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Essays for prison reform
Essays over prison reforms
Essays over prison reforms
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Prison "Reform" in America In the essay "Prison "Reform" in America," Roger T. Pray points out the much attention that has been devoted to research to help prevent crimes. Showing criminals the errors of their ways not by brutal punishment, but by locking them up in the attempt to reform them. Robert Pray, who is a prison psychologist, is currently a researcher with the Utah Dept. of Corrections. He has seen what has become of our prison system and easily shows us that there is really no such thing as "Prison Reform" In Roger Prays essay we see how our prison system has come to where we are at now. He shows how history of prisons worked and how our basis of the prison system came about over the last 200 years. Robert states that it was the Americans that invented the prison. "The history of prison in America is the history of a troubled search for solutions." Before we had prisons in America, criminals where dealt with in a swift and brutal manner. Many prisoner where dealt with by corporal or capital punishment. Jails did exist in this time but they were "primarily for pretrail detention" stated Pray. "Today's system, where imprisonment is a common penalty for most crimes, is a historical newcomer." Many crimes during 1718 and 1776 were punishable by death. This was usually done by hanging, sometimes by stoning, breaking on the rack and burning at the stake. Towards the end of the 1700's people realized that cruel punishment did little to reduce crime and their society was changing the population grew and people started to move around more frequently. There had to be a search for new punishments. "New punishments were to rely heavily on new ideas imported from Europe in the writing of such social thinkers of the Enlightenment as the baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, Thomas Pain and Cesare Beccaria". These thinkers came to believe that criminals could be rehabilitated." Beccaria, a European theorizer, had the most influence on penology. "His work had a profound effect on criminal punishment the world over." Beccaria wrote "the purpose of punishment is not to torment a sensible being, or to undo a crime [but] is none other than to prevent the criminal from doing further injury to society and to prevent others from committing the like offense." This is how... ... middle of paper ... ...m committing the like offense." How many times has this worked. It is known that many murders get paroled and 1/3 of these commits another murder. Do we really want to try to make prisoners better people? They committed crime once who is to say they won't again. Maybe if I saw more reports on how prison has improved our society and the criminals who live among us, I would see why we should work on reforming our prisons. Until then, it does not seem to be working. We trust in the government to provide for our safety, but we must take responsibility among ourselves. To understand that the current system does work and that its intent is not to provide a safe society. History has shown us that. What we have done or continue to do will not make this a safer place to live. The problem is not to reform our prison system, for this won't stop criminals to commit crimes, but to find ways and means to deteriorate them from doing the crime. Work Cited Prison "Reform" in America by Robert T. Pray Historical Viewpoints Volume 1 An American resolution: The history of prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877 by Matthew Meskell. Stanford Law Review.
The conditions of prisons were a bit dreadful. In some prisons, prisoners had their feet fasten together by iron bars and had chains around their necks. Most prisoner cells had very little furniture and bedding, prisoners had to sleep on the floor or unless had their friends supply them with furniture and bedding. Most cells did not have a toilet, prisoners were given buckets. A prisoner was giving a small loaf of bread unless they had money to buy more food but that was a bit expensive. Even children were allowed in prisons. Some prison...
Instead of prisoners just sitting in a cell doing nothing, why not put them to work, "Every inmate that works saves taxpayers $5,000 a year"(Smith). There are prisoners that work in greenhouses, that generated $57 million in revenue. As budget cuts rise working prisoners become more and more valuable. Inmates are finding ways to save money by recycling there old mattress, that would of end up in landfills. Some prisons even have their inmates help clean up dirty parks around them. While the prisoners are doing this they are learning skills , that will help them with different jobs. Prisoners that do a good job get rewarded with money bonuses. Prisoners learning how to be more responsible and understand how to become a better person will help them in the up coming future. With the prisoners getting paid for bonuses for good work this will make it feel as if it’s a real job. The experience that the inmates are receiving will help them with jobs once they are released from prison. Prisoners will strive to do better with the bonuses they are receiving, and will understand again what its like work. Now with this happening this will ensure the prisoners will have a better and healthier
Roberts, John W. "Work, Education, and Public Safety: A Brief History of Federal Prison Industries." n.d.
Davis discusses the history of the justice system and how the Penitentiary replaced capitol and corporal punishment. She defines Penitentiary as “Imprisonment was regarded as rehabilitative and the penitentiary prison was devised to provide convicts with the conditions for reflecting on their crimes and, through penitence, for reshaping their habits even their souls.3” though the idea of the penitentiary is arguable a new idea during the American Revolution. The penitentiary process was so that prisoners could learn from what they have done by a process of separation and rehabilitation. After slavery and during the early 20th century the level of crime rates rose during the early 1920’s to 1940’s. In the Article Less crime more punishment Adler4,
Before jails were even implemented in America, the colonists had quite a different approach to punishment that led to how jails came to be. The original outlook of criminals came from the Colonists religious belief that criminals were sinners who were workers of the devil. The Colonists felt they had to be protected from devil’s workforce and therefore criminals must have their name run into the ground, be cast out of the town, or in the most extreme cases be hung. Before the Colonists accepted institutions, they looked to public humiliation as a means of correcting the lesser criminals. The harsher punishments, such as death, were given to people who were believed to be beyond redemption. But, with growing populations due to industrialization of cities townspeople grew less and less known to one another. With less recognition between citizens the thought of public humiliation as a punishment was weakening as a threat. On top of that, people were beginning to grow weary that capital punishment may have been too barbaric and overall ineffective. Yet, the colonists were still not completely convinced to utilize jails. The hesitation was a result of the community feeling that most men were not salvageable and institutionalizing them would only be rewarding. Although, this conception began to unravel in the late 1600’s when the Pennsylvania Quakers came up with a plan that would eventually be accepted.
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.
There are many people who are critical of the US‘s prison sysetm; the idea of locking up those who commit crimes against a society simply to keep them from doing harm. Many say that more rehabilatation is necessary to improve these individuals and, therefore, society as a whole. What are some ways of doing this? Do you agree/disagree with this view and why? Is the prison system currently in place the best option for society? 2 pages, double spaced, 12pt. font.
With the conditions of both jail and prison seem to be unjust, it seems like a reform to prisons and jails could be made. Ismael Nazario says a person’s experience in jail can be very traumatizing, and based on the conditions in prisons, can encourage inmates to continue to be criminals. ("What I Learned as a Kid in Jail." Ismael Nazario) Many people end up getting cancer in both because
“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.
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.
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.
Furthermore, it will be looking at whether punishment could be re-imagined, and if so, what would it entail? The use of prison as a form of punishment began to become popular in the early 19th century. This was because transportation to colonies had started to decrease; transportation was the removing of an individual, in this case an offender, from its country to another country; usually for a period of seven to ten years and in some cases for ever. During this time prison was now being used as a means for punishment, this was in response to the declining of transportation to colonies. Thus, instead of transporting offenders to other colonies, they were now being locked away behind high walls of the prison.
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.
Crime constructs us as a society whilst society, simultaneously determines what is criminal. Since society is always changing, how we see crime and criminal behavior is changing, thus the way in which we punish those criminal behaviors changes. In the early modern era in Europe, public executions were the primary punishment given to members of society who were involved in criminal behavior. This form of punishment served to showcase the absolute power of the state, King and church to take away the life of any citizen who disrupts peace. It was a way to make the criminal justice system visible and effective in an era when the criminal justice system was in its beginning stages of demonstrating orderliness (Spierenburg). More specifically, it was a relatively straightforward and psychological way to evoke deterrence. The potential of gruesome violence, public persecution and religious betrayal were tools thought to be strong enough to make public executions a successful form of deterrence because within the community, social bonds and religion were the fou...
It seems as though the prison system can’t even get a hold on their primary function, seeing that “two-thirds of prisoners reoffend within three years of leaving prison” (Gilligan). While placing offenders in prison effectively removes that threat from society for a time, what benefit is it if they cause the same problem upon release? What is the point of a federal prison if inmates aren’t given the opportunity to make use of their time and have rehabilitation? Not only would it be for the better of prisoners’ chances of returning to community, but also for the better of the nation economically. In James Gilligan’s article, “Punishment Fails. Rehabilitation Works” (2012), he discusses a study conducted regarding potential rehabilitation programs with prisoners, resulting in an impressive outcome that “reduced the frequency of violent reoffending after leaving the jail by 83 percent,” which “saved the taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on it.” Warden Burl Cain supports this concept, claiming that “Everybody forgets what corrections means…If this person can go back and be a productive citizen and not commit crimes again, why spend the money to keep him in prison?” (The Editorial Board)