Inmates are given little or no medical treatment, when needed, resulting in serious injury, illness and even death in some instances. Even though these individuals that are being imprisoned are convicted criminals, everyone should be entitled to medical treatment when it is warranted. This is a very common problem inside private prisons. There needs to be more than a handful of doctors that are working inside these prisons.“Immigrant prisoners at GEO Group’s Reeves County Detention Center lead two major uprisings in 2009 and 2010 after multiple deaths at the facility that were caused by a lack of proper medical care. The ACLU later sued on behalf of the family of Jesus Manuel Galindo, an epileptic who died after being placed in solitary confinement …show more content…
The justice system in the United States is supposed to serve justice to individuals who are have been harmed and punish those who have broken the law. There are some judges who have stock in GEO Corp. and the CCA, and when a criminal is in front of them for sentencing, instead of sending them to a state-run prison, they are sending them to private one’s which they have stock in. By having private prisons now an option for housing criminals, county judges are “helping” their communities by adding a huge surplus of income coming into their county, but have found a way to make more of their own money since they hold stock in these private companies.“ bonds issued for prisons since the late 1980s is approximate $90 million—a vast sum for a county with an annual budget of only $5 million,” (Abramsky, 2004). Many of these judges are making money off of their own cases that they are presiding over and are making money in a racketeering business, which is now in the millions of dollars.“ As a state, we have done a poor job of monitoring the program and have made no real attempt to find out what taxpayers are getting for their money.”(Epstein, 1). There are many states that are like the idea of private prisons because it helps bring revenue to their communities but have no idea of what is actually going on inside, and how only a few people are making money off of these private
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
Solitary Confinement is a type of isolation in prison which a prisoner is segregated from the general population of the prison and any human contact besides the prison employees. These prisons are separated from the general population to protect others and themselves from hurting anyone in the prison. These prisoners are deprived of social interaction, treatments, psychologist, family visits, education, job training, work, religious programming and many other services prisoners might need during the sentence of their imprisonment. There are roughly 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement but 25,000 are in long term and supermax prisons. According to the Constitution, “The Eighth Amendment [...] prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment”(US Const. amend. VIII). Solitary confinement is suppose to be the last straw for inmates to be in. If they don 't follow it, they can be on death row. Taxpayers pay roughly $75,000 to $85,000 to keep prisoners in solitary confinement. That is 3 times higher than the normal prisons that taxpayers pay for them to be in prison. Solitary confinement was established in 1829 in Philadelphia for experimentation because officials believed it was a way for
In 1814 Francis Scott Key described America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Does that still hold true today? The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet houses roughly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. That means it has 751 people in jail for every 100,000 in population. If you only count adults one in every 100 Americans is locked up. In 2012 the U.S. spent 677,856,000 billion dollars on national defense, that’s nearly 7.5 times the amount spent on education. If more money was spent on education there would be a better chance that people won’t end up incarcerated. About half of the prisoners in the United States are sentenced for non-violent crimes. The population of federal prisons has increased
Private prisons have a negative effect on states and local governments. Unfortunately, the number of private prisons has been increasing since their inception in 1983 causing further problems. For-profit prisons offer no real benefits and are bad investments for states. Furthermore, private prisons beleaguer communities with high turnover rates that hurt local economies. The demands of these institutions put an excessive burden on the local community’s infrastructure. Similarly, private prisons strain the county and city legal systems. More often than not, spin-off industries and economic benefits promised by the for-profit correction industry fail to appear. Additionally, private prisons are allowed to cherry pick the least expensive inmates, leaving the more expensive inmates for the state. A number of studies financed by the private prison industry give the misconception that they save states money. More importantly, the need to make a profit is an incentive for private prison industry officials to engage in nefarious activities.
Of course, that would be the logical thought to have, but as it turns out, it 's a little more complex than that. Expectedly, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” (Adam Gopnik) In other the words, more inmates meant more money for the company. Over the last thirty years, the Corrections Corporation of America, a company whose main source of income comes from “having as many [prisoners] as possible, housed as cheaply as possible” saw the incarceration rates increase to “500 percent to more than 2.2 million people.” (grassroots) Well, let’s not get carried away, one could argue that the spike in incarceration rates can’t possibly be the private prison’s fault. They exist only to control and house the prison population, not to create it. Well, one would be right, the private prisons are not directly responsible; they are not directly making more criminals but what one doesn 't realise is that they play a pretty critical role in the
On an average nearly 688,000 prisoners are released back into society, and of which includes 433,000 prisoner's waiting for trial and convictions, and the remaining percentage of prisoner's are serving sentences for minor and non-violent crimes, although, in the attempt to ensure public safety. Prison overcrowding continues to be a grave concern to the safety and welfare of the general public in California today because consequently the percentage of juvenile offenders detained represents 12,000 for technical violations, and 3,000 juveniles are detained for status offenses costing the taxpayers on an average $31,286 annually, and currently, the number of offender’s incarcerated in State and Federal prisons today is an astounding 2.4 million
There are many citizen concerns, including the premise that private prison companies lobby governments to increase punishments and penalties to fill their facilities. Mr. Geoffrey Segal writes “It is unlikely that private prison firms are going to sway policy in favor of greater incarceration when such polices are obviously already very popular with the general population” in his online article published also on The Reason on November of 2002, Mr. Segal is the director of privatization and government reform at Reason Foundation. witha B.A in political science from Arizona State University, and a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University. The prison system as an industry, according to Randy Gragg privately owned prisons are starting to flourish again, Mr. Gragg is the editor-in-chief of Portland monthly, he wrote the article “A High-Security, Low-Risk Investment: Private Prisons Make Crime Pay” for Harper’s magazine on August 1996 Mr. Gragg is a Harvard University graduate of the school of design, and the national art journalism fellow at Columbia University. The
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
In today’s society, we often find people who have a bias against the correctional system. We find these people to have no credible source besides the information the media proposes, third party information, or if they themselves have been locked up. Whether we sit and listen to them preach about the corruptness is up to us.
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
Thousands of people statewide are in prisons, all for different reasons. However, the amount of mental illness within prisons seems to go unaddressed and ignored throughout the country. This is a serious problem, and the therapy/rehabilitation that prison systems have do not always help those who are mentally ill. Prison involvement itself can contribute to increased suicide (Hills, Holly). One ‘therapy’ that has increased throughout the years has been the use of solitary confinement, which has many negative effects on the inmates. When an inmate has a current mental illness, prior to entering into the prison, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the illness can just be worsened and aggravated.
Should prisons in the United States be for profit? How do for profit prisons benefit the United States? Would inmates rather be in private or public correctional centers? What kind of affects does this have on taxpayers? What are the pros and cons of profit prisons? These are many of the questions that are brought up when discussing for profit prison systems. There are different perspectives that can be taken when it comes to talking about for profit prisons. This paper will discuss some of the ways that the United States has started to become for profit and why it has happened. Finally, this paper will give an opinion of whether or not for profit prisons should be dominant over public facilities.
Solitary confinements are a prison within prisons, that isolates inmates from the rest of the world. Solitary confinement was originally founded by the Quakers and Anglicans in the early 1800s, in Philadelphia. The purpose of solitary confinement when the Quakers and Anglicans first created it, was to give the inmates the opportunity to get the chance to find Christ (Biggs 2017). Now the purpose of solitary confinement is to serve as punishment for criminals that are killers or cause a problem within the prison. Inmates in solitary confinement sit in a cell that is 80 square feet for 22-23 hours a day, with 1 hour of free time without human contact (Breslow 2014). One side believes solitary confinement is a good and a easy way to protect society
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...
The correctional system is based on helping offenders become part of society and not commit any crimes. Many prisons begin the correcting criminals since they are inside the jails, but many prisons do not. Prisons provide prisoners with jobs inside the prison where they get very little pay close to nothing and many have programs that will help them advance their education or get their high school diploma. There are various programs prisons provide to prisoners to help them get a job or have a skill when they are released from prison. In contrast, prisons that do not provide programs or help to prisoners rehabilitate and enter society again will be more likely to commit another crime and go back to jail. The Shawshank Redemption prison did not