Incarceration of Men, Women, and Juveniles

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Incarceration of Men, Women, and Juveniles

Prison populations have been on the raise since the early 1970s. Today we incarcerate over 2 million men, women and juveniles in the various correctional facilities around the country. These facilities can range from local jails or detention facilities to the new so called "Supermax" prisons. Conditions can also vary across the spectrum for these different correctional institutions. Each type of inmate has his or her own challenges when faced with incarceration. Many factors play into determining "the experience" they have. Age and sex are one of the things that determine what type of institution you are committed to. Adult male prisoners are committed to adult male prisons. Adult female prisoners are committed to adult female prisons. Juvenile offenders however, both male and female are sometimes unique in this aspect. There is a growing tendency to sentence juvenile offenders to adult prisons for their crimes. Perhaps because society has grown weary of the constant assault by these same juveniles on our sense of fairness and justice. Each day we see more and more juveniles committing violent crimes on our streets and in our schools. If this trend continues we will begin to see more issues dealing with how juveniles are treated in these adult prisons. Most of our juvenile offenders end up in State run systems as they are rarely prosecuted in the federal courts. Sentencing these youths to adult correction facilities opens them up for a broad range of abuse. The most compelling issue here would be that these adult institutions simply were never designed to handle juveniles or youthful offenders. The very treatment they receive from their "adult" fellow in...

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...ate training for these guards to refrain from sexually abusing prisoners. Thereby we have numerous cases of misconduct by male prison guards against their female inmates. There are actually states that offer no legal protection for rape and molestation while behind bars. If guards are caught they are usually subjected to administrative punishment rather than criminal prosecution. Once again I return to my point that this type of treatment while there are those that will say "let them get what they deserve", I believe that a more pragmatic approach to the problem will better serve all of society in the end. If we don't do something to stop these negative re-enforcement's while behind bars, then we are setting ourselves up for a revolving door of career criminals which will only make matters worse by keeping the pressure up on our justice and corrections systems.

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