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Paper on prison reform in the united states
Racial discrimination in the justice system
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As someone who has personally been victimized by the justice and prison system of Illinois, one of my life goals has been to fix it and make it equal and unprejudiced for every single citizen of our state. I have spent countless hours visiting penitentiaries in Illinois, and I was a critical part of the committee to close Tamms SuperMax Prison, where prisoners were locked up 23 hours per day and fed old food. I believe our prison system should be a place for rehabilitation and education, not a place to lock up people who have made mistakes. If there is no education involved in criminal’s lives, how are they supposed to change? That’s why I plan to take all of the low and medium security prisons and change them into secure higher education centers instead of the horrible places they are now. …show more content…
Prisoners will get a chance to study during their time and step back into society with a GED, associate’s or bachelor’s degree. Prisoners are not given this chance today, especially those with low-level drug charges who should be able to rejoin society, but often do not have that option. The justice system is greatly skewed against people of color, strikingly African American, and Latino people. That is why part of my Justice Reform Plan is to decriminalize recreational marijuana. With the system in place as it is now, peoples’ (especially people of color) whole lives can be derailed because a very small drug charge that didn’t harm anyone except for
For years now, incarceration has been known to be the center of the nation’s Criminal Justice Center. It’s no secret that over time, the criminal justice center began experiencing problems with facilities being overcrowded, worldwide, which ended up with them having to make alternative decisions to incarceration that prevent violence and strengthen communities. These new options went in to plan to be help better develop sentencing criminal offenders.
Over the past several decades, the number of prison inmates has grown exponentially. In 1980, prison population had numbers around half a million inmates. A graph of statistics gathered from the U.S. Bureau of Justice shows that between 1980 and 2010, the prison population grew almost five times, topping out at nearly 2.5 million. According to an article in The New York Times, the average time spent in jail by prisoners released in 2009 increased by 36% compared to prisoners released in 1990. Many people, such as those at Human Rights Watch, believe that the increase of these numbers has been because of tough-on-crime laws, causing prisons to be filled with non-violent offenders. This rise in crime rates, prison population, and recidivism, has led politicians as well as ordinary citizens to call for prison reform.
Mass incarceration has put a large eye-sore of a target on the United States’ back. It is hurting our economy and putting us into more debt. It has considerable social consequences on children and ex-felons. Many of these incarcerations can be due to the “War on Drugs”. We should contract the use of incarceration.
Prisons have been around for decades. Keeping housed, those of our society who have been convicted
Overcrowding of prisons due to mass incarceration is among one of the biggest problems in America, mass incarceration has ruined many families and lives over the years.America has the highest prison population rate , over the past forty years from 1984 until 2014 that number has grown by four hundred percent .America has four percent of the world population ,but twenty-five percent of the world population of incarcerated people Forty one percent of American juveniles have been or going to be arrested before the age of 23. America has been experimenting with incarceration as a way of showing that they are tough on crime but it actually it just show that they are tough on criminals. imprisonment was put in place to punish, criminals, protect society and rehabilitate criminals for their return into the society .
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.
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
Between 1990 and 2007, the number of children under 18 years old with an incarcerated parent in the United States increased from 945,600 to 1,706,600, reaching 2.3% of the nation’s children (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). These children can suffer from traumatic separation, loneliness, stigma, confused explanations to children, unstable childcare arrangements, strained parenting, reduced income, and home, school, and neighborhood moves. (Murray, Farrington, and Sekol 2012). Additionally, these children are put into high stress life events while their parents go through the process of being incarcerated and likely had other stressors before their incarceration. The behavioral effects of these children and their families have urgent social concerns, as incarceration effects go far outside of prison walls.
“According to DPIC”, death penalty laws are dated as far back as the 18th century. Death penalties came in the form of being beaten to death, crucifixion, burned alive, drowning and even impalement. America’s death penalty laws was greatly influenced by England. However, the death penalty in the United States is executed by the use of lethal injection which inflicts immediate death. In today’s society you can often find that most are in favor offenders receiving life without parole instead of the death penalty.
We all can think of at least one person who has been in prison. Whether it would be someone famous, like Lindsey Lohan, Orlando Brown, or even Martha Stewart; or someone from a nearby town or even someone that was close to you. There are even games on escaping prisons in the market, one of the newest ones being The Escapists. “You do the crime, you do the time,” as the old saying goes about committing some felony and being punished for it in prison provided by the US “justice” system. However, is “doing the time” actually working?
What is education? Should education be limited to those who are free in society and not locked up behind bars? Education is a broad term which can be interpreted in many different ways, however , it is typically defined as the action or process of teaching , especially in a school, university,or college. As we seek to refine and reform education we must understand that education expands much farther than just the classroom. For instance education in jail, it 's a gateway for prisoners to come out as a new person and have a different view on life For example Malcolm X. Also it 's less likely for a prisoner to reoffend because they 're more likely to get a job with degree they earn while being incarcerated . Also this can help save tax money.
Throughout history, the prison systems have had different ways of handling prisoners. Some of the early prisons believed that the public should observe the prisoner’s punishments. Later on, prisons moved to be a place for hard labor and emphasized being able to correct someone. Due to increase crime, the prison system started focusing on trying to control crime (Esperian 319-20). Currently, the United States’ prison system faces high recidivism rates, overcrowding, and rising budgets. It is a cycle that continues to make very little improvement. There is a missing link that needs to be addressed. This link is imprisonment and the lack of education(Kaiser18). Prisons should provide correctional education to help these people change their lives after they are released. Implementing correctional education in prisons can reduce recidivism, overcrowding, and is a cost-efficient investment.
Legitimate power consists of prisoners accepting the fact that staff has the authority to give directives concerning the inmates activities daily, legitimate power ensure compliance by the majority of prisoners over the scope of the inmates activities and over the largest amount of time and effort that is involved in these activities (Carlson, & Garrett, 2008). Legitimate power may be the most important power for correctional staff, due to the position of the power. With many discussions of legitimacy in prisons the focus is on the importance of the inmate's perception of prison authority to maintain safety and order, this will also help to reinforce the credibility of the prison officials and those that govern over these facilities (Woolredge, & Steiner, 2016). For legitimate power to work correctional officers must be careful of how they exert their power, so that inmates will be perceptive it also helps to shape inmates perceptions. Example of legitimate power inside a prison would be an officer giving some inmate instructions of what he/she should be doing, how the officer present this information can tell what kind of authority he/she has with
Some people blame it on the lack of education that most prisoners do not receive before or while in prison. Most prisoners do not have a college degree, causing it to be more difficult for them to land a job once out of jail. It can also be blamed on how long the prison sentence is. Many inmates are serving long sentence causing them to lose connection to the outside world. Also, many possible employers do not want to hire someone who has been in jail before due to their past reputation. These connections with the people who visit them can help them get a job or even could help them stay out of trouble once they are released. They can also have gang connections which would cause them to be back on the street once they are released. This is due to the fact that they do not know any life except the one in a gang.
After researching this issue and looking at it from the both sides, I believe we must be careful in looking at people based on their current situation as opposed to their health condition. Of course, we can also say, being on death row equates to a health condition in regards to your estimated life span. If you are sentenced to death and are currently on death row, you would not be eligible to receive an organ transplant. On the other hand, short of death row, you would be eligible. If you were a prisoner, and were on the donor list, either to receive or donate, it would be no different than anyone else.