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Mental health in prisons essay
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The Death Row Phenomenon
Imagine yourself in a poorly lit, four-by-four concrete block. No window to look out and gaze upon life outside of the place where you have been sentenced to die. The only objects in your possession are a small television set, a needle thin mattress, and a pillow that is next to useless. But you feel grateful; because not everyone gets a mattress or pillow in their cell. You’re considered one of the lucky ones. However, three days a week you can step outside into your own cage connected to the back of your cell. With all of that in mind, finding a purpose for your life is exceptionally hard to find in prison alone, but in solitary confinement? Whether your sentence gets overturned or not, you will have to live with the death row phenomenon the rest of your life. In movies and television shows, jail is illustrated as a place where men and women go to get a reality check, to lift weights and come back as a new person; physically and mentally. Nonetheless, death row is nothing like the image that jail puts off. Living on death row is like purely living on a routine that consists of eating and sleeping. For roughly twenty-three hours a day, inmates are locked tight in their cells. Many of them read, write, and even do arts and crafts. Inmates can also receive psychological services and counseling, more times than
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After knowledge of this so-called phenomenon, there has been an uproar about death row inmates awaiting time for their executions. Despite the topic of the death penalty itself, which is already a heated topic, the death row phenomenon doesn’t help the argument whatsoever. Neither death row syndrome or death row phenomenon is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. This term became about from ex-death row inmates who have continued to live a life of pure
Is it justifiable to inflict the death penalty on individuals who have committed murder? As majority would have it, yes. There are many arguments in favor of capital punishment. Some of these include taking a murderer out of this world once and for all, and saving money that would be spent on them if they were given a life sentence, as well as the majority rule of citizens of the United States wishing it to stay. In Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, Dick and Perry were assigned the death penalty for the cruel murders of four members of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas. Not only did this pair of men deserve what they got, but it is also better for the state that they were executed.
Solitary confinements are a prison within prisons, that isolates inmates from the rest of the world. Solitary confinement was originally founded by the Quakers and Anglicans in the early 1800s, in Philadelphia. The purpose of solitary confinement when the Quakers and Anglicans first created it, was to give the inmates the opportunity to get the chance to find Christ (Biggs 2017). Now the purpose of solitary confinement is to serve as punishment for criminals that are killers or cause a problem within the prison. Inmates in solitary confinement sit in a cell that is 80 square feet for 22-23 hours a day, with 1 hour of free time without human contact (Breslow 2014). One side believes solitary confinement is a good and a easy way to protect society
The sentencing of underage criminals has remained a logistical and moral issue in the world for a very long time. The issue is brought to our perspective in the documentary Making a Murderer and the audio podcast Serial. When trying to overcome this issue, we ask ourselves, “When should juveniles receive life sentences?” or “Should young inmates be housed with adults?” or “Was the Supreme Court right to make it illegal to sentence a minor to death?”. There are multiple answers to these questions, and it’s necessary to either take a moral or logical approach to the problem.
Prisons exist in this country as a means to administer retributive justice for those that break the laws in our society or to state it simply prisons punish criminals that are to receive a sentence of incarceration for more than one year. There are two main sub-cultures within the walls of prison the sub-culture of the Department of Corrections (which consists of the corrections officer, administrators, and all of the staff that work at the prison and go home at the end of their day) and the actual prisoners themselves. As you can imagine these two sub-cultures are dualistic in nature and this makes for a very stressful environment for both sides of the fence. While in prison, the inmates experience the same conditions as described in the previous
The purpose of this paper is to examine life on death row. The information obtained in order to write this paper came from one article. In reading the article it is very clear to see the obvious one-sided bias of the author, who is apparently adamantly against the current status of death rows across the United States of America. Unfortunately, no research could be found to illustrate other views or opinions of life on death row. The author of this article used many opinions, first hand accounts and experiences of prisoners living on death row to illustrate his/her ideas. However, there is an obvious bias of those currently living on death row against their living conditions and treatment. It can be assumed that few people would want to be somewhere or enjoy being somewhere when they knew that they would eventually be executed. It is can also be assumed that very few people would find awaiting executing a happy or fulfilling experience. It is interesting to note that while searching the Internet for information on the death penalty an abundance of web sites were found that belonged to prisoners on death row. All of whom claimed that they were wrongly accused, framed for, and innocent of the crimes that they were convicted of committing.
The cells in which inmates are kept are very small; they have a toilet, a shelf, a desk and a bed that contains a thin mattress (Shalev, 2011). Inmates are not allowed to have physical contact with their visitors. In fact, they cannot even see them face to face in certain facilities. Inmates cannot participate in any work activities, and only if the facility offers it can they receive small amounts of educational programs on a television on a secured circuit (Shalev, 2011). The only time inmates are permitted to leave their cell is to exercise inside a caged enclosure for about an hour a day. Most cells contain a solid door with a single slot so that inmates may be cuffed or received their meals. Also, depending on the facility they may have a small rectangular window in their cell that is extremely small. The most common way that inmates communicate is through shouting because the cells are set up so that no contact can be made to other inmates.
Imagine. You are alone with your thoughts. There is nothing that can separate you from their unpredictable horrors because you spend 23 hours a day completely alone. In silence you wait, desperate for a chance to leave the four-walled, concrete cell you now call home. These are the conditions of solitary confinement that are still in widespread use throughout America today. Although solitary confinement may seem like the safest way to protect other prisoners, guards and even the inmate himself, it is an inhumane and cruel punishment and it has the opposite effect of what prisons are intended for. .
The effects of prolonged isolation for inmates in confinement cells are obsessive-compulsive tendencies, paranoia, anger-management issues, and severe anxiety (Sifferlin, Alexandra). Along with the basic concepts such as food, water, and shelter, there are two other basics that Dr. Terry Kupers states are required for human wellbeing: “social interaction and meaningful activity. By doing things we learn who we are and we learn our worth as a person. The two things solitary confinement does are make people solitary and idle” (Sifferlin, Alexandra). Isolation and confinement remove prisoners’ ability to perform significant tasks and act as a part of society. This dehumanizes the inmates because they are no longer able to understand their role as a human being. One inmate, Jeanne DiMola, spent a year in solitary confinement and expressed her thoughts while in the cell: “I felt sorry I was born … Most of all I felt sorry that there wasn 't a road to kill myself because every day was worse than the last" (Rodhan, Maya). In DiMola’s opinion, a death penalty more than likely would have felt more humane than the isolation she experienced. Another prisoner, Damon Thibodeaux, stated, “Life in solitary is made all the worse because it 's a hopeless existence … It is torture
Throughout life we all live through moments that change who we are; mentally, physically and psychologically. These moments can be, huge and defining or something as small as whether we leave our house or just stay home on a certain day. For some, we find ourselves looking back, and not even realizing the power of the decision we made and how it brought us to who we are now. For others, the decisions we made lead to obvious outcomes. A prime example of this is a criminal. Though, he or she might not have known or thought they would get caught, the acts they voluntarily proceeded in, are illegal and the one and only future they ultimately have is jail or prison. Within the prison system, criminals are faced with these same decisions, but the punishment will have much more detrimental effects than any other decision: solitary confinement. This brings me to my main point. Contrary to many may think, it is not just a myth that solitary confinement can and will have extremely detrimental psychological and social effects on any human being, criminal or not.
Main Point 1: Imagine someone that has been accused of murder and sentenced to death row has to spend almost 17-20 years in jail and then one day get kill. Then later on the person that they killed was not the right person.
The capital punishment has been cited as a reasonable sentence by those who advocate for retribution. This is essentially when it comes to justice so that people take full responsibility for their individual actions. Studies have proved that the decision to take away life of a person because they committed a certain crime serves to perpetuate the crime in question. It also serves to enhance the progress of organized and violent crime. It has been noted that various flaws in the justice system has led to the wrong conviction of innocent people. On the other hand, the guilty have also been set free, and a plethora of several cases has come up when a critical look at the capital punishment has been undertaken. Killers hardly kill their victims deliberately, but they probably act on anger, passion, or impulsively. In this regard, it is not proper to convict them exclusively without
Women on Death Row The eighth amendment protects Americans from the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Many death penalty opponents use this as the backbone to their argument against capital punishment. Other than being cruel, I do not think that the death penalty can be used judiciously in the United States or any other part of the world. Personally, I do not think that human beings are perfect and as such they cannot set up a perfect justice system.
Offenders given mandatory life in prison on charges of murder, on average only serve 16 years before being released back into society. One in three of these killers carries out a second murder even under the supervision of the probation officer.1 If we allow murderers to spend life in prison we run the chance of them getting out and killing again. Capital punishment can also deter future perpetrators from committing such a heinous crime, and it will end the prisoner’s suffering by giving them a humane death and give closure to the victim’s family. Without a concrete meaning of “life in prison” we need the death penalty to put an end to the most evil of people.
Some prisoners are claustrophobic; they can’t be in small tight places for example their prison cell. The prisoners were used to being on the streets doing whatever they felt they wanted to do; now they got to follow rules and do as they’re told. Inmates with life sentences have to stay in prison until they’re no longer alive, knowing that some even try to commit suicide. No one would like to be in prison for life, just thinking about can make everyone scared. Inmates serving life in prison are able to get special services, depending on their conduct. Inmates have double celled housing space for themselves, a person can get frustrated being small places and since the inmate is going to be there for life they want to at least let him feel good. The inmates also get employment opportunities, also depending in their conduct. They want the inmates to spend their time out of trouble and helping them get distracted can get them out of trouble. In some facilities the inmate can receive meals in their cells, in chow hall or in day room. Some facilities offer academic education; they offer adult basic education, GED, or special
For decades the death penalty has been a big role for people who go to prison for the major crimes they have committed since the Eighteenth Century B.C. This is more on the side of prisoners who have been on death row. This is a prison section for prisoners who have been sentenced to death. They are kept apart from all other prisoners and are not involved in educational and employment programs because of problems they could start and so on. They also do not let visitors come by and not able to go outside to exercise. They spend the majority of the day in their cells by themselves. The inmates live through the thoughts of when they will be executed and their mental status is brought down due to the anxiety and isolation they are in. The time