The United States has the highest total prison population in the world, becoming recognized as the “Incarceration Nation” by other countries. The U.S. sentenced over 1.57 million criminals to prisons in 2013 alone, and increased to 2.2 million by 2015. The country spends over 60 billion dollars building new facilities and maintaining existing ones, and can spend up to $60,000 for the cost of living on a single inmate. After such spending, questions are raised to the efficiency and benefits received from this exponential cost. Is incarceration the most effective method of imprisonment, and does it truly deter crime? Do methods exists in which education and incarceration coincide to serve both punishment and rehabilitation? Within an evaluation …show more content…
of inmates consisting of murderers, rapists, burglars, and drug addicts, and other criminal offenders, is a different approach of imprisonment and/or reform even worth considering? For the exponential cost of prison punishment, incarceration alone is not the most effective use of government and taxpayer money. The necessity of punishment for criminal offenses throughout the United States is indisputable. Once an individual has committed such offenses, removal from society is necessary, for the safety of those in the community. Prisons then ensure immediate protection and punishment for both the society and inmate. The Criminal Justice system scales and distributes various lengths of time to criminals, specific to their deeds. Prisons then allow such individuals to be contained and ensure they will not be able to continue committing crimes throughout the duration of this time, guaranteeing the society safety from the particular criminal. Another goal of the criminal justice system includes rehabilitation and reformation of the inmates, but this concept is frequently conflicted with opposing views of punishment. Many believe that the methods required for rehabilitation conflict with the punishments more appropriate for the criminals. They argue that these criminals deserve a more severe punishment, and shouldn’t receive the opportunity to benefit from reform. Others argue that the price of rehabilitation and reformation are unrealistic and would further cut from other government funding of social programs, such as education. These costs fundamentally determine the way the justice system operates, and the extent of their power on the inmates in their reign of control. Imprisonment costs and spending is exponentially high in the United States. In 2009, 7.2% of general state spending was spent on prison and correction related activities. This spending is invested in the safety of the communities surrounding the prisons. However, such activities and funds compete with many other important funds, such as health care, education, and housing. With such important competing programs, exponential spending of the government funds on prisons calls to question the effects and benefits this funding is actually investing in. June Tangney states, “Our incarceration policy is very costly with relatively few benefits and a lot of deleterious effects on our economy and our families and on the fabric of our communities”. With such few benefits, taxpayer money is not being spent effectively. Incarceration alone may not be the most effective usage of 39 billion dollars of taxpayer per year. If crime is truly deterring, the costs may be worth the prevention of crime; however, they are not. After extensive spending and funding, imprisonment does not always guarantee a deterrent of crime from the offenders. The statistics of recidivism is exponentially high in the United States, and over 60% of previous prison inmates are re-arrested. Many argue that it is in fact not the fault of the prison, but in fault of the inclinations of the criminal. However, if there’s a way to encourage behavioral correction and development during the duration of imprisonment, why shouldn’t prisons enforce it? "Being the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world is really something we need to take a second look at," June Tangney says. "It's not that we have any more criminals than the rest of the world; we're just doing different things with them”. These “different things” that June mentions, are simply retroactive measures to ensure “punishment” and isolation into the lives of the prisoners, in place of potential proactive reformation and education. “When you talk about reform, you talk about transforming prisoners' lives in a positive way. But prisons offer anything but an environment for that type of transformation” states Robert Roberts, the founder of Projects Return. Programs used to reform that encourage education have proven results for lower recidivism rates and higher post-imprisonment employment rates. Educating of inmates can potentially lead to many beneficial results, such as lower recidivism rates and post-imprisonment job opportunities.
Research has shown that the more inmates are educated, the less likely they are to return to a life of crime. Education provides inmates with a second chance of life, and even an entirely new lifestyle they were unable to achieve before. ‘“Education is not the only avenue toward recovering and protecting one’s dignity in prison, but it is a major one,” wrote Matthew Spellberg, who taught comparative literature in a New Jersey prison as a graduate student at Princeton “Done right, it offers a modicum of the authority required of a person for self-creation: It makes a person in some modest way master of his or her own mind.”’ (Skorton, College Behind Bars). Education gives inmates opportunities to be truly be successful, and take control of their lives. However, in most prisons education is extremely limited. The government re-enforces and emphasizes punishment, and funding for education is extremely limited. Only 19% of inmates in prison are literate, 40% illiterate and 16% of these inmates have not had any high school education at all. According to Jennifer Wynn, "Inmates with at least two years of college have a 10 percent re-arrest rate, compared to a national re-arrest rate of approximately 60 percent." Education is key to not only decreasing crime rates, but introducing inmates as functional citizens of society. In addition to education, reformative measure may be taken to further aid inmates to becoming members of their communities once
again. Various ways of alternative imprisonment and behavior correction can provide a more permanent behavioral change. Methods such as group homes, community service programs, and community justice programs all aim to reform criminals sentenced to prisons. Group homes provide housing and constant help to aid individuals in their process of reformation. Other programs include Community Justice Programs and CPEP. Community Justice Programs involve entire communities, and intends to change criminals in their community to not simply be punished, but taught and reformed so they can eventually benefit the society. Many individuals in the community come together to help the individual, and find the best appropriate solution to the crime, which does not always include imprisonment. Community and work services also add to this way of reform, but both lack in the severity of and security of punishments that prison enforce. This lack of punishment gives the government and criminal justice system hesitation to encourage and change incarceration to methods such as these. However programs such as CPEP provide results that outweigh the benefits of strict punishment. CPEP (Cornell Prison Education Program), is a program dedicated to educating prisoners at Auburn Correctional Facility. Cornell waives all fees of tuition for the inmates, and supplies textbooks, school supplies, and associate degrees. Volunteer professors teach students at the correction facility, and have found that they are extremely eager and interested in the lessons and work given by the instructors. The program is not extremely expensive, with an estimated cost per inmate averaging around $1,800, and is fully funded by The Sunshine Lady Foundation. The Forbes article states, “With its stunningly high rate of incarceration (716 individuals per 100,000 compared to 76–154 in Western Europe and 114 in Canada), our country needs more programs like CPEP. They offer a humane, comparatively cheap and effective alternative to the discipline-and-punish approach that all too often breeds only hopelessness and recidivism”. CPEP opens an alternative view of reform. A way to encourage, teach, and ensure a promising future for inmates and prisoners across the country. If prisons were designed and aimed to create individuals that could work in and benefit human society, criminals would not only suffer consequence of a life in prison, but could be educated and informed throughout the entirety of their lives. However prisons aim simply to incarcerate, isolate, and punish. Sentencing a criminal to prison, is like sending a toddler to time out; he may spend an eternity in the corner, but he’s unlikely to change if nobody teaches him what he did wrong. Although ideas of reformation and rehabilitation exists, efforts are not being made to enforce correction and education programs. Prisons should encourage and allow inmates to reenter society, and should provide the resources to do so. The caging and incarceration of thousands of criminals for lifelong amounts of time is not only costly, but provides retroactive results, leading to even more crime and government spending. The safety of society from these criminals is provided, but the caging of uneducated, potentially dangerous people together is not benefiting anyone, especially the communities paying for imprisonment funding. For 60 billion dollars of United States funding, is a cage worth it? The United States is left to evaluate how the results of incarcerating criminals for lifelong amounts of time ultimately remains futile. They must reflect upon the endless potential benefits education and reformation can have on both the lives of these inmates, communities, and the country as a whole.
In Western cultures imprisonment is the universal method of punishing criminals (Chapman 571). According to criminologists locking up criminals may not even be an effective form of punishment. First, the prison sentences do not serve as an example to deter future criminals, which is indicated, in the increased rates of criminal behavior over the years. Secondly, prisons may protect the average citizen from crimes but the violence is then diverted to prison workers and other inmates. Finally, inmates are locked together which impedes their rehabilitation and exposes them too more criminal
Correctional program writing nowadays is at a level of efficiency that surpasses earlier outlooks. In territories all over the United States, there are several curriculums that use research-based curriculums to teach, instruct, and inspire inmates. Disappeared are the days of hit-or-miss execution of curriculums that seemed good, but over and over again just occupied time for the inmates. The previous evolution happened for several reasons (Corrections Today, 2010). The largest wake-up demands was the claim composed around thirty years ago. The statement made was not anything works in corrections systems, mainly rehabilitation. Even though this commonly revealed report was taken from its context, it did in detail carry some notice to the mystery that several penitentiaries were not operational as change
Mandatory minimums for controlled substances were first implemented in the 1980s as a countermeasure for the hysteria that surrounded drugs in the era (“A Brief History,” 2014). The common belief was that stiff penalties discouraged people from using drugs and enhanced public safety (“A Brief History,” 2014). That theory, however, was proven false and rather than less illegal drug activity, there are simply more people incarcerated. Studies show that over half of federal prisoners currently incarcerated are there on drug charges, a 116 percent percentage rise since 1970 (Miles, 2014). Mass incarceration is an ever growing issue in the United States and is the result of policies that support the large scale use of imprisonment on
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.
The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000). In contrast with this, community oriented programming as halfway houses cost less than the prison alternative. Community programming costs five to twenty five dollars a day, and halfway houses although more expensive than community programs still remain cheaper than prison (Morris, 2000). Tabibi (2015c) states that approximately ninety percent of those housed in prison are non-violent offenders. The treatment of offenders in the current system is understood to be unjust. By this, Morris (2000) explains that we consistently see an overrepresentation of indigenous and black people in the penal system. Corporate crimes are largely omitted, while street crimes are emphasized (Morris, 2000). This disproportionately targets marginalized populations (homeless, drug addicted and the poor) (Tabibi, 2015c). The current system is immoral in that the caging of people is highly depersonalized and troubling (Tabibi, 2015c). This is considered to be a barbaric practice of the past, however it is still frequently used in North America (Morris, 2000). Another moral consideration is with the labelling of youth as offenders in the criminal justice system (Morris, 2000). Morris (2000) argues that we should see youth crimes as a social failure, not as an individual level failure. Next, Morris (2000) classifies prisons as a failure. Recidivism rates are consistently higher for prisons than for other alternatives (Morris, 2000). The reason for this is that prisons breed crime. A school for crime is created when a person is removed from society and labeled; they become isolated, angry
It is to no surprise that America has a large amount of its people incarcerated for a variety of reasons. One must ask themselves how we can help these individuals get back on track. The answer is America’s most powerful weapon known to man; an education. This is an annotated bibliography for research on the effects of education in the prison system and if these effects are worth taxpayer’s money.
In recent years, there has been controversy over mass incarceration rates within the United States. In the past, the imprisonment of criminals was seen as the most efficient way to protect citizens. However, as time has gone on, crime rates have continued to increase exponentially. Because of this, many people have begun to propose alternatives that will effectively prevent criminals from merely repeating their illegal actions. Some contend that diversion programs, such as rehabilitation treatment for drug offenders, is a more practical solution than placing mentally unstable individuals into prison. By helping unsteady criminals regain their health, society would see an exceptional reduction in the amount of crimes committed. Although some
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
The Criminal Justice system was established to achieve justice. Incarceration and rehabilitation are two operations our government practices to achieve justice over criminal behavior. Incarceration is the punishment for infraction of the law and in result being confined in prison. It is more popular than rehabilitation because it associates with a desire for retribution. However, retribution is different than punishment. Rehabilitation, on the other hand is the act of restoring the destruction caused by a crime rather than simply punishing offenders. This may be the least popular out of the two and seen as “soft on crime” however it is the only way to heal ruptured communities and obtain justice instead of punishing and dispatching criminals
Freedom in any society is a condition that is directly correlated to the compliance of society’s rules, regulations, and laws. This right afforded to citizens under the constitution is surrendered by those who choose to disregard and trample on the set of standards and behavior needed for a society to maintain order and avoid anarchy. When loss of freedom is the tool used to punish this segment of society, prisons become the instrumentality used to carry out the various freedom restrictions under the law for each individual. Citizens who find themselves incarcerated in prison will be exposed to an entirely different environment than those in free society. In addition, there is a psychological impact on those being reintroduced into society after having completed long-term sentences, an impact many believe contribute to the high recidivism rates in the United States. The criminal justice system with all of its connected inner workings may not address all of the concerns inside and out of our current prison system, but just as we have improved on our prisons from the past, we will continue to improve and implement new techniques and design precise programs in our future prisons.
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
According to experts and inmates, education is a key to successful reentry into society that most inmates are lacking. Over the past twenty years, the need for education within jails and prisons has risen to an all-time high...
All over America, crime is on the rise. Every day, every minute, and even every second someone will commit a crime. Now, I invite you to consider that a crime is taking place as you read this paper. "The fraction of the population in the State and Federal prison has increased in every single year for the last 34 years and the rate for imprisonment today is now five times higher than in 1972"(Russell, 2009). Considering that rate along crime is a serious act. These crimes range from robbery, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, abuse, trafficking, assault, and murder. Crime is a major social problem in the United States. While the correctional system was designed to protect society from offenders it also serves two specific functions. First it can serve as a tool for punishing the offender. This involves making the offender pay for his/her crime while serving time in a correctional facility. On the other hand it can serve as a place to rehabilitate the offender as preparation to be successful as they renter society. The U.S correctional system is a quite controversial subject that leads to questions such as how does our correctional system punish offenders? How does our correctional system rehabilitate offenders? Which method is more effective in reducing crime punishment or rehabilitation? Our correctional system has several ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders.
Incarceration is the act of imprisoning a convicted felon. The negative effects of incarceration seem to overshadow how beneficial it can to those with misdemeanors. The power of the church draws the more religious inmates in and gives them a new insight to life and to their religion. Many of the incarcerated did not plan that they would be in jail or prison; many had reasons whether it was childhood or drugs and alcohol, there are now groups that the inmates may attend in order to gain support, positive feedback, and help from others in similar situations. Education programs are also available to any who wish to continue (young adults) or go back to school in order to acquire a GED. From finding faith in a religion, to having a group support system, to getting your GED incarceration can have positive effects on prisoners, despite the negative publicity of prisons.