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Strategies to use to reduce crime
Challenges facing social work
Essays on prisons
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Recommended: Strategies to use to reduce crime
Upon release, previously incarceration individuals find themselves subject to what is known as collateral consequences. Societal and policy consequences that extend beyond the criminal justice system and long after incarceration. With consequences touching every aspect of their life from; housing, family composition, education and employment opportunities. As one becomes incarcerated they better understand racial, economic and behavioral-health barriers within yet at the time of parole many do not have an awareness of the negative and disproportionate treatments associated with life post-conviction and incarceration (Pettus-Davis, Epperson and Grier, 2017). As efforts of decarceration commence, civil disabilities and rehabilitative practices …show more content…
Individual states who have reduced both prison populations and crime rates are proving smart reforms can make communities safer and save the tax payers money. In 2007 the state of Texas, a traditionally red state, adopted legislation offering sentencing alternatives to low-level, nonviolent offenders which in turn decreased prison populations by fourteen percent and crime rates by twenty nine percent. Just a few years later Connecticut a progressively blue state legislated a second chances society, allowing nonviolent offenders a diversion program offering mandatory rehabilitation and treatment options. Crime in Connecticut now hits a fifty-year low and their prison population is the smallest it has been in two decades (Harris, …show more content…
Who will need to work diligently to ensure that criminal justice reform remains a priority when fights over Affordable Care, immigration and Russian ties take center stage on Capitol Hill. top-tier issue during a time when fights over judicial nominations, the References American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. (2017). Grand Challenges for Social Work. Retrieved from Promote Smart Decarceration: http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/12-challenges/promote-smart-decarceration/ Easterling and Johnson. (2012). Understanding Unique Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children: Challenges, Progress, and Recommendations. Journal of Marriage and Family, 342-356. Harris, H. (2017, March). The Prison Dilemma: Ending America's Incarceration Epidemic. Foreign Affairs, pp. 118-129. Pettus-Davis, Epperson and Grier. (2017, March). Reverse Civic and Legal Exclusion for Persons with Criminal Charges and Convictions: A Policy Action to Promote Smart Decarceration. Retrieved from Grand Challenges for Social Work:
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
Shapiro, David. Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration. Rep. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2011. Print.
Community corrections programs are therefore frequently used as a method to reduce the overall percentage of the prison populations. These programs offer supervision that “oversee offenders outside of jail or prison, and are administered by agencies or courts with the legal authority to enforce sanctions” at a significantly lower cost than incarceration (Community Corrections (Probation and Parole), 2015). Although statistics vary, it is believed that approximately two-thirds of the people who could be incarcerated for a crime or offense committed, are actually given a positive alternative option. Typically the people who are given the opportunity to partially or completely bypass incarceration are non-violent offenders who in the long run will be better off if he/she is handled thorough a community corrections program (Alarid, Cromwell, & Del Carmen,
Can you imagine having your parents incarcerated? I can, when I was 10 years old my father was incarcerated and at age 23 my mother was incarcerated. Parental incarceration impacts you as a child or a teen in so many ways due to only one parent or grandparent being able to raise the child without the other. Parental incarceration is a very dramatic event in a child's lifespan. Having a parent incarcerated can have an impact on a child's mental health, social life and educational needs. Studies show parental incarceration can be more traumatic to students than even a parent's death or divorce, and the damage it can cause to students' education, health, and social relationships puts them at higher risk of one day going to prison themselves.(Sparks,
In recent decades, violent crimes in the United States of America have been on a steady decline, however, the number of people in the United States under some form of correctional control is reaching towering heights and reaching record proportions. In the last thirty years, the incarceration rates in the United States has skyrocketed; the numbers roughly quadrupled from around five hundred thousand to more than 2 million people. (NAACP)In a speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton notes that, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
Glaze, Lauren E and Maruschak, Laura M. “Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children.” BureauofJusticeStatistics.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 8 Aug. 2008: 1. PDF File.
Parke, Ross D. "Effects of Parental Incarceration on Young Children." From Prison to Home: The Effect of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. University of California, Riverside, Dec. 2001. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
Travis, Jeremy & Waul, Michelle. (2003). Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. The Urban Institute Press: Washington, D.C.
Parental incarceration and its reoccurring effects on children, specifically in the system, is a rising issue with little research done and no current solution to halt the snowballing problem. According to Cynthia Seymour (1998), “current estimates indicate that as many as 1.5 million children have an incarcerated parent; many thousands of others have experienced the incarceration of a parent at some point in their lives”. A large portion of our country is effected by incarceration, especially children, yet nothing is being done to support these children and their families or caretakers.
In recent discussions of prison reform, a controversial issue has been whether diversion programs are more beneficial than not. On the one hand, some argue that diversion programs give convicted criminals a chance to hopefully better themselves and get back into society. On the other hand, however, others argue that these programs are allowing dangerous criminals back into the streets with no guarantee of them changing their behaviors. In sum, then, the issue is whether society and the government should allow these unguaranteed hopes to continue. While some believe that diversion programs may be a good substitute for prison, diversion programs are not an efficient substitute because they release potentially dangerous criminals and felons out onto the streets.
The challenges of children who grow up with parents whom were incarcerated at some point in their childhood can have a major effect on their life. The incarceration of parents can at times begin to affect the child even at birth. Now with prison nurseries the impregnated mother can keep her baby during her time in jail. With the loss of their parent the child can begin to develop behavioral problems with being obedient, temper tantrums, and the loss of simple social skills. Never learning to live in a society they are deprived of a normal social life. “The enormous increase incarceration led to a parallel, but far less documented, increase in the proportion of children who grew up with a parent incarcerated during their childhood” (Johnson 2007). This means the consequences of the children of the incarcerated parents receive no attention from the media, or academic research. The academic research done in this paper is to strengthen the research already worked by many other people. The impact of the parent’s incarceration on these children can at times be both positive and negative. The incarceration of a parent can be the upshot to the change of child’s everyday life, behavioral problems, and depriving them a normal social life.
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
“Therefore, it is not unlikely for individuals to be denied a job because of ex-offender status, regardless of the crime they committed, or for ex- offenders to be offered the lowest paying job, regardless of their skill or training level” (Johnson 2). We need to stop punishing ex-convicts after they are released from prison. The purpose of prison is to help criminals improve their lives and reestablish healthy habits and goals. When they are released and we do not help them achieve their goals, we teach them that the coaching they have recieved is not applicable. We continually stunt their growth as they already have restricted options to improve their own lives. They often fall back and relapse into violations of the law that send them back to