The United States prison system is an important aspect of today’s society. Without the prison system, there would be no place for the law enforcement agencies to detain the criminals that they have apprehended. Now, prisons today are much nicer than the prisons of the past; it all began with the Pennsylvania system. The Pennsylvania system was “a form of imprisonment developed by the Pennsylvania Quakers around 1790 as an alternative to corporal punishments.” (Schmalleger, 411). This prison that was developed in the 1790s used the means of solitary confinement and pushed for rehabilitation for the inmates (Schmalleger, 411). This new form of imprisonment encouraged society to create other prisons based on the same system, such as the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh in 1826 and the Eastern Penitentiary in Cherry Hill, Pennsylvania in 1829. *(411). The Pennsylvania System was the founding principle for future American prison systems.
After the Pennsylvania system, a new system came sweeping across America, and that was the Auburn system, which took place during the “Mass Prison Era” of the mid to late 1800s (Schmalleger, 411). The Auburn system was “a form of imprisonment developed in New York State around 1820 that depended on mass prisons, where prisoners were held in congregate fashion and required to remain silent” (Schmalleger, 411). So this new system came along, and was a competitor to the system that was developed in Pennsylvania. The problem with the Pennsylvania system was that “as prison populations began to grow, however, solitary confinement became prohibitively expensive” (Schmalleger, 411). The Auburn prison was once one of the prisons that followed the Pennsylvania model, but over time, the prison abandoned the ...
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... there are medical programs that take care of the inmates’ medical problems, there are community service programs which some people may serve instead of jail time, and the inmates can even gain an education within the prisons, so many of the concerns of other eras are still addressed today in the prisons (bop.gov). Even in society today they are changing, with more prisons becoming privately run and owned, eventually these private prisons will grow to the size of the state and federal prisons now and will overtake them.
Works Cited
"BOP: Inmate Work Programs." BOP: Inmate Work Programs. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
"Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)." Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Schmalleger, Frank. Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.
Wright, J. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice. (p. 9.1). San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUCRJ201.12.1/sections/sec9.1
Seigal, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
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.
Supermaximum security prisons, which fall under the consolidation model, are associated with a number of ethical problems. There are a number of issues that need to be taken into consideration when discussing the use of supermax prisons. Hans Toch, a corrections scholar, pointed out that the methods used in supermax prisons are not new penal techniques. In fact, those types of prison conditions were adopted in the past and rejected because of increased rates of inmates developing mental illness (Hickey, 2010). Supermaximum security prisons have been associated with past attempts, like the Eastern State Penitentiary, where twenty-four-hour isolation was used and there were no programs for self improvement.
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.
The Pennsylvania system is a method of imprisonment based on the principle that solitary confinement reforms prisoners. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, which was mainly made up of Quakers, promoted it. Solitary confinement started in 1829 at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Eastern State Penitentiary was founded on the Pennsylvania System. The prisoners there were kept in cells 12x7.5x16 feet. They saw nobody, except for institution officers and occasional visitors. The inmates were kept ...
An American resolution: The history of prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877 by Matthew Meskell. Stanford Law Review.
The first solitary confinement penitentiary, Western Penitentiary, was founded in 1826 with two-hundred solitary cells. Soon after the development of this penitentiary, the penal reformers decided that solitary confinement wasn’t
“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime control model.
Schmalleger, F. (2009), Prentice Hall, Publication. Criminal Justice Today: An introductory Text for the 21st century
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 27, 343-360. http://ccj.sagepub.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/content/27/3/342
Incarceration has been the center of the United States justice system ever since the opening of the nation’s first prison. In order to understand how the aspects of the first corrections institutions correlate to later correctional practices seen today. Whether it was temporary or permanent, there has always been some form of detainment for offenders, and they were always held against their will. Imprisonment of offenders in earlier times was done primarily to hold the accused until the authorities determined the offender’s actual punishment. Jails and prisons create a vicious and expensive cycle of crime that usually just end up overcrowding correctional facilities.
Prisons have been around since the 1500s but from watching different movies and reading books before they were what they are today facilities, people would be put in things such as dungeons. Imprisonment is the main form of punishment or rehabilitation in the United States. It is known that the United States has the highest level of imprisonment. “Prison building efforts in the United States came in three major waves. The first began during the Jacksonian Era and led to widespread use of imprisonment and rehabilitative labor as the primary penalty for most crimes in nearly all states by the time of the American Civil War. The second began after the Civil War and gained momentum during the Progressive Era, bringing a number of new mechanisms—such as parole, probation, and indeterminate sentencing—into the mainstream of American p...
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.
Incarceration has not always been the main form of “punishment” when it comes to doing an injustice to society. In fact, in the early 1600’s common forms of punishments for doing wrong in society included social rejection, corporal punishment, forced labor etc. (“Prison History.”). It had not been until the 18th century where it had been determined that incarceration could actually be a form of punishment correlating with a set amount of time in which an individual had to serve dependent on the severity of his actions. The logic behind incarceration is to restrict a person of his liberty as retribution for the crime he has committed (Prison History.”) Prisons that were created in the 18th century gained their recognition because of their high goals in perfecting society. But, the truth is as people were focusing on perfecting society prisons soon became overcrowded, dirty, and most of all dangerous. By the late 19th century many more people had become aware of the poor prison conditions which had led to a “reformatory” movement. The reformatory movement was put into place as a means of rehabilitation for inmates (“Prison History.”) Prisons would now offer programs to reform inmates into model citizens by offering counseling, education, and opportunities to gain skills needed for working in a civilian world. However, with the growing amount of inmates each year prisons are still becoming overcrowded. Because prisons are so overcrowded there are not enough resources being spent on achieving the rehabilitation of inmates and reintegrating them into society in order for them to survive in the civilian world once released from prison (“Prison History.”)