard to come by for individuals with a legal record.
The issue of mass increase in the number of aging inmates has become a major concern for the government agencies and researchers. This is based on the resulting social and economic impact that the growing population of elderly inmates impose. As Rikard and Rosenberg (2013) notes, the trend of rapidly increasing population of prisoners above fifty five years is likely to go higher unless the current federal and state laws are reviewed to come up with a possible solution to deal with the associated impacts of the elderly population in prisons. According to the research conducted on the causes of this trend, it is noted that the shift of sentencing from rehabilitative to incapacitating sentence after the Vietnam War can be attributed to be the cause of the current situation in prisons in addition to resulting to overpopulation in correctional facilities.
You ever wonder what it’s like inside of prison? What happens in there or what can occur if you're not careful in there. And why can prison be so unsafe and bad. Well obviously it’s bad because there are so many dangerous criminals in there. But most of them are in there for a good; reason, they might of done something that was illegal and they got caught.
