The prison system is filled with people from various backgrounds and lifestyles. People who come into the system not knowing who they will encounter while they are there. Prisoners who are members of various gangs are intermixed with prisoners who may suffer from mental illness, sex offenders and juveniles have the possibility of sharing the same cell. While there are systems and policies in place that helps at times to protect each prisoner, the same systems and policies can create an environment that is detrimental to prisoners. Theses people enter the prison system having to give up many rights that for the years that they are incarcerated will be controlled by wardens and guards, however the same inalienable rights that they were born with are not given up, and any system or policies that denies then these rights is abusive. There are ways to improve the prison system that allows the people who enter them to keep important rights while paying their debt to society.
It should first be mentioned that prisons were created to be rehabilitative facility as well as a punitive organization. While prisons have succeeded in punishing people for their crimes, the prisons have less often rehabilitated those people. For example, many prisoners who suffer from mental illnesses or drug addictions at the time if incarceration receive minimal treatment for their diseases,
despite the fact that the disease helped them become incarcerated. Except for life-threatening illnesses, prisoners typically wait for weeks in order to get important treatment from physicians at hospitals, which means that daily treatments that could resolve many of the prisoners; issues are not provided (Clark, 2010). Prisoners with mental illnesses or other...
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3) Clark, R.L. (2010) http://www.transformativestudies.org/wp-content/uploads/10.379tia.1937-0237.10027.pdf
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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.
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.
The individuals imprisoned are cast aside and separated from the community, even though they are a part of the community along with their victims (Leven, 1992). Both studies called for prisons to only be used as punishment on the offenders who would benefit from the long-term rehabilitation. Leven (1992) calls for community based reformation rather than relying on prison based treatments. This would entail the offender working with the community outside of the prison, instead of the community inside of the prison. Prisons may not be rehabilitative for all offenders as it does expose them to an environment of high-risks.
To punish or to rehabilitate incarcerated inmates is a debate decades in the making. The majority of correctional facilities are currently punishment-oriented. There is such a strong focus on punishment, as correctional facilities are built upon disciplinary objectives, that it is difficult to create effectual rehabilitative programs for inmates. Rehabilitation while incarcerated can include a wide variety of assistance such as education, vocation training, and hands-on experience. Mental illness support can also be a large portion of inmate rehabilitation, as the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that sixty-one percent of inmates in state prisons struggle with mental problems (Glaze and James). Ignoring mental illness, rather than helping
In the article “The Mentally Ill Are Mishandled by the Justice System”, Shannon explains how there are approximately 3000 mentally ill inmates in a prison who are unjustfuly sent there. Many mental illnesses are cause by post traumatic experiences such as being abused as a child or being sexually abused as a child. She also explains how many times judges and officers do not fully understand why mentally ill people do what they do, therefore they misunderstand the person’s actions and send them.
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.
Longitudinal research has been conducted comparing the rate of violence in male and female prisons. It is important to do research on this topic because it does not only lead to the conclusion of where is violence prevalent, but focuses on other aspects as well. It focuses on the psychological, social, and sexual side of the inmate. This topic does not only focus on who has the highest rates of violence, but why does that sex have a higher rate. This topic looks deeper at the differences between male and female inmates and what causes them to have high rates of violence. Most people would say that male prisons have a higher rate of violence due to biological reasons. People tend to think that males are more aggressive therefore violence is prevalent in male prisons, yet there is a lot more to this idea.
Prisons are institutionalized systems that hold people hostage against their will. Many believe that these institutions are fundamental to keep balance within society. Although prison systems are meant to seclude troubled individuals, it should go beyond just containing criminals. The judicial system is responsible for correcting and eliminating future delinquent behavior before they can be effectively situated back into society. In saying this, the court system does not implement these actions within prison systems, failing to fulfil the goals and the function of the prison overall. The U.S elots millions of dollars toward funding for our correctional system, but are unable to reform the basic natural rights and maltreatment within the prison system.
Rehabilitation is firmly entrenched in the history of corrections in the United States. Penitentiaries, for example were formed in 1820 with the belief that offenders could be morally reformed (Cullen, & Jonson, 2012, pp. 27-28). In 1870). The National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline documented the merits of rehabilitation (Wines, 1871, p. 457). However, by the end of the 1960s, the United States had experienced several years of discontent within its prison systems which resulted in a national call for prison reform and the development of a disillusionment with rehabilitation (Martinson, 1974, p. 22). In 1966, Robert Martinson was hired to evaluate the effectiveness of rehabilitation, the result of which was his infamous “What Works?” paper, in which he posits that empirical evidence does not support rehabilitation (p. 23). By the mid-1970s, correctional policy shifted from one emphasizing rehabilitation to one emphasizing just desserts/retribution, deterrence and incapacitation (Cullen, & Jonson, 2012, p. 22). The result of these “get-tough” policies, which sought to control crime through strict laws and lengthy sentences, was unprecedented growth in our custodial population, which we can no longer support, either financially or spatially (p. 1).
Although it may not seem like a major problem to most people in the United States, prisons are becoming overcrowded, expensive to maintain and have little to no effect on the moral discipline of inmates. The current prison system is extremely inefficient and the purpose of prisons has been completely forgotten. According to Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the primary purpose of prisons is to punish, to protect, and to rehabilitate. Not only is there an increase in prisoners, but there is a rise in the number of repeat offenders. Alternatives such as counseling, drug rehabilitation, education, job training and victim restitution must be better enforced and organized. People do not understand the severity of the problem mainly because
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.
All over America, crime is on the rise. Every day, every minute, and even every second someone will commit a crime. Now, I invite you to consider that a crime is taking place as you read this paper. "The fraction of the population in the State and Federal prison has increased in every single year for the last 34 years and the rate for imprisonment today is now five times higher than in 1972"(Russell, 2009). Considering that rate along crime is a serious act. These crimes range from robbery, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, abuse, trafficking, assault, and murder. Crime is a major social problem in the United States. While the correctional system was designed to protect society from offenders it also serves two specific functions. First it can serve as a tool for punishing the offender. This involves making the offender pay for his/her crime while serving time in a correctional facility. On the other hand it can serve as a place to rehabilitate the offender as preparation to be successful as they renter society. The U.S correctional system is a quite controversial subject that leads to questions such as how does our correctional system punish offenders? How does our correctional system rehabilitate offenders? Which method is more effective in reducing crime punishment or rehabilitation? Our correctional system has several ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders.
Punishing criminals by putting them in a correctional facility such as prisons can be successful in repenting the criminal as they would reflect on their own actions, allowing the guilt to make them better people, probably even seeing their own faults through other prisoners. Prisons give criminals a chance to rehabilitate themselves by using the facilities there present such as the counseling and seminars given. The fact that prisons house a lot of criminals that associate with each other has created a “criminal community”, an atmosphere where crime inhibits; therefore criminals can only aid each other out to become better “crims”, learning the tricks of the trade as well as toughening each other up through the highly abusive nature of the criminals there. Health wise, prisons can highly be dangerous and lethal to the prisoners; such diseases as AIDS from homosexual relationships and drug use is prevalent, as well as male rape, and even female rape, even some become mentally insane. In general however, prisons aren’t a nice place to be.
Many people idealized the relevancy of living in a civilized world, where those who break the law are reprimanded in a less traditional sense of punishment in today’s standard. Instead of just doing hard time, programs and services could and should be provided to reform and rehabilitate prisoner. Despite standard beliefs, many individuals in prison are not harden criminals and violent offenders, many of these people suffer mental illness and substance abuse Hoke
Throughout the decades of correction, there has been an argument between rehabilitation and retribution. Although people think of prison as a reformatory, a place where criminals who have committed crimes pay their debt to society and learn their lessons, in order to return to society. People think of prison as a place of punishment, where the loss of freedom, limited privileges and rights are undertaken to enforce a punishment on criminals and to protect society. The question is which of these beliefs, retribution or rehabilitation, is more effective or important.