The Pros And Cons Of Prisons

When one is asked what are prisons usually used for, to the average Joe, they might say that it used to house convicted felons for their wrongdoing. Others might say that prisons are a form of protection of society against the potential dangers of these “convicts”. Discussing this complex question in class, the inside and outside students came up with various ways that prisons are used for; some of them include: population control, housing, cheap labor, deterrence, profit, business, “to buy time”, reformation and a multitude of factors. Even though these are plausible options that could be true, what really is the main reason for prisons? Well for author Marc Mauer, incarceration in the United States could be used for the reduction of crime. Because of America’s obsession to reduce more crime, the cost of actually building prisons in “both fiscal and human terms, …show more content…
(p. 105-106) Knowing that policymakers do not give much thought towards bettering and reducing prison populations, it is now understandable why the “institutions” are used as a crutch to cover a major issue in the US’s criminal justice system. Reverting back to the main issue of what prisons are for, there really is not a clear answer so far. Even though there are facts of how incarceration works, there are facts and released felons with no kind of aid that shows that just incarceration for a number of years does not suffice either. The issue of incarceration desperately needs to be brought up more with policymakers to ensure that crime rates significantly go down. It is actually disheartening to even believe that felons and those who are not the same person as they were when they committed their crime are not receiving help to actually better transition into modern society. Hopefully, this issue can become significant as time