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American prison systems
The United States prison system
Challenges that the prison system essay
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The corrections system has varied in many way throughout the years, and most people have mixed feelings about how it is being ran in today’s world. The system has changed over time all over the world, but it has also changed in different regions in the world. For example, some laws and regulations have been changed over the years that apply to the whole nation, while some laws and regulations only change in certain states. Not only do laws around the nation change, but the way prisons are ran in certain areas of the United States have changed over the years. Although laws and regulations of the correction systems change over time, the United States finds a way to enforce the law in the most efficient way possible all over the nation. Punishment has changed a lot in today’s world compared to the ancient and medieval times. Some might say that the punishment that is …show more content…
The Pennsylvania prison system is known as a separate system, where solitary confinement is encouraged dearly for the prisoners. This system was made to save the prisoners from being distracted and slowing them down in their process of repenting their foul actions that placed them in the prison. On the other hand, the Auburn prison system is known as a congregate system, where they believe it is best for the prisoners to be in a wide population where they can interact. In this prison system, the prisoners are side by side all throughout the day where they eat, work, and pray together but they go to their cells at night time to sleep. To keep a low-risk population, the Auburn system keeps their population housed by the category of the offense and the prisoners are dressed accordingly to their offense. Evidently, the Pennsylvania prison system and the Auburn prison system have substantial
The Auburn system was first implemented in 1819 at the New York State Prison at Auburn. The Auburn system is considered a less pure model than the Philadelphia system. The Auburn prison system is also known as the congregate system. In this system, prisoners are kept together for most of the day. They are kept together during work, meals, and prayer, but return to solitary cells at night. Even thought they are kept together, silence among the prisoners is enforced at all times. The inmate’s work is usually hard labor, which is considered the correct route for their punishment and rehabilitation. Another aspect of the Auburn system is the tier system. Cells are layered
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
When the our criminal justice system introduced punishments, sanctions for criminal behavior tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others. These punishments included ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding and the stocks. As years progressed, these punishments have slowly started disappear from our penology and capital punishment was introduced. According to Kronenwetter,
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.
Prisons and correctional facilities in the United States have changed from rehabilitating people to housing inmates and creating breeding grounds for more violence. Many local, state, and federal prisons and correctional facilities are becoming more and more overcrowded each year. If the Department of Corrections (DOC) wants to stop having repeat offenders and decrease the volume of inmates entering the criminal justice system, current regulations and programs need to undergo alteration. Actions pushed by attorneys and judges, in conjunction current prison life (including solitary confinement), have intertwined to result in mass incarceration. However, prisoner reentry programs haven’t fully impacted positively to help the inmate assimilate back into society. These alterations can help save the Department of Corrections (DOC) money, decrease the inmate population, and most of all, help rehabilitate them. After inmates are charged with a crime, they go through the judicial system (Due Process) and meet with the prosecutor to discuss sentencing.
There are several types of punishment that can be inflicted upon an offender including, fines, community sanctions and imprisonment (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007). Punishment is described as a sanction which inflicts a certain amount of pain and loss on the offender, used for payback and deter (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002). There are three ways society justifies punishing offenders, through the
The past two decades have engendered a very serious and historic shift in the utilization of confinement within the United States. In 1980, there were less than five hundred thousand people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails. Today we have approximately two million and the numbers are still elevating. We are spending over thirty five billion annually on corrections while many other regime accommodations for education, health
The Pennsylvania system is a method of imprisonment based on the principle that solitary confinement reforms prisoners. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, which was mainly made up of Quakers, promoted it. Solitary confinement started in 1829 at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Eastern State Penitentiary was founded on the Pennsylvania System. The prisoners there were kept in cells 12x7.5x16 feet. They saw nobody, except for institution officers and occasional visitors. The inmates were kept ...
Canada reached its utmost population rate in 2013, with 15,000 inmates; this is a drastic increase of 75% in the past decade. Incarceration rates are rapidly increasing as crime rates decrease. Upon release, former prisoners have difficulty adapting into society and its social norms. Criminologist, Roger Graef states that, "the vast majority of inmates, the loss of local connections with family, job, and home sentences them again to return to crime." Prisoners often result in lethargy, depression, chronic apathy, and despair, making them ultimately rigid and unable to assimilate back into the public. Depression, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember are experienced by prisoners who are isolated for a protracted amount of time; research has indicated that prisons can cause amenorrhea, aggressive behaviour, impaired vision and hearing, weakening of the immune system, and premature menopause. With the lack of system programs, the constant violence, and the social isolation, the prison system fails to prepare prisoners for reintegration to society. Prisons do not provide the proper structural functionalism to rehabilitate former long-term prisoners into society.
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.
With the substantial increase in prison population and various changes that plague correctional institutions, government agencies are finding that what was once considered a difficult task to provide educational programs, inmate security and rehabilitation programs are now impossible to accomplish. From state to state each correctional organization is coupled with financial problems that have depleted the resources to assist in providing the quality of care in which the judicial system demands from these state and federal prisons. Judges, victims, and prosecuting attorneys entrust that once an offender is turned over to the correctional system, that the offender will receive the punishment in which was imposed by the court, be given services that aid in the rehabilitation to those offenders that one day will be released back into society, and to act as a deterrent to other criminals contemplating criminal acts that could result in their incarceration. Has our nations correctional system finally reached it’s critical collapse, and as a result placed or American citizens in harm’s way to what could result in a plethora of early releases of inmates to reduce the large prison populations in which independent facilities are no longer able to manage? Could these problems ultimately result in a drastic increase in person and property crimes in which even our own law enforcement be ineffective in controlling these colossal increases of crime against society?
“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime control model.
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.
middle of paper ... ... Prisons need to be structured, orderly, isolated and individualized in order to really rehabilitate the offender. Despite the very strict methods needed in order to accomplish prisoner reformation, this type of punishment was still a far cry from the public executions that were popular in earlier history. Policy makers, the public and a new generation of thinkers are now focused on stabilizing American society and improving the conditions of mankind (Rotham), particularly when it comes to the criminal justice system rather than simply demonstrating power and control to try and maintain deterrence.
Punishment has been in existence since the early colonial period and has continued throughout history as a method used to deter criminals from committing criminal acts. Philosophers believe that punishment is a necessity in today’s modern society as it is a worldwide response to crime and violence. Friedrich Nietzche’s book “Punishment and Rehabilitation” reiterates that “punishment makes us into who we are; it creates in us a sense of responsibility and the ability to take and release our social obligations” (Blue, Naden, 2001). Immanuel Kant believes that if an individual commits a crime then punishment should be inflicted upon that individual for the crime committed. Cesare Beccaria, also believes that if there is a breach of the law by individuals then that individual should be punished accordingly.