Personal Narrative: The California Prison System

Improved Essays
Let me start out by saying that I lived in Susanville California for four years and I am not fond of the culture of Prison towns. I met quite a few people that worked there and they are definaley a different breed of cat. As a nurse I have also known a lot of nurses that have worked there and the majority of them tell me it is not the prisoners that you have to look out for it is the staff. They tend to be just a step away from being criminals themselves. Any institution that is that large such as the Veteran’s Administration, the especially the California Prison system is full of problems. California has the largest prison system in the U.S. It usually comes down to mis management by the higher ups. The Prison system has its own culture,

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Maximum security prisons like this one (Clinton Correctional Facility) are meant to keep inmates under close supervision and very tight parameters. Matt, (one of Sweat’s…

    • 136 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Joan Didion’s excerpt ‘The Promise of the Prison’, from The People and Promises of California, Didion talks about California and the hopes residents were instilled by the building of prisons. The prisons being built were going to provide protection and a substantial amount of job opportunities for residents. Didion mentioned that by the year 2000 California had over “33 penitentiaries and 162,000 inmates,the largest in the western hemisphere.” This number has increased since then not just in California but all over the United States; this accounts for twenty-two percent of the world’s prison population. California’s prisons are overpopulated and exceed the expected capacity of inmates that should be housed.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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…

    • 2111 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Realignment has large affected on operation of California’s prison and jail systems. Since more and more people commit crimes, state prisons become overcrowded. According to the Fact Sheet of 2011 Public Safety Realignment, “Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed Assembly Bill (AB) 109 and AB 117, historic legislation to enable California to close the revolving door of low-level inmates cycling in and out of state prisons. It is the cornerstone of California’s solution to the U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons to 137.5 percent of original design capacity” (CDCR Fact Sheet). Overcrowded is just one of the problems that Correction systems have to face up; costs and recidivism are also challenge to…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It’s a warm, bright Monday morning. I am walking into a stone building with barbed wire surrounding it. As I walk through the doors there is a huge metal detector in the middle of the room. Everybody that enters this room has to walk through it to make sure not to bring anything harmful into the building. With that said, I have just walked into a correctional facility.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction Currently, the United States is home to the highest percentage of the world’s incarcerated population. The United States itself only accounts for 4% of the total population, but has somehow managed to contain 25% of the world’s prison population. From 1984 to 2014, the number of prisoners has increased by over 400%. (vlog) California is at the forefront of this problem, as they have recently exceeded their maximum prison capacity. Their system was designed to hold 83,219 inmates, but has greatly exceeded this number with their population peaking at more than 144,000 (MacDonald, 2013).…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Inmates get treated poorly all the time, all around the world (except in Germany). Certain TV shows such as Orange is the New Black and Prison Break give us a small insight to how prison is, but they don’t show us the worst…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Let me first begin by telling you how I ended up finally being admitted to my agency. It was a long process of searching and talking to people whom I hadn’t met before. At the end, I am glad I got into this agency because I did learn several things, and the staff was always willing to answer our questions. It made me want to get up during the morning to go and experience what was happening inside Cameron County Jail. Each day people would come and go to court or would be brought to the booking process.…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Golden Gulag Analysis

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, promises to analyze the underlying causes that have perpetuated the exponential growth of state run prisons in California from a socioeconomic framework. Lastly, parenthetical citations are used throughout different sections of the reading to provide additional information and credit…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Let's flash back about, oh, 20 years. I was new to the Texas Panhandle, seeking to learn the ropes about the community where I had just moved. I got a call one day from the then-assistant warden of the William P. Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The prison official, Rick Hudson, invited me to tour the maximum-security lockup in northeast Amarillo.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Unlike some states where prisons are privately owned, California state prisons are state funded which the decrease in annual cost ultimately saves taxpayer’s funds. The savings in state used funds also help the state use the funds towards other state funding…

    • 1354 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The state must then provide the inmates with the basic needs of all people including, medical care, psychiatric care, and basic sanitary conditions. It was found that the prisons in the State of California were extremely overpopulated, and that “overcrowding has overtaken the limited resources of prison staff; imposed demands well beyond the capacity of the medical and mental health facilities; and created unsanitary and unsafe conditions,” (Katsh 113). Overcrowding has caused the prison staffs to be unable to adequately treat those with medical conditions and those with mental illnesses. At times the overcrowding became so severe that for suicidal inmates, there were not enough free beds. In lieu of suicide preventative beds, “suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth size cages without toilets,… for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of [their] own urine,” (Katsh 114).…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    My Prison Research Paper

    • 242 Words
    • 1 Pages

    prison à sécurité moyenne My prison is built for medium level security and prisoners. This prison features a schedule, a canteen, solitary, and jobs to work off jail time and for cash. For exercise inmates may take to the courtyard for basketball and weightlifting.…

    • 242 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An Introduction to Prison Management While this course demonstrated the significant negative impacts imprisonment has on prisoners, it was interesting to study the impact on corrections officers too. The fifth lecture provided valuable insight into the emotional implications of prison for corrections officers. Furthermore, the role of power in relationships between prisoners and corrections officers was intriguing too, especially the notion that these power dynamics further exacerbate the criminogenic nature of the prison’s internal environment. The Emotional Impact of Prison on Corrections officers…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Going to school is the same as going to prison. On the first day of being in prison, we all meet up in the main hall and the warden gives us instructions. All of the prisoners are divided up into different halls, and we have a designated prison guard. Some prison guards are nice, but usually they are mean. The prisoners that have been here for a long time can get away with more because they suck-up to the warden and the guards.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays