The Prisoners for Benefits
As we know, the United States holds the most prisoners in the world. California is one of the states that has highest rates of prison population in the nation. The number of prisoners have been rapidly increasing and is leading to overcrowded prisons. The California Department Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, needs to work on the expansion of prison systems as a means to deal with the overcrowding problem. According to an article by Adam Liptak, “the case of Brown v. Plata [in 2011] that violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment…” it forced California to reduce crowding in its own institutions. As a result, California Governor Jerry Brown decided to contract private prison. He signed
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The lack of rehabilitation programs and other activities are a huge downside to the private prison system. Prisoners need a rehabilitee program to help them get ready for when they are out of the prison. According to Lisa Wade, PhD, “Likewise, there’s no motivation to rehabilitate prisoners; doing so is expensive, cuts into their profits, and decreases the likelihood that any individual will be back in the prison system.” Private prisons want prisoners to come back to their cells again. Therefore they cut the budget of the rehabilitation programs, so rehabilitate prisoners will not get the full treatment. Unfortunately the prisoners who have not received any sort of rehabilitation program or activities in which they are reintroduce to life outside of prison, will reenter in a matter of months. The private prison programs are not as fully efficient as the government prisons, according to Lisa Wade, PhD, “state prisons are much more likely than private prisons to offer programs that help prisoners: psychological interventions, drug and alcohol counseling, coursework towards high school or college diplomas, job training, etc.” According to the research of Cassandre Monique Davilmar, there have been similar studies that show that “private prison inmate groups had a greater …show more content…
As a result of this, Hardin would get tax revenues, new jobs and economic benefits while a private prison company would be in charge of running the facility and get something off of the profits.” Supporters state that more jobs would be offered to the community which can lower an unemployed rate. The community could earn revenues and boost up the economy. However building a private prison for income generation does not assure that a contract will be made with the government. There have been places such as Hardin, Montana that have built a “facility [that] has remained empty and unused because the builder wasn’t able to land a contract with the state or federal government for inmates” (GreenGarage). Furthermore according to GreenGarage state that “Hardin isn’t the only one suffering from this problem as several others in places across America have built private prisons for economic benefit but instead have been struggling to recoup what they spent.” Even though private prisons try to generate job opportunities within the community small town like Hardin are an example of what could go wrong in the
Rehabilitation also involves programs in prisons that have the goal of helping offenders return back to society (Goff, 2014, p.20). Prisons have also put in place programs to assist inmates, “the goal of these release programs are to ease the transition of offenders from the institution into the community while simultaneously promoting stable employment after release” (Cullen & Jonson, 2011, p.309). If a person has been in an institution for a long period of time it is often hard to adjust to life outside, which is why these programs are important in the justice
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
Private prisons are correctional institutions ran by for-profit corporations. They claim to cost less than prisons ran by the state, while offering the same level of service. In fact, the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations, states that their business strategy is to provide quality corrections service while offering a better value to their government partners at the same time making a profit (CCA 2010). However, opponents of private prisons say they do not save states money because of their hidden cost. At any rate, more than a few states have found private prisons to be advantageous. For one reason, many states are facing massive deficits and are l...
California has one of the most dysfunctional and problematic prison system in US. Over the last 30 years, California prison increased eightfolds (201). California Department of Correctional and Rehabilitation (CDCR) does little to reform prisoners and serve as human warehouse rather than a correction institution. California's prison system fails the people it imprisons and society it tries to protect. In many cases, California's prison system exacerbates the pre-existing problems and aids in the formation of new problems for prisoners. This paper discuses the criminogenic effects of overcrowding, and reduction/elimination of programs and how it negatively affects California and the ballooning prison population and possible remedies.
Vogel, Nancy. “Rehab in Prison Can Cut Cost, Report Says; Crowding Exacerbates High Recidivism Rate by Denying Inmates Useful Treatment, Experts Find.” Los Angeles Times: 0. Jun 30 2004. Proquest. Web. 24 Feb 2014
The proponents of private prisons contend that private prison are a necessity because the criminal justice system is in crisis and governments do not have the willingness to spend public money building new prisons. According to Adrian Moore, Mr. Moore is the Vice President, Policy of the Reason Foundation, and this statement was published online “Private Prisons, Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost.” For the website reason.org on April 1998 Moore holds a Ph.D. in Economics
The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops opportunities for paroles to prevent their return to prison. The following context will examine and discuss the different approaches to reduce the population of state prisons in California in order to avoid prison overcrowding.
When people think of reform movements, they often look for one key sign, and ask one key question of whether that the reform was a success. Did the reform create a lasting change in the way people view the institution that was reformed? All the great reformation movements, from Horace Mann and his education reforms, to Martin Luther, and the Protestant Reformation, to the civil rights movement, all created lasting change in the minds of the average person. One other reform, often overlooked historically is the Prison Reform movement. As the world shifted from 18th to 19th century ways of life, many key aspects of life underwent tremendous change. As the United States gained their independence from Britain and began to shape their own identity, the reforms and revolutions that occurred in this infantile stage of its history played an immeasurable impact on the future of the entire country, with the most notable and impact reform being the reformation of prisons from the 1820s until 1860.
The number of Americans that are in prison has elevated to levels that have never been seen before. Prisons in the US have always been crowded ever since the first prison was invented (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The first prison in the US was the Walnut Street Jail that was built in Philadelphia in 1773, and later closed in the 1830’s due to overcrowding and dirty conditions (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The prison system in modern US history has faced many downfalls due to prison overcrowding. Many private prison owners argue that the more inmates in a prison the more money they could make. In my opinion the argument of making more money from inmates in prisons is completely unconstitutional. If the private prisons are only interested in making
Private prisons in the United States, came about in the early 1980s when the war on drugs resulted in a mass wave of inmates, which led to the lack of the prison system’s ability to hold a vast number of inmates. When the cost became too much for the government to handle, private sectors sought this as an opportunity to expand their businesses through the prison industry. Since the opening of private prisons, the number of prisons and inmates it can hold has grown over the last two decades. With the rising number of inmates, profits have also substantially grown along with the number of investors. But what eventually became a problem amongst the private prison industry was their “cost-saving” strategies, which have been in constant debate ever
Prisons have been around for decades. Keeping housed, those of our society who have been convicted
California’s prison system has been a hot topic for the better part of the past two decades. In 2006, it was estimated that California’s prison system was at 200 percent of its capacity (“California”). This severe overcrowding not only affects those in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), both inmates and staff, but it also affects society as a whole. Inmate’s rights are being violated due to the overcrowding and the taxpayers are being left to foot the bill for a system that is falling apart from within. Too many people think that the solution to this problem is to simply build more prisons.
With the emergence of the Private Prison Industry it brought together the economy and punishment. Due to the term “prison industrial complex” came about to explain the growth in the prison population. The Prison industrial complex can be traced to January 3, 1973 when Nelson Rockefeller, who was the governor of New York, gave a State of the State address and demanded that all drug dealers to must be given life in prison without the possibility of parole (Harcourt, 2011:236). He did not specifically say prison industrial complex but started the use of big business in the criminal justice system. The prison industrial complex is a term that is used to describe the interests of the government and the interests of
The goal of private prisons is to be more efficient and runs cheaper than the average public operated prisons. In a public prison, it cost a lot of money for the inmates to be taken cared of, so the plan was to have a prion that is not own by the government, but instead was owned by a owner who would guarantee to run their prison facility for less money, and still provide the same qualities and care as a public prison. However, that isn’t the case now. Private prisons are falling short on actually fulfilling those aspect and requirements. In fact it is relatively hard to determine if there is any difference in the qualities between a private facility and a public facility. The only difference so far is that a private prison is not own by the government and therefore it is more of a business own by an owner who most likely runs...
Overcrowding of prisons due to mass incarceration is among one of the biggest problems in America, mass incarceration has ruined many families and lives over the years.America has the highest prison population rate , over the past forty years from 1984 until 2014 that number has grown by four hundred percent .America has four percent of the world population ,but twenty-five percent of the world population of incarcerated people Forty one percent of American juveniles have been or going to be arrested before the age of 23. America has been experimenting with incarceration as a way of showing that they are tough on crime but it actually it just show that they are tough on criminals. imprisonment was put in place to punish, criminals, protect society and rehabilitate criminals for their return into the society .