Essay On Prison System

1090 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Prison Effects in the Era of Mass Incarceration

A huge issue in America is the growing industry of privatized prisons. Usually referred to as the Prison Industrial Complex, the issue ties together many problems like the connection between the massive rate of imprisonment for nonviolent crimes as well as the growing political influence of the private prison industries and companies that thrive on inmate population. As this problem gets larger and larger, the prisons in the United States fill up continuously, because of a mentality that years of imprisonment can fix pretty much any problem.
Between 1970 and 2005 the US' prison population grew by a massive 700% (Kirkham), far outpacing both population growth and crime rates. Today it's got to the point where America is home to 5% of the world's population but a quarter of the world's prisoners (The PEW). And not only does America have the highest imprisonment rates of any country in the entire world, it also has the highest rate of kids incarceration.
Over 130,000 kids are detained in the US every year and on any given day there are over 70,000 kids in detention (Knafo). But the biggest winners of this mass incarceration haven't been the taxpayers, but the private prison companies who are making giant profits out of people being in jail. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2010 the two largest prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, while their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth more than $3 million (The Associated Press).
Private prisons didn't really exist before the early 1980s when US states and the federal government needed a solution to the overcrowding in public prisons. But between 1990 and 2009 the number of people in private prisons increased by a...

... middle of paper ...

...the community and a lot cheaper than sending people to prison. In 2011 the Governor of Illinois office reported that in the states first year of the program it has diverter more than 1,000 nonviolent offenders (AP).
Another thing states could is ban contracts that require certain occupancy in a prison. By not signing this states can use state run facilities and not worry about having to fill up prisons just so the corporation doesn’t sue them. By doing this there will be no incentive for sending people to jail.
Privatization of public institutions is just a bad idea. It creates corruption in people with power and they profit at the public's expense. The government should be responsible for managing the jails and prisons. To give this vital government system into the hands of corporation’s whose main goal is to make money it is inevitable that corruption will occur.

Show More
Related

  • Private Prisons Negativly Impact State and Local Governments

    3178 Words  | 7 Pages

    Private prisons are correctional institutions ran by for-profit corporations. They claim to cost less than prisons ran by the state, while offering the same level of service. In fact, the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations, states that their business strategy is to provide quality corrections service while offering a better value to their government partners at the same time making a profit (CCA 2010). However, opponents of private prisons say they do not save states money because of their hidden cost. At any rate, more than a few states have found private prisons to be advantageous. For one reason, many states are facing massive deficits and are l...

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Prison Overpopulation

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    Prison overpopulation puts a strain on the environment of our legal system. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) the United States is currently incarcerating 1 in 100 American Adults. ALEC also claims that

    Read More

  • Surging Incarceration Rates in the United States

    1766 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shockingly, there seem to be a few people who actually profits from keeping people in jails. The practice of mass incarceration who most see as a major problem in the United States of America is actually beneficial to some. The prison system in the United States who was create to keep dangerous criminals at bay is now a major source of profit for some private corporations. John W. Whitehead, attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute writes that, “ the flawed yet retributive American “system of justice” is being replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of mass punishment based upon profit and expediency.” Some blame the war on drugs as the main reason for the mass incarceration; others blame racism. Although those components do play a major role in the affair, a closer look at at the mastermind behind the prison industrial complex suggest that the privatization of the prison system has become the main reason why mass incarceration exist so forcefully in the United States and is a crime against the people of the people of

    Read More

  • Essay On Prison Overcrowding

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    The number of Americans that are in prison has elevated to levels that have never been seen before. Prisons in the US have always been crowded ever since the first prison was invented (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The first prison in the US was the Walnut Street Jail that was built in Philadelphia in 1773, and later closed in the 1830’s due to overcrowding and dirty conditions (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The prison system in modern US history has faced many downfalls due to prison overcrowding. Many private prison owners argue that the more inmates in a prison the more money they could make. In my opinion the argument of making more money from inmates in prisons is completely unconstitutional. If the private prisons are only interested in making

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Mass Incarceration

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Private Prisons: Profitability and Controversial Strategies

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    Private prisons in the United States, came about in the early 1980s when the war on drugs resulted in a mass wave of inmates, which led to the lack of the prison system’s ability to hold a vast number of inmates. When the cost became too much for the government to handle, private sectors sought this as an opportunity to expand their businesses through the prison industry. Since the opening of private prisons, the number of prisons and inmates it can hold has grown over the last two decades. With the rising number of inmates, profits have also substantially grown along with the number of investors. But what eventually became a problem amongst the private prison industry was their “cost-saving” strategies, which have been in constant debate ever

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of For Profit Prisons

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Should prisons in the United States be for profit? How do for profit prisons benefit the United States? Would inmates rather be in private or public correctional centers? What kind of affects does this have on taxpayers? What are the pros and cons of profit prisons? These are many of the questions that are brought up when discussing for profit prison systems. There are different perspectives that can be taken when it comes to talking about for profit prisons. This paper will discuss some of the ways that the United States has started to become for profit and why it has happened. Finally, this paper will give an opinion of whether or not for profit prisons should be dominant over public facilities.

    Read More

  • Problems with the American Prison System

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.

    Read More

  • Prison Industrial Complex Essay

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    Therefore, they argued that the drive to fill new prisons with people were driven by the ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit and money (Davis). Also, the prison industrial complex states that punishment is the result of economic and political structures as well as ideologies instead of trying to deter crime (Davis). It was stated that many corporations with global markets actually rely on prisons as a source of profit, not only in the United States but also in Europe, South America and Australia. The prison industrial complex is fueled by privatization because of how much privatization has changed areas such as healthcare and education which in turn has increased the presence of private corporations in the prison economy which has lead to the existence of private prisons.The private prison trends are “reminiscent of the historical efforts to create a profitable punishment industry based on the new supply of “free” black laborers in the aftermath of the Civil War” (Davis,

    Read More

  • Private Prisons or For -Profit Prisons

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    A private prison or for-profit prison, jail, or detention center is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically have contractual agreements with the governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in that private facility. Private prisons have been part of the system for quite some years now, specifically for involvement in corrections. Private for-profit prison management started rising in the 1980s, they represented a qualitative shift in the relation between corrections and private business. The question is there really a difference between private and public facilities, since the two are suppose to be different when it comes t cost and efficiency, also are the private facilities being run as a correctional facility at all?

    Read More

  • Adult Prison Essay

    1551 Words  | 4 Pages

    for youngsters who have a long history of convictions for less serious felonies for which the juvenile court disposition has not been effective” (qtd. in Katel).

    Read More

  • Essay On Mass Incarceration

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 .

    Read More

  • Prison Rehabilitation

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    Firstly, in order to gain a better understanding of the problems that plague or correctional system we must fully understand the enormous overcrowding problem that exist in the majority of or state and federal prisons. Since 1980 the prison population has quadrupled and only the numb...

    Read More

  • Issues in Corrections

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...

    Read More

  • Security In Prison Essay

    1235 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over 2.1 million inmates occupy the cells of prisons in the United States of America (Highest). Since the mid-1800’s, the prison population has almost doubled in size and still continues to grow. The amount of time spent in prison by an individual has also raised from 1993 (Espejo 21). Routines, crimes, and security contain similar structures in all prisons, but some involve worse circumstances and criminals; here is a look into the life of a prisoner.

    Read More

More about Essay On Prison System

Open Document