The Pros And Cons Of The Prison System

This Wakefield and Uggen article suggests, as I had suspected after the previous week's readings, that the punishment system is a positive feedback loop that funnels individuals into poverty and discrimination. Once an individual enters the system, their social position is unlikely to ever recover, compounding any previous disadvantages. The social descriptors of those who go to prison might as well be the textbook definition for "cheated by life": poor, young people of color that are subjected to increased surveillance by police account for a large portion of those incarcerated in the "prison boom". As these people are often raised in environments that are prone to high crime rates, they receive more attention from police; hence a larger proportion …show more content…
Clearly these effects do nothing to better an individual's chances for re-building their life after imprisonment, and thus former inmates stay in the lower tiers of society or sink lower still into unemployment and, as it commonly happens, resort again to crime to survive. If a person was better-off before entering prison, their chances at a decent life are often just as bleak as they are for the already disadvantaged individuals exiting prison with them. Clearly this not only increases the amount of people at the lowest societal strata, but lengthens their stay there, sometimes indefinitely. Once one's reputation is dashed by their prison record, re-establishing a good societal standing is difficult for the aforementioned reasons of work discriminations, health problems,