The failure of imprisonment has been one of the most noticeable
features of the current crisis in criminal justice systems. At best,
prisons are able to provide a form of crude retribution to those
unfortunate to be apprehended. At worst, prisons are brutalizing,
cannot be shown to rehabilitate or deter offenders, and are
detrimental to the re-entry of offenders into society. If anything,
they do little else than confine most prisoners, and as a result lead
to the imposition of certain undesirable learning habits and labels.
Such habits include the learning of survival patterns of behavior,
which do little to help the prisoner to be reintegrated as a useful
and productive member of the community.
It has been established that prison work or training experiences all
too often fail to impart skills that can be usefully applied once the
prisoner is released. The prison experience also acts as a
stigmatising one, so that the prisoner finds that society labels them
as an undesirable or untrustworthy person, despite the fact that
he/she has ostensibly been 'rehabilitated' (Bartollas, 1985).
Both ideological and socioeconomic pressures play an important role in
bringing about changes to the concept of punishment and the methods of
dealing with the criminal deviant. To date, however, there has been an
increasing pressure for the avoidance and the minimisation of the
penal servitude. The general consensus of much criminological opinion
is that imprisonment as a corrective and punitive method has failed.
What has emerged in response to this failure is the notion of
community-based corrections, a movement that has received both
intellect...
... middle of paper ...
...e. The
prison institution is only a phenomenon of relatively recent times in
the history of man, it is by no means true that society is unable to
accommodate other means of social control (Andenaes, 1974).
What needs to be reviewed is not so much the methods of correction but
the basic doctrines of punishment themselves. The introduction of all
these new schemes may only serve the purpose of extending social
control, instead of defeating, many social problems. In fact,
community-based corrections may be seen as undermining, not assisting,
movement towards fundamental change in the criminal justice system.
Alternatives, therefore, need to be clearly and completely separated
and distinguished from the traditional prison system and the culture
of imprisonment if they are to have any greater hope of being
successful.
Joe is a prisoner in a United States penitentiary convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. Johan is a prisoner in a Norwegian Correctional Facility also convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. After eight years of serving their time in custody, they are released back out into society, the world beyond their prison walls. During the following month after their release, Joe has once again been arrested for assault and attempted robbery while Johan has started making a quiet living as a deckhand on the coast for a small fishing company in Kopervik. Now both men have the same background and have come out of the same circumstances but yet only one reverts back to a life a crime, why?
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
Throughout the history of the United States and including the western world. Corrections have served the country by convicting and sentencing offenders depending on the seriousness of the crime. Along with that today, offenders are either placed in probation, incarcerated or taken to community-based corrections. Even though, corrections have always tried to find ways to deter crime by correcting criminals, the poor economy in our country has been the cause for struggles in the correctional system. Some of the causes of economic issues are the cut of budget, over crowing, lack of programs for people with mental illnesses, and lack of innovation.
In today’s society, we often find people who have a bias against the correctional system. We find these people to have no credible source besides the information the media proposes, third party information, or if they themselves have been locked up. Whether we sit and listen to them preach about the corruptness is up to us.
One in every 108 adults were placed behind bars in 2012 (Dimon). That made for 2.2 million prisoners in the United States ("The Sentencing Project News - Incarceration"). This is almost the population of Houston, Texas ("Facts and Figures"). In the years following its creation, the correctional system has become a rougher place to live with nearly one percent of the whole United States population behind bars. Both the mental illness and murder rates have increased, along with return rate of prisoners. The increase of problems can be blamed on the many factors including the unstable prison environment, the rapid spread of disease and the high return rate. In general, U.S. prisoners are far worse off than those in other countries in terms
Three walls. One toilet seat. Bars made of mild steel and a lock only accessible to men who government calls authority figures. Prison systems are known for three things: to protect the people, to punish the criminal and to rehabilitate the prisoner so that a crime will not be further committed. However, it has been causing ongoing controversy on whether or not it has been stripping away the earned rights of citizens or indeed helping them become “better” for society.
It was a warm August night in Baltimore when police found the bodies of three teenage boys gunned down outside a playground. One of the teens was Franklin Morris a seventeen-year-old frequently suspend from school and left to his own vices. His mother concerned about the direction he was heading reached out for help. A counselor suggested a deterrence program aimed a scaring him straight. At fourteen years old Franklin was featured on the A&E network show Scared Straight.(Cable) A television show that follows around trouble juveniles while they tour and experience the hardened criminal world of prisons, hoping to deter them from the prison system. The show portrayed him as a young man with no boundaries and lack of respect towards the community and his parents. Within three years after the program, Franklin was right back on the street with a more hardened attitude. What could have prevented him from succumbing to a violent life on the streets? And how do we prevent others from ending up in the same situation.
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
Mr. Governor, there are many ways to reduce the current problem of prison overcrowding; unfortunately many of them are not popular as they are seen as being soft on crime and as we both know that is not favorably looked upon. Some of the options would provide a temporary decongestion of the prisons while others would be a more long term reduction in inmate populations. After reviewing I believe that there are a few that we could possibly accomplish and still portray an acceptable persona to the public. These few include reviewing the mandatory sentencing laws, education opportunities, good time credits earning, conditional release of elderly inmates, foreign national occupation and after prison employment incentives.
The exact time and location of the world’s first actual prison is unknown, but obviously at some point in time incarceration within a prison system became a common consequence for criminal activities. Schmalleger writes that punitive imprisonment appeared to have been introduced in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for debtors and certain offenders against canon law (Schmalleger, 2009). In those decades penalties for criminal activities dealt more with shaming the offender in hopes of deterring them from future criminal activity. Examples of shaming include the ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding, and the stocks (History of the Prison Systems). In addition to the various forms of shaming and deterring, the death penalty was a common punishment for criminal activity, such as hangings, stoning, or burning. Within these decades, prisons were occasionally used as an alternative to corporal punishment. However, as years went on society’s view of an individual’s liberties and humanity were changing thus changing the views of how criminal acts should be handled changed as well. Schmalleger writes that near the end of the eighteenth century is when the concept of imprisonment as punishment reached its fullest expression. The prisons that had been established and continually altered in the United States eventually become models for European reformers that were in hopes of creating a prison system that would humanize criminal punishment (Schmalleger, 2009). The concept was that restricting a person’s liberty would be retribution enough, and that an exact period of time served in a prison could be assigned depending on the severity of a crime committed (Prison History). Early prisons came in the forms of ...
Canada reached its utmost population rate in 2013, with 15,000 inmates; this is a drastic increase of 75% in the past decade. Incarceration rates are rapidly increasing as crime rates decrease. Upon release, former prisoners have difficulty adapting into society and its social norms. Criminologist, Roger Graef states that, "the vast majority of inmates, the loss of local connections with family, job, and home sentences them again to return to crime." Prisoners often result in lethargy, depression, chronic apathy, and despair, making them ultimately rigid and unable to assimilate back into the public. Depression, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember are experienced by prisoners who are isolated for a protracted amount of time; research has indicated that prisons can cause amenorrhea, aggressive behaviour, impaired vision and hearing, weakening of the immune system, and premature menopause. With the lack of system programs, the constant violence, and the social isolation, the prison system fails to prepare prisoners for reintegration to society. Prisons do not provide the proper structural functionalism to rehabilitate former long-term prisoners into society.
But there are people who also disagree with changing the way the prison system works right now. As I found in the article called: "Our Money to Educate Minds behind Bars Is a Terrible Thing to Waste" which appeared in the Chicago Now, the author, Masaki Araya, points to reasons why prisons shouldn 't offer educational programs to inmates. "Why should any money, private and public, be wasted on ‘free’ education to those confined behind bars when we already have law abiding citizens, especially families, struggling and barely getting by trying to pay to attend college?" is one of the points Masaki brings up. Masaki believes that these people have no right to be given free education and rehabilitation programs because they have committed crimes
Prison is an institution for the confinement of persons convicted of criminal offenses. Throughout history, most societies have built places in which to hold persons accused of criminal acts pending some form of trial. The idea of confining persons after a trial as punishment for their crimes is relatively new.
Prison has been around in human society for many millions of years. Having someone who disobeyed the law of that village, town, city or country punished in some form of institution, cutting them off from people, is a common concept – a popular and supposedly “needed” process society has taken to doing for many years now has been put under the spotlight many times by many different figures and people in society. The question remains – do prisons only make people worse? Many articles have been published in many journals and newspapers of the western world (mainly the USA, UK and Australia) saying prison only makes a person worse yet no complaint of the method has come from the less liberal eastern societies; this only proves how in countries where the rights of humans are valued such issues as if prisons only make people worse are important and relevant to keeping fair to all.
In "Prison Studies" Malcolm X briefly details how, during his incarceration, he embarked on a process of self-education that forever changed him and the course of his life. Malcolm writes of his determination to learn to read and write, born out of his envy and emulation of Bimbi, a fellow prisoner. His innate curiosity, sense of pride, and ambition to learn and be someone of substance motivated him to study relentlessly. As he learned more about the world he developed a great thirst for knowledge that left him with a lifelong desire that only his continued studies could satisfy. He believed that prison offered him the best possible situation in which to educate himself.