Prison Reform in The United States of America “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones” (Nelson Mandela, 1994). The United States of America has more people behind bars than any other country on the planet. The prisons are at over double capacity. It cost a lot of money to house prisoners each year. A large number of the prisoners are there because of drug related offenses. There are prisoners who have been sent to prison for life for marijuana related drug offenses. Many prisoners have been exonerated after spending many years behind bars due to the corruption in our legal system. 32 States in United States of America still execute prisoners even though there is no evidence to suggest that capital punishment is a deterrent. Prison reform is needed in America starting at the legal system and then ending the death penalty. There are too many people incarcerated in the United States of America. The U.S. imprisons 724 people per 100,000. In absolute numbers United States has more of its citizens behind bars then do China or Russia combined. (Gallagher 2008). There are about thousand U.S. citizens that become incarcerated in the prison system in any given week. Many of the prisons are so crowded that they have converted the gymnasium into a massive housing unit. These massive housing units hold hundreds of prisoners inside small gymnasiums. The bunk beds are stacked four or five high with every available space reserved for the bunk beds. Even though the prisons are over double capacity they have not added one extra toilet or shower at any of the facilities. Because of this many of the prisoners report tha... ... middle of paper ... ...nited States of America is throwing billions of dollars down an empty black hole trying to solve a problem that they don’t really even have. If just the slightest reforms were made towards drug rehabilitation instead of incarceration then many people’s lives could be saved to live productive lives in society and contribute towards the well being of everyone. If drug policy were changed to exclude incarceration then the U.S. would save billions of dollars every year from having to incarcerate these prisoners. If District attorneys were held responsible for withholding crucial evidence that can exonerate the accused then we would reduce the number of innocent people serving time for crimes that they did not commit. If the death penalty was abolished throughout The United States of America then we would know that no injustices are being served that cannot be reversed.
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.
The U.S. corrections system has had a long history of being the most progressive in the world. It has been the model for many corrections systems around the world. From the invention of the modern prisons to the mission of Rehabilitation and modern probation. Even for most of the nineteenth and twenty century, the U.S. corrections remained in the lead for having the best ways to deal with offenders. However, even with all of the advances in the corrections system the U.S. is now know for having one of the most populated prisons in the world. In fact, since 1973, the U.S. imprisonment rate has increased from under 100 people per 100,000 to almost 500 per 100,000 (American Corrections, 2016).
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.
Throughout the history of the United States and including the western world. Corrections have served the country by convicting and sentencing offenders depending on the seriousness of the crime. Along with that today, offenders are either placed in probation, incarcerated or taken to community-based corrections. Even though, corrections have always tried to find ways to deter crime by correcting criminals, the poor economy in our country has been the cause for struggles in the correctional system. Some of the causes of economic issues are the cut of budget, over crowing, lack of programs for people with mental illnesses, and lack of innovation.
According to Mark Early, president of the Prison Fellowship International, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows that there are 19 states that have prisons operating at 100 percent capacity and another 20 are falling right behind them. There is no wonder why the overcrowding of prisons is being discussed everywhere. Not to mention how serious this predicament is and how serious it can get. Many of the United States citizens don’t understand why this is such a serious matter due to the fact that some of them believe it’s not their problem. Therefore they just don’t care about it. Also, some Americans may say that they don’t care about what could happen to the inmates due to repercussions of overcrowding, because it’s their own fault. In order to cure this growing problem people have to start caring about what’s going on, even if it’s to people who might deserve it.
The drastic increase in US inmates has happened overtime. In the beginning of the century the incarceration rate did not rise much and was nearly 10 inmates for 100,000 people. By the mid-1970s, the rate steadily rose, doubled in the 1980s and tripled by the 1990s. Now we are at stifling rate of 445 people incarcerated for every 100,000 people in the nation; 1,100 per 100,000 males nationwide are incarcerated or have been at any given time.¹ (Statistics via: theatlantic.com). Thousands of new prisons and jails have been built over the last 20 years or so and, somehow, the prison system is still overcrowded. This leads to the concept of the prison system and corrections being termed an “industry.”
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
Overcrowding is one of the predominate reasons that Western prisons are viewed as inhumane. Chapman’s article has factual information showing that some prisons have as many as three times the amount of prisoners as allowed by maximum space standards. Prison cells are packed with four to five prisoners in a limited six-foot-by-six-foot space, which then, leads to unsanitary conditions. Prisons with overcrowding are exposed to outbreaks of infectious diseases such as, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
Sources on prison reform (2015) Growing Push to Reduce Incarceration Rates could Hurt Private Prisons expert say. The main argument is how private prison would be affect by the tough on crime law and how this law would cause the a major increase in the private prison population. However, private prison have made a major profit off the federal government for years by housing so many inmates making billions of dollar off the government. Private prison keep people in prison to increase profit and don't bring and economic benefit to the local communities they prison to serve. Private prison is also known to worry about keeping the private prison population fill, no effort in rehabilitation program to help inmates gain there way back in to society.
Prisons have been part of our criminal justice system for very long. “Few people find life without the death penalty difficult to imagine” (Davis 9). Since sentences within prisons have always been around, society has made us think that prison is the only punishment for criminals. In these excerpts it is stated “… more than two million people (out of a total of 9 million) now inhabit U.S prisons, jails, youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers” (Davis 10). This is a shocking fact because two million people are being oppressed by the law. Two million out of nine million is a huge number that inhabits prisons of one single country. More and more people are incarcerated every year and the numbers keep growing. Mass incarceration during
Maybe if I saw more reports on how prison has improved our society and the criminals who live among us, I would see why we should work on reforming our prisons. Until then, it does not seem to be working. We trust in the government to provide for our safety, but we must take responsibility among ourselves. To understand that the current system does work and that its intent is not to provide a safe society. History has shown us that. What we have done or continue to do will not make this a safer place to live. The problem is not to reform our prison system, for this won't stop criminals to commit crimes, but to find ways and means to deteriorate them from doing the crime.
Although America holds only five percent of the world’s population, it contains 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population which is why reform needs to be made in order to bring down incarceration rates which will in turn lower costs paid by American citizens.
Prison reform is a hot topic and ongoing issue that is making its way through the Senate and Legislation. America’s prisons are one of the most overcrowded
Second, in an environment in which the concentration is on punishment, politicians and the American public are frustrated with prisoners living in a “resort-like” facility which might include opportunities to participate in: watching cable TV, weightlifting rooms, free education, religious affiliations, and libraries. The average cost of keeping a prisoner...