Alternatives to Incarceration for the Young Offenders
In recent years there have been so many crimes that youth have been involved. The crime rate has really have went up. There are too many young inmates in our prisonsjails; the percentage is so high that we really need to do something about it. “Despite a decline in juvenile offending over the past decade, the population of youth confined in pre-trial secure detention has steadily grown. On an average day, more than 27,000 youth are estimated to reside in locked detention centers — a number that has grown 72 percent since the early 1990s”. ("Center for children’s law and policy"). This means in the past twenty five years, the crime has gone up and a lot of our tax dollars have went to the system to provide for this offenders.
The prison and jails are so full that is almost unbelievable, that is why there is such a desperate needs to get these offenders out and providing for themselves. The system is really trying to offer programs to all of the inmates but also focusing on the younger population. Incarceration is very expensive because a prisoner must be provided with clothes, food, bed, and other necessary things. Keeping them locked up is just keeping our society from moving forward. So why waste
There have been so many concerns on whether it is a good idea on charging minors as adults. There are so many offenders in the prisons that began their time before they were eighteen. This is a big concern because even if they committed a crime they are young they really don’t know, so why charge them as adults. When they go in as young offenders is so much easier for them to stay in the system, so let’s help our society by helping these offenders and make them work for what they want. If we incarcerate them we are giving them everything that they need so why not make them work for what they
The adult system’s shifts leaked into the juvenile system, causing an increase in incarcerations even when delinquency rates were declining at the time. Juvenile reform legislations prompted more compulsory sentencing and more determinate sentences for juveniles, lowering of the upper age of juvenile jurisdiction, considerable ease in obtaining waivers to adult court for juvenile prosecution, and made it easier to gain access to juvenile records as well. Furthermore, it led to greater preoccupation with chronic, violent offenders, which in turn led to a redirection of resources for their confinement. Thereby, the absence of reliable criteria for identifying such offenders tends to stereotype all delinquents and is more likely to raise the level of precautionary confinements. These three major shifts in juvenile justice policy demonstrate the power and depth of traditional beliefs about the causes and cures of crimes in U.S. society. It also shows how the system can bend for a time in the direction of new approaches to prevention and control. Today, we are presently in a time of conservative responses where the prevailing views about crime express beliefs about prevention, retribution, and incapacitation that are profoundly rooted in our
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for centuries to come will be seen as a huge contributing factor to the occurrence of the U.S. Civil War when it happened. As people’s views change about things over long periods of time, what people believe about the moral rightness of the institution called slavery may also change. It is possible that slavery could one day be counted by the majority as proper. Uncle Tom’s Cabin could find itself on center stage in importance again in a debate over slavery. Until then, it is safe to say that its impact on society was massive in its time and will now be studied as a great contribution to our history.
As we know the federal government spends a large portion of our budget on the maintaining of prisons. During the 2011 fiscal year it cost nearly $29,000 to house a prisoner in a state penitentiary per year as stated by the Federal Register. The funds that are estimated to keep a prison running end up running over the prediction causing them go over budget. We can account for this because according to The Price of Prisons|Oklahoma on Vera.org, here in the state of Oklahoma the Oklahoma Department of Corrections called for $441.8 million taxpayer dollars in the 2010 fiscal year. The actual cost for the maintenance of the prisons called for $453.4 million taxpayer dollars. This is about $11.6 million taxpayer dollars over the set budget for the year. This proves that there are too many things that need to be taken care of in these facilities. Much of the money went to paying employee benefits and to capital costs which is also stated in this article. Instead of using the money to pay for employee benefits they should be using it to pay for what the inmates need. This causes a strain on citizens because they are obligated into paying more taxes. The money being used on prison employee benefits could be going to other programs such as education and Social Security which would benefit more
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
It is undeniable that mass incarceration devastates families, and disproportionately affects those which are poor. When examining the crimes that bring individuals into the prison system, it is clear that there is often a pre-existing pattern of hardship, addiction, or mental illness in offenders’ lives. The children of the incarcerated are then victimized by the removal of those who care for them and a system which plants more obstacles than imaginable on the path to responsible rehabilitation. Sometimes, those returned to the community are “worse off” after a period of confinement than when they entered. For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism are exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives(Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66).
The two main types of incarceration include short-term, which is used for minor crimes and offenses, and long-term incarceration which are major crimes that involve major rehabilitation. Short-term incarceration is exactly how it sounds, it is a form of confinement that lasts for only a short period of time. It is reserved for the minor crimes that are committed in order to give the correct punishment to the guilty offender. These short-term incarceration places house current and future inmates. The short-term punishments include the obvious such as more jail time, but it could also mean other forms of punishment such as house arrest, parole, work release programs, rehab, and also probation. These punishments are meant to confine the offender
While Jim Crow dominated the social landscape of the South for much of the 20th century, formal segregation and acts of racism also existed in the North during this time. Blacks who moved to the North in the Great Migration after the First World War might have been able to live without the same degree of oppression experienced in the South, however the elements of racism and discrimination still existed. Despite the work by abolitionist, life for free blacks was still harsh because of northern racism. Most free blacks lived in overpopulated ghettoes in the major Northern cities such New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. In the Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B Dubois’ does a social study on race, and uncovers many social problems that plagued African
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
The United States has been known world-wide for entertainment surrounding the police, judiciary, and incarceration systems. These shows and movies are filled with violence - and at the end, the “bad guys” (criminals) always lose to the “good guys” (law enforcement). But this poses the question: should criminals be treated badly due to their offenses? It is common sense that when one breaks the law, they should be punished for it. However, do the crimes committed take away the humanity of the convict? Prisoners are still citizens of the United States and therefore have rights. America’s Incarceration System continues to fail to meet the needs and rights of prisoners due to issues such as overcrowding, lack of health care, discrimination, and sexual assault.
Show the problem exists: “Critics of the juvenile justice system claim that approximately 500,000 youths who move through to the nation’s pretrial detention centers each year—70 percent of them nonviolent offenders—are thousands too many and that this experience may even increase the chances that they will commit more crimes and go “deeper” into the system” (Hardy 2007). These numbers are staggering. Of these half a million youths 350,000 of them will be re-incarcerated in just a matter of 12 months or less. This is an epidemic that can no longer be avoided. The arrest rates for juvenile violent offenses have also significantly increased over the past few decades with a 61% rise in arrests for violent offenses, even despite the fact that violent offenders are a relatively small proportion...
The United States has been affected by a number of crimes committed by juveniles. The juvenile crime rate has been increasing in recent years. Everyday more juveniles commit crimes for various reasons. They act as adults when they are not officially adults. There is a discussion about how juveniles should be punished if they commit heinous crimes. While many argue that juveniles who commit serious crimes, such as murder, should be treated as adults, the fact is, juveniles under the age of eighteen, are not adults, and should not be treated as such.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
America, the land of the free, as well as the not so free. As well as being the largest in the world, the prison population within the United States provides proof that it is the most broken forms of incarceration. The U.S. subscribes to the notion that all people that have committed a crime can be rehabilitated and released as a fully functioning member of society. However, this entire concept is wrong.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin along with other lesser known works. Stowe wrote to bring to light the wrongs in society, most notably slavery. The literary period, the historical period, the community in which she lived, her family background, her religious beliefs, and her education all influenced Stowe’s desire to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin illustrating the lives of slaves. Despite the criticism she received, she continued to support the abolitionist movement with the same conviction, her actions eventually fulfilling her true goal: freedom.
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.”)