Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Studies on prison systems
Studies on prison systems
The negative impact of prison
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Studies on prison systems
America has one of the highest incarceration rates when compared to other developed countries. Before we place the cuffs on, let us check again, as to why they are placed. Criminals as we call them are the people who have been found guilty of a crime beyond reasonable doubt. They have committed crimes that the general public has found requiring punishment or some sort of rehabilitation. Therefore, we send them off to penitentiaries so they can have a “time-out” until they have served sufficient time equal to the crime they have committed. They are us, just another American who has unfortunately disobeyed the law that binds us to live civilized with one another. That being said, we must keep them in mind when we place the convicted into prisons and determine how to spend our resources to supply those prisons.
Laws: Now let us dive into laws. There are two classifications of law in the United States that we are voluntarily accepted, the first are civil laws our responsibilities to others. Civil offences are usually violations of contracts, like marriage, landlord/tenant disputes, or property disputes. The second category of law that we hold are criminal laws; these are “rules of conduct that have been codified and carry with them standardized consequences for their violation” (Del Castillo, 2012). Criminal laws are split in two sections and will be covered over this paragraph. Malum in se are criminal offences that hold the behavior that have been deemed “naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of civilized community” (Del Castillo, 2012). These include homicide, rape, robbery, and assault. Malum in se require of a violent mental state because they are considered destructive in nature. Malum Prohibitum are “Public Welfare Offen...
... middle of paper ...
...e, it widely used and accepted so much so that the U.S. Constitution was written on cannabis paper.
Works Cited
Henrichson, C., & Delaney, R. (2012). The price of prisons: What incarceration costs taxpayers. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 25(1), 68-80. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/fsr.2012.25.1.68
Trout, G. (2011). THE COST OF INCARCERATION: OHIO PRISONS. University Of Toledo Law Review, 42(4), 891-901.
Katel, P. (2007, April 6). Prison reform. CQ Researcher, 17, 289-312. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/
Conyers Jr., J. (2013). The Incarceration Explosion. Yale Law & Policy Review, 31(2), 377-387.
STELLOH, T. (2013). California's Great Prison Experiment. Nation, 296(26/27), 31-34.
Wallace, G. (2012). THE REAL LETHAL PUNISHMENT: THE INADEQUACY OF PRISON HEALTH CARE AND HOW IT CAN BE FIXED. Faulkner Law Review, 4(1), 265-297.
Today, prisons are the nation’s primary providers of mental health care, and some do a better job than others. Pete Earley focuses his research on the justice system in Miami, Florida. He documents how the city’s largest prison has only one goal for their mentally ill prisoners: that they do not kill themselves. The prison has no specialized
Land of the Unfree: Mass Incarceration and Its Unjust Effects on Those Subjected To It and American Taxpayers
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
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.
“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. A large number of the prisoners are there because of drug related offenses. There are prisoners who have been sent to prison for life for marijuana related drug offenses. Many prisoners have been exonerated after spending many years behind bars due to the corruption in our legal system. 32 States in United States of America still execute prisoners even though there is no evidence to suggest that capital punishment is a deterrent. Prison reform is needed in America starting at the legal system and then ending the death penalty.
Drago, F., Galbiati, R. & Vertova, P. (2011). Prison conditions and recidivism. American law and economics review, 13 (1), pp. 103--130.
Harris, H. (2017, March). The Prison Dilemma: Ending America's Incarceration Epidemic. Foreign Affairs, pp. 118-129.
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
For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism is 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). I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to people being slamming in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related.
Mauer, Marc. 1999. The Race to Incarcerate. New York: The New Press National Research Council. 1993.
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.
Is the American Prison System Inhumane? Absolutely. It is badly overcrowded that they have to be sent to some other prison do to that overcrowding. Also, something that people should remember is that not everyone in jail has been convicted; many are awaiting trial or some are trying to immigrate to the US and are being held until their case can be reviewed.
As of present prison networks across the United States have ceased being entities under the control of the government, and have gone into the hands of private, profit-seeking proprietors. Why? Put simply, overcrowding. Prisons have met carrying capacities and have exhausted their resources on individuals, many of whom, should not have been afforded the luxury of life to begin with. However, in hindsight, it is factually and numerically lowered priced to keep a death-row inmate alive rather than proceeding with the expected execution: “A death sentence costs at least twice as much, start to finish, than a sentence of life without parole, according to a Maryland study. The Bar Association study pegged the cost here of prosecution, defense and appeals at nearly $800,000 more for a death penalty. Most of that cost is borne by counties. In King County, taxpayers have spent about $10 million on two pending death-penalty cases — and neither have even gone to trial. Smaller counties have been threatened with bankruptcy by the cost of death-penalty cases. The cost of lifetime imprisonment pales in comparison, and ensures the same level of public safety. The Legislature’s fiscal staff estimated that abolishing the death penalty required adding just two prison beds” (Riley et al. 3). Whilst it may be true that keeping an inmate alive
The origin of the word prison comes from the Latin word to seize. It is fair to say that the traditionally use of prison correspond well with the origin of the word; as traditionally prison was a place for holding people whilst they were awaiting trail. Now, centuries on and prisons today is used as a very popular, and severe form of punishment offered to those that have been convicted. With the exception however, of the death penalty and corporal punishment that still takes place in some countries. Being that Prison is a very popular form of punishment used in today's society to tackle crime and punish offenders, this essay will then be examining whether prison works, by drawing on relevant sociological factors. Furthermore, it will be looking at whether punishment could be re-imagined, and if so, what would it entail?