In the article “Assessing the penal harm movement” by Francis T. Cullen, Cullen talks about the penal harm movement and the unintended consequences that arose from the utilization of this movement. He reviews the evolution of punishments throughout time and the distinctions of the correction system in each historical era. He also argues that the penal harm movement has caused and still continues to cause society further complications. Cullen believes that we as a society needs to keep fighting towards finding a more efficacious and progressive response to crime. Cullen states, “For over a decade, virtually every contemporary commentary on corrections in the United States has reminded us that the system is in crisis” (57).…
The last five chapters of the book “The American Prison: Imagining a Different Future” written by Francis Cullen, Mary Stohr and Cheryl Johnson discuss some of the various prison systems that can be found in America, and the issues that surround them. The main focus of discussion for each chapter is the history of the prison, its effectiveness in running, its social context in modern day America, and the authors of the chapter’s personal thoughts on the importance of that specific prison type. The four types of prisons covered in chapters 9-12 are the private prison, the green prison, the small prison, and the accountable prison; chapter thirteen of the book talks about the lessons that should be learned from the book regarding the harm and…
With a total prison population of 2,217,000 people as of 2013, the United States continues to have the highest prison rate in the world (Institute for Criminal Policy Research). In light of these numbers, it is clear to many that the United States is in need of some kind of reform in the way it responds to crime and carries out justice, however, there is much disagreement on what aspects of our criminal policies need to be reformed and in what way. Many factors play a role in the enormous prison rates in the United States, however, some of these factors raise concerns not only about the prison populations, but also bring up questions regarding economics, ethics, and the overall effectiveness of the United State’s current criminal justice policies.…
International Corrections is defined as any corrections intuition that is located outside the United States and should be a great interest in the discovery of what works and what don’t work. The three models of incarceration currently used in the United States is the custodial, rehabilitation, and the reintegration models. The first of the three is the custodial model which is based on the assumption that prisoners have been imprisoned in order to protect society. The second of the three is the rehabilitation model which emphasizes treatment programs such as drug and alcohol programs to reform the offender. The third of the three is the reintegration model which focuses on issues such as the lack of education and poverty.…
The current state of U.S. prisons is they are severely overcrowded for a number of reasons. Our current judicial system has favored prisons becoming multi-million dollar businesses with large amounts of staff running them, some of them even have CEO’s. The current number of prisoners in the United States is 1,561,500 (BJS); that is between the federal and state prisons. The problem is so prevalent that the United States has a total of 5% of the world population and over 25% of the total prisoner population for the world (Roeder). Our current judicial system is justifying putting people in jail for violating social norms, most notably—drug charges.…
In this essay, I will be arguing the following: Incarceration and prison systems should be moral, progressive and therefore rehabilitative in nature. The United States’ current systems are inherently racist, classist, sexist, excessive, immoral, and non-rehabilitative. I will first look at rates of incarceration and discuss their immoral and reproductive nature as well as propose some solutions to equalize and lessen them. I will then turn to the prison system. In a moral system, I argue that prisoners should be treated humanely as people, fully deserving of rights such as access to health care, paid work, human interaction, and healthy food.…
Staci Evans Instructor Jennifer Caro-Barnes ENGL 1302 November 8, 2015 Mapping the Issue: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in America The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. A shift in prison policies over the past few decades has received most of the blame. In response to high crime rates, politicians did not want to seem "soft on crime" and enacted policies such as lengthy sentences, mandatory minimums, and "three-strikes" laws.…
The sole purpose of prison is to punish criminals for crimes they have committed, protect citizens from crime, and rehabilitate those individuals to be honest, law-abiding citizens once they are released back into the public. Wilbert Rideau, author of “Why Prisons Don’t Work”, was in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and has first-hand experience with how the prison system works. Prison is the punishment, but the punishments within the prison are inhumane and ineffective. High re-offense rates show that the public is not being protected from criminals; nor, are they rehabilitating those individuals to be productive citizens. Prisons are harming the individuals inside of them more than helping, prisons do not work.…
The Incarceration Issue Within The United States The United States is known as a prosperous nation, and being the “land of the free”, but what most people do not want to talk about, or do not realize, when speaking about the United States is the massive amount of prisoners the US has. In fact, we have the most prisoners by far. The US roughly makes up about 5% of the total population on earth, but accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s prison population (Scommegna, Tyjen Tsai and Paola. " U.S. Has World 's Highest Incarceration Rate."). There has been an upward trend of using harsh jail sentences as a deterrent to breaking the law since the 1980’s, and has overall proven ineffective.…
Introduction Prison overcrowding is a major issue in the United States. It is an issue that is rapidly increasing daily. The goals of the criminal justice system are to prosecute, punish, and rehabilitate. Due to overcrowding it has become clear that the goals of this system are to punish, prosecute, incarcerate, and release. If the offender does not have the means to succeed and the tools necessary when reintegrated into society recidivism chances increase greatly causing a negative impact on the increasing amount of offenders in the prison system.…
This article informs about the influences of state punishment and private prisons. Although state punishment is an important aspect of either prison system, this particular article opens up for more questions and ideologies of the private prison systems to occur. The main question that this article argues is why both the public and prison systems are capable of falling so far below the obligations that they must fulfill? This particular study looks into this question through inferring a deep analysis of the private prison systems in the U.S.…
Many people think that incarceration is like a vacation at a country club until they see what really happens behind the bars. Offenders do not get the help that they need when they are in prison. When offenders go to prison and when they are let out nothing has changed and they usually end up back in prison. The rates of population have gone up and prisons are becoming over populated. Craig Jones and Don Weatherburn proves, “The sentenced adult prison population has increased by about 20 per cent since the mid 1990s” (10).…
In the last 40 years, incarceration in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world; we hold 5% of the world’s population, but house 25% of the world’s prisoners (Kelly 2015). The use of incarceration has gradually become a more acceptable and more used form of punishment. As a result, our prison population is overflowing with offenders ranging from petty theft criminals to violent offenders. As cited in the textbook, purposes of our justice system should be retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, (Clear, Reisig, & Cole 2016, p.72-73) but we focus far too much on punishment first and rehabilitation second, if ever.…
Prisoners may face misconduct and possible effects on prison management, psychological consequences, an effect on the jail population dynamics, as well as high rates of prison violence among inmates and staff. In order to help improve the overcrowding of prisons a development of a “10-point plan to reduce prison overcrowding” (Penal Reform International) was constructed. The plan was constructed in order to help provide direction to policy-makers on how they can address this situation and ease its harmful consequences. The steps include 1.…
Essay 2 (1,000 words) 'Is building more and more prisons the best solution? ' The primary purpose of prison is to protect the community and rehabilitate the offender (Smart Justice, 2015). Research has indicated that prison fails to do this and instead can increase rate of reoffending (Smart Justice, 2015). Prison does not address the causes of the person’s criminal offending.…