Prison Expansion: No Benefit to Society

No one likes seeing large imposing buildings with high brick walls and barbed wire topping them And behind those thick walls is another imposing building with small slivers crossed with large grates to let light in and men and women clothed in orange roaming the highly watched yard. They are imposing and daunting buildings, ones that would take away from a community’s attractiveness. But worse than seeing a new building like this one being built in one’s community, is seeing an already imposing building expanding into one’s neighborhood. These imposing buildings remind society that the world is not as safe as one would like to believe, that there are more than a few less than savory citizens in our midst. Expanding our nation’s prisons is not necessary to benefit society because prisoners cost society more than money, they do not reform prisoners, and they do not treat prisoners fairly.

But prisons have not always been this way. Before the 1800’s, the idea of prisons was non-existent. When someone committed a crime and was tried in court, the judge had the power to declare the accused guilty or not guilty. If the accused were deemed not guilty, he or she could walk away with no further punishment. However if he or she were deemed guilty, “the felon was usually given at the end of a rope or the swing of an axe” (Murphy 57). In the mid

1800’s, the prison system was created, however, these prisons were self-sustainable. The convicts did everything. They cooked and cleaned, painted and repaired what needed to be repaired, made their own clothes as well as making license plates for the outside world. The prison staff only oversaw and kept an eye on the prisoners; the staff did not provide any of the labor. But prisons ...

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