Pros And Cons Of The American Prison System

Intro The American prison system is one that can be viewed as extremely flawed. Our prisons are overcrowded, and our incarceration rate trumps all other nations in the world. However, crime rates have dropped in the past couple decades. Despite these drops, we still see a great deal of mass incarceration. In our correctional system, we fail to focus on rehabilitation of criminals, and reintegrating them back into society. Instead, we often tend to push criminals further away from normal lives with extremely long sentencings, sentence minimums, and even keeping them out of jobs after they have served their terms in prison. Criminals also lose the fundamental right of voting in some states, as well as having a much harder time owning homes, …show more content…
Society tends to shun those who have committed crimes. When we look at people as criminals we tend to devalue them as human beings. With this devaluing approach we don’t focus on educating, treating, or accepting criminals back into society. By creating laws for a rehabilitative prison reform we would be able to focus on accepting those who have committed crimes back into society. That mean’s we must not only focus on the way the system treats these people but also the way we view them. The affluent hold an extremely uneven amount of power, without reintegration we are allowing those in power positions to maintain control that cannot be justified. It is the most affluent that have the most influence on laws and rules, and the ability to keep the destitute in disadvantaged situation. By using a rehabilitative approach we would be able to better educate the population. For those who finish their time throwing them back into society can be extremely difficult to deal with after being in confinement. With the odds against them when seeking work and help outside of the prison system, convicted criminals are more likely to find themselves behind bars again because they have not necessarily been taught how to survive back in society. When labeled as a criminal and treated as much continually one who has already been convicted is more likely to recidivate. To keep recidivism down we need to focus on teaching prisoners skills that they can use outside of prison, proper interactions, and help them understand the deviance behind their actions. Conformity is hard to reach when those who you are trying to get to conform don’t believe in what they are doing. In order to keep people from using innovation, retreatism, ritualism, and rebellion, they must feel that they are being given the same means to reach societal success. The prison system should focus on teaching individuals ways to achieve success without them