Sunny's Role In Criminal Justice

Sunny’s perspective changed and evolved throughout her time in the criminal justice system. In the beginning, working as a legal intern she had many different encounters with inmates, hearing their different complaints and oppositions to their treatment while incarcerated. The inmates’ different backgrounds and situations opened Sunny’s eyes to how they were living in an endless cycle of criminality, going back and forth from society to incarceration. Being a legal representative for the inmates, she was able to see firsthand how disengaged and cruel some of the CO’s were to the inmates. She discussed throughout the beginning how most of her time was going after those officers who broke the rules. Sunny’s work was very influenced by an incident …show more content…
The programs goals were to stop their violent behaviors and teach them about restorative justice and how their violent acts effects the victim, their families, and the community as a whole. If they hurt someone, they must take the responsibility. The offender should give back to the person and community that they harmed. Sunny calls it ‘basic human decency.’ I think that RSVP and other programs like it are both smart and tough on crime. I say this because before the inmate can graduate out of this program they have to prove themselves and participate in all the post release programs, therapy, job training, life skills, and show that they will be released to appropriate housing. If they are not motived and don’t work hard to get what they need to get done, they will not be eligible for release. RSVP puts a lot of responsibility in the inmate’s hand. They are controlling their …show more content…
How do they expect violent individuals with lengthy criminal backgrounds, no education or job skills be successful? Why would they send these offenders back into the community and expect them not to get caught up in criminality again with no education on how to even change their criminal thinking? Programs and services offered in prisons should target the specific crime and behavior that landed that offender in jail in the first place. I like the way sunny word’s the concept in her epilogue: “What kind of society would we be if we made sure each prisoner received therapy, education and peer pressure pushing him to do the right thing so that when he is released, he can grow up and get a job and stop terrorizing us. If that happened we could stop the violence and stop building prisons. I believe violent people have to be taken out of circulation. But it need not be a permanent removal if we stop sending them to monster factories and instead direct them to places that invest in their success