The crime rate in America has gone down, but whether or not incarceration is responsible for the drop continues to be cross-examined. Incarceration, like everything in life, is accompanied by both pros and cons. Prison is never the place anybody wants to claim residency to; it sends out a bad vibe. If a relative, a friend, or we were victims to a crime we would ultimately insist on the criminal being put away so we can all feel a sense of protection. We receive a sense of closure, possibly temporary, but nonetheless closure. What happens the moment the delinquent is released after serving time? The culprit is back on the streets and you fear you’re in danger again. That feeling is due to the fact that prisons don’t effectively rehabilitate the occupants. When they’re released they continue the life they left behind after being incarcerated. If they aren’t given the chance to rehabilitate while in prison chances are slim that they will go on the right path once they have been released.
There exist two forms of deterrence. Primary deterrence focuses on the criminal; in the form of direct prevention of crime. However, it does not take rehabilitation into consideration whatsoever. Primary deterrence, also known as specific deterrence, emphasizes on keeping the criminal off the streets. If the criminal is serving time in a prison they can no longer commit crimes or be criminal threat to society and each community. The second form of deterrence is general deterrence. That form specializes in teaching society a lesson by incarcerating people around us. Joel Waldfogel from America’s Prisons says that, “ if someone is convicted of robbing a convenience store and sentenced to jail or prison, their punishment will cause others to think twi...
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...paigned for a more humane treatment for prisoners.
Works Cited
America’s Prisons. San Diego: David L. Bender, 1997. Print.
Balko, Radley. “ The Crime Rate Puzzle: Did Incarceration Reduce the Crime Rate, Or Did it Get In The Way?” Reason July 2011: 78+. Gale Biography In Context. Web/ 31 Jan. 2014. Article.
How Should Prisons Treat Inmates? San Diego: David L. Bender, 2001. Print.
Prisons and Jails: A Deterrent to crime? Wylie: Information Plus,2004. Print.
Waldfogel, Joel. “Prisons Does Not Deter Crime.” America’s Prisons. Noah Berlatsky. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. From “The Irrational 28-Year-Old Criminal.” Slate. 2007. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 Jan. 2014. Article.
Western, Bruce. “Locked up,locked out: the social costs of incarceration.” Reason July 2011: 40+. Gale Biography In Context. Web.31 Jan. 2014. Article.
" With violence affecting so many lives, one can understand the desire driven by fear to lock away young male offenders. But considering their impoverished, danger-filled lives, I wonder whether the threat of being locked up for decades can really deter them from crime" (305). Hopkins is definitely not our stereotypical prisoner. Most generally, our view of prisoners is not that of someone who has this profound use of wording and this broad sense of knowledge.
Jacoby uses many claims about how crime in the United States has grown and the how faulty America’s justice system currently is. One claim said that citizens pay around “$30,000 per inmate each year” (Jacoby 197). This grasps the reader’s attention by connecting their life to the problem; it is their money, a lot of their money, being used to imprison these criminals. The rates have increased on inmates since the 1980s by over 250% (Jacoby 197). Jacoby declares that the prison system is terrible; he uses accurate and persuading evidence.
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.
Cohen (1985) supports this sentiment, and suggests that community based punishment alternatives have actually led to a widening and expansion of the retributive criminal justice system, rather than its abolishment. The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America, the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000).
Shapiro, David. Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration. Rep. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2011. Print.
Throughout history, it has become very clear that the tough on crime model just does not work. As stated by Drago & Galbiati et al. In their article: Prison Conditions and Recidivism, although it is...
The past two decades have engendered a very serious and historic shift in the utilization of confinement within the United States. In 1980, there were less than five hundred thousand people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails. Today we have approximately two million and the numbers are still elevating. We are spending over thirty five billion annually on corrections while many other regime accommodations for education, health
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
Mauer, Marc. 1999. The Race to Incarcerate. New York: The New Press National Research Council. 1993.
“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.
My first refutation of this statement is that in many circumstances, the high possibility of bountiful financial reward without consequence triumphs over fear of punishment, as I stated previously. Another important reason is that as mass incarceration consumes a greater percentage of the conversation, some of the social stigma around prisons will dissipate (Gendreau, Goggin, & Cullen, 1999). This is especially true for convicts, who, under poor economic and psychological conditions, may not be intimidated enough by the prospect of returning from prison to abstain from crime. As more people in individual networks of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances enter and are released from prison, prisons as an institution may lose some of their mystery and soul-eating reputations. Certainly, the sheer incidence of conviction and incarceration has not made prisons desirable, but becoming incarcerated has become an imaginable and plausible reality that one can survive. The sheer number of individuals that have been consumed in prisons has caused the emergence of prison-related references in pop culture, from the Netflix sensation Orange is the New Black to the rap smash hit “Hot N*gga” by Bobby Shmurda. To some extent, the omnipresence of mass incarceration in our culture has normalized it as part
The most problematic conclusion about Mass Incarceration, whatever the causes or practices, is that currently America has had the highest national prison rates in the world; furthermore, the rates of minorities (particularly African Americans) are extraordinarily disproportionate to the rates of incarcerated Caucasians. Despite the overall rise in incarceration rates since the 1980s, the crime rates have not been reduced as would be expected. Researchers, activists, and politicians alike are now taking a closer look at Mass Incarceration and how it affects society on a larger scale. The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of Mass Incarceration for a better understanding of its importance as a dominant social issue and its ultimate relation to practice of social work. More specifically the populations affected by mass incarceration and the consequences implacable to social justice. The context of historical perspectives on mass incarceration will be analyzed as well as insight to the current social welfare policies on the
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.
Verkaik, R. (2006) The Big Question: What are the alternatives to prison, and do they work? The Independent [online] 10 October. Available from:
Levitt, S. D. (1996). THE EFFECT OF PRISON POPULATION SIZE ON CRIME RATES: EVIDENCE FROM PRISON OVERCROWDING LITIGATION. Quarterly Journal Of Economics, 111(2), 319-351.