America’s Prisons and Their Effects On Society

The problem of prison overcrowding forces most violent prisoners to serve less than half their sentence ("Punishment"). Supporters believe that the only solution to ... ... middle of paper ... ... not only reduce the number of inmates in the prison system, but would also offer rehabilitation approaches for offenders, enabling them to change their lives. This alternative method gives both supporters and opponents of building more prisons a common ground upon which to stand. It is a solution that focuses on the main problem: punishing criminals. Works Cited "And Punishment: Crime."

The prison system is a source of debate and criticism. Many people would agree that prisons are effective because they keep criminals who are deemed dangerous away from society. Of course, there are different levels of offenders requiring a lesser or greater level of security. Moore Solomon, a Criminal Justice Reporter for the New York Times and a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times states, “140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country are serving life terms” (Solomon). Such a high number of incarcerations would indicate that most convicts in prison have-been or will-be released back into society after serving their sentence.

Prison is not a good and enjoyable place to be in a first place however, more people are going to prison. This issue is not only threatening our correctional system, it is also threatening our economy as well. Our criminal justice system has been dealing with this issue in number of ways including, privatization of prison and increasing the uses of paroles and probations. One of the things that I would try to do is to prevent repeat offenders from coming back to prisons. According to (Wikoff, Linhorst & Morani, 2012.

In this world we live in many feel that prisons exist to punish, not counsel, offenders. That may be true that Prisons exist for punishment, but they also have an important contribution to make to reducing re-offending by engaging prisoners in rehabilitation programs and purposeful work. Society is flawed in its thinking that by putting criminals in a place away from society we would be better off. To make it worse I am sure that more that 60 percent of Americans are against social reform because they have made up their mind that once a crook, always a crook. This is flawed mainly because it seems to assume that showing people that what they've done is wrong will always accomplish something, that punishing those who commit crimes will deter others from following the same pattern.

Also, they view imprisonment as a deterrent against future crimes. For example, if a law-breaker sees his friend imprisoned for a crime he committed, then the other party will be less willing to break the law and end up in prison as well. Furthermore, punishment itself would satisfy most of society when the criminal is imprisoned. Prison offers law-breakers a chance to receive drug treatment, educational benefits, and as stated before, a chance at rehabilitation. Also, incarceration costs less than leaving criminals out of prisons because the cost of housing inmates is less than the cost of their crimes incur.

Inside Story of the Prison System We are all accustomed to believing that prisons are places of justice, hardship, and prosecution of those who have broken the law. Many people trust that the inmates are completely cut off from connections with the outside. Most people believe criminals receive the punishment they deserve by depriving them of the rights and privileges that the rest of society enjoys. There are many questions that will remain unanswered, but one important question would be: Is the prison system effective, or is the staff making it too easy for the inmates to deal with contraband? There are many issues that involve prison systems such as overcrowding, but the one I find most interesting is the drug abuse and ways inmates obtain these drugs.

In general however, prisons aren’t a nice place to be. Something not very common in prisons is that some prisoners could, through reflecting on their own actions and correcting their own faults, fixing themselves emotionally they would leave prison better humans. Prison can be a place where criminals reflect on their actions and see who they are through other prisoners, and using this a sort of ‘therapy’ where they would better themselves. Yet even though this isn’... ... middle of paper ... ...be greatly life changing for the better for some people. Roger Dean Kiser Sr. and Jeri Becker from the previous articles used prison for repenting and thinking about themselves, about their actions and from this becoming great people with Becker becoming a known author and teacher, a famous example of how prison can change people.

There is no way that prisoners will become better people if they don’t have rehabilitation programs to help them; Mrs. Prescott stressed that there is hope for everyone. At FMC Rochester, they take in a lot of white collar criminals. After they spend some time in prison, these white collar criminals pick up on traits from other inmates. From time to time inmates leave prison more likely to commit a violent crime than when they arrived there. Often, rehabilitation programs are poorly funded, and large numbers of people believe that people are sent to jail or prison only to be punished.

Even once prisoners are released they are not treated “normal”. We make people do time to make up for the crime they committed but yet once they finish the punishment we still look down upon felons and they are having trouble finding jobs because of their past so this future complicates and reinforces them returning into prison or jail. I think Shawshank Redemption did an amazing job showing prison culture even if it was all directly shown but in subtle symbols it really added a lot to the movie and our perspective on inmates and prisoner subculture.

Doctors sometimes misinterpret injuries and causes of death and this can really alter a case's outcome significantly. Finally, witnesses may report false sightings, or report something that they thought they heard but misinterpreted it entirely. More laws should be put into place to protect the innocent suspects, and to insure that nobody goes to prison that really does not deserve it and more citizens should be trained to accurately give a description of a suspect to decrease the wrongful conviction rate. It is understandable why a criminal would lie about committing a crime which they did commit to get out of trouble and stay out of jail. In majority of prisons worldwide, 90% of convicted criminals claim innocence.