Corruption Shawshank Redemption

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Typically prisons have been known to reform and punish individuals for crimes that they have committed. However in more modern times they have had little impact on these wrongdoers, and many have returned to the place that they thought they would never go back to. On the other hand, there are also individuals who leave prison not knowing what to do with themselves, after learning to be so reliant on the guards and warden for however long their sentence was. In the film The Shawshank Redemption directed by Frank Darabont, Brooks Hatlen is a prime example of a prisoner who was institutionalized. Brooks was a resident of Shawshank for 50 years, and was locked up for so long that he forgot how to function in the real world. Being a part of an …show more content…

More and more have become owned by private companies, which wills them to use these prisons for profit. As a result they are more focused on incarcerating a large number of individuals than teaching them how to function in a safe and innocent way within society. Prisoners who should be serving a short sentence will end up serving time for life with bad living conditions in order to ensure that their living quarters are as cheap as possible. After they spend the majority of their lives locked up without a say in any of the choices they make, many individuals become reliant on the guards and warden that have spent so long controlling every aspect of their routine. Once prisoners have adjusted to their surroundings, they become indigent, and lose all knowledge of independence and basic life skills. For many who return to society after inhabiting these conditions for so long are unable to function as a normal person, and require resources, such as halfway houses, that are able to slowly integrate them back into the real world. Even though many believe that incarcerating more individuals and holding them in these conditions will result in more prisoners learning their less, it does just the opposite. Having to high of a prison population decreases the quality and rationale for the institution itself. Rather than truly helping the detainees, this method will lead to the use of prisons merely to inflict pain on the wrongdoers, which just gets them angry with society. An example of this higher incarceration method is a scam aimed towards kids. For ten years the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation paid two judges to imprison kids and send them to private prisons. It took years before this issue to come to light, after the judges had already made more than 2.6 million dollars and more than 5000 kids had been locked up. These judges who are simply looking for a way to

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