In the PBS film Prison State, filmmakers follow the lives of four individuals throughout incarceration in the Kentucky Criminal Justice system, as well as efforts made to reform the system and the effect on inmates. They also studied the impact of criminalization of Juveniles for minor crimes, and the incarceration of the mentally ill and drug addicted. Among the many staggering statistics revealed on the Kentucky Criminal Justice System in the film, was the amount spent on housing the growing inmate population. According to the film, the state of Kentucky’s spending jumped by 220%, about half a billion dollars, in housing inmates between 1999 and 2010.…
Prisons all over the country are starting to feel the pressure now more than ever. Why? Primarily, because prisons are becoming overcrowded with inmates. Many of whom are people of color. This is happening primarily because of the profit many corporations gain from high incarceration rates.…
The book About Prison by Michael G. Santos recounts his personal experience in the criminal justice system of the United States of America. First he explains the background of his situation. He was a normal kid growing up in a good family but he explains how he felt like he could not make a life for himself after high school by working for his father as a contractor (Santos, 2004, p.2). Seeking something more in life, Santos saw an opportunity to start selling cocaine with his high school friend Alex. Santos betrayed his father by taking out a huge amount of money in order to purchase cocaine and lied to his father about the reason for taking out the money.…
Explanation: In this paragraph, Foucault elaborates upon the function of this prison. Then main idea for him is “ the object of information, never a subject in communication.” He also offer another explanation that this panoptic design can observe anyone who needs to be control, include prisoners, schoolchildren, medical patients, or workers. This design maximize the efficiency of the institution, and consider about both observer and the observed.…
What could jail be like? Most everyone asks this question once in their life, and some find out. The stereotype of Cache County Jail inmates is rough. Big tattoos, mean and even deadly. Is that really the case though, does incarceration change or affect them in some way?…
According to the NAACP’s organization website, American prisons have seen quadruple the amount of prisoners in the system now compared to 1980 (Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, 2016). Roughly 2.3 million people are incarcerated causing North America to hold roughly 25% of the world’s prisoners. President Obama and his administration for two terms have tried to address this growing incarceration through the Fair Sentencing Act. In 2015, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 inmates who were serving time in prison for non-violent drug offenses, according to The Economist (The Economist, 2016). Recently, in 2016, President Obama has shifted his focus to banning solitary confinement in United States prisons.…
The trend of neoliberalist policies in the United States, reducing government regulation while allowing private market interventions to replace these once powers of the government, has shown its effects unevenly to different groups in varying realms of life. Both Wacquant and Molina discuss policy implications with regard to the American prison system and to border control, respectively. Government reducing its effort on certain fronts and yet increasing them on others, seems neutral in theory but in reality, contains consequences, which are examined. A not-previously-seen increase in the rate of incarceration within the American prison system stemmed from a reduction in welfare programs, implemented across the board but disproportionally…
Module 9 Reading Response Introduction and Questions due November 14, Midnight (4 points) From the Lecture: 1. What is the Prison Industrial Complex and how does it generate profit? Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is private industry that run prisons by using a business model. PIC’s main goal is to generate as much profit as possible.…
Overcrowding and mass incarceration have been problems in the United States prisons for decades. Overcrowding can be traced back to the late 1970 's with an inmate population increase of 750% from the 70 's to present(Rogan). This increasing number of prisoners has had major negative effects, not only on the inmates themselves, but also on the surrounding communities that these inmates have been taken from and will eventually be released back into. The more mass incarceration that goes on the more these prisons, communities, and future generations will continue to decrease. The well being of the prison inmates was put in such jeopardy, because of overcrowding, that in 2011 the Supreme Court decided with a 5:4 vote that California would have…
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 prisoners from the cells could be seen by the officer who was observing from the tower, but the prisoners could not see the officer. Michel Foucault says, "The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produce a homogeneous effect of power." (Foucault 233). An institution like a school or prison in which a Panopticon was used produced the identical results for each individual. People in panoptic institutions are isolated from the outer world and exposed to the observer.…
1. The purposes of criminal punishment can simply be divided into two schools of thought: retributionists and preventionists. Identify, define, and discuss the several criminal law key term words that are associated with these two schools of thought and conclude with your opinion of which is the most effective.....or why all are concurrently effective. Be thorough since this is important concerning the purposes of punishment in a modern society. 1.…
Panopticon – the “perfect prison,” the “ultimate surveillance machine” and the “new model for modern society” (Knachel, par. 1). According to Dictionary.com, “Panopticon” is a combination of the Greek words pan, meaning “all”, and optikon, referring to “sight”. Collectively, the etymology of the word defines panopticon as “all-seeing”. The Panopticon is an architectural design proposed by Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher.…
This experiment went wrong and led to mental problems. These problems became so extreme that the experiment was discontinued after 6 days instead of 2 weeks. The Stanford Prison Experiment called into question the idea of Good vs Evil. The experiment showed how situational journey can cause an individual to “compromise” their beliefs. This change in behavior lead to psychological conflict among the “guards” and “prisoners.”…
The panopticon at that time was believed to form structure in their society by building this prison system at that time. It was a circular building with individual rooms where the prisoners were kept. In the center of the building there was a tall tower imitating a light tower. Inside this tower, you can see all the inmates, but from the outside nothing was visible to the inmate’s eyes. This system gave the impression that the prisoners were being individually watched at all times, which caused the prisoners to follow the rule to avoid punishment.…