Why Are Prison Obsolete

Decent Essays
“Are Prisons Obsolete?”
When I was younger I was told if you did a crime you would be sent off to a prison too do time as your punishment. Not until I was older did I realize the problems that were really going on with our prison system. This was a place they sent people who had done bad things to be isolated from the rest of society, where there supposed to think about there crime and for some to never see the outside every again. Some say that prison is a place to reform an inmate so when they do come out of the system he or she can be a better citizen. With the number of inmate on the raise every year one would think that within the past 10 years there would have been some type of change in the prison system, with more people going to jail

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the book Freedom is A Constant Struggle, chapter nine, Angela Davis starts off by talking about how many people complain how Black History Month is in February and many people complain that it's the shortest month of the year, she explains how Frederick Douglas birthday is in that month. She also said that Martin Luther King's birthday is in the middle of January and said Black History Month is really a month and a half. The country continues to celebrate Black History month during Women's History Month, and Davis adds African Americans now have two and a half months. Davis talks about Obama's presidency and how most white men voted against Obama and brought up the fact that, that shows us the persistence of racism. Davis talks about the way Muslims are mistreated and misread.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Introduction The correction system in America is in many ways, deeply flawed. The ideology of prison is that it is created with the general purpose of making people better, morally and ethically, it was supposed to be the adult version of time out, take away someone’s freedom as a person for a while and hope that the same person would learn a lesson and change for the better. But in real life, people who get arrested for minor or not so major crimes gets locked up with the murderers and rapists. The convicted may not be such a bad person; he or she could have had a bad day and did some thoughtless regrettable things. But no matter who they were before they entered the correction system, they come out a totally different person, and in most…

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    1. An article “Responsible Prison Reform” falls under conservative on the political spectrum. The reason, I believe this article falls under conservative is because in the article Eli Lehrer talks about how once again, they are leading the way toward the strengthening the sentence rules and other strategies that augmented incarceration rate. Therefore, they should lead the way in rationally reducing the prison population where the incarceration should be changed. For example, in the article, Tom Bethell’s 1989 Washington Monthly cover story “ Criminals belong in jail,” where he talks about along with other liberal lawmaker, “the senator Joe Biden helped President Ronald Reagan enact major legislation related to the “War on drugs,” later helped Bill Clinton spend billions of federal dollars on hiring more police and building more…

    • 2011 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Something needs to happen in our prison system because it is terribly wrong. We are digging a hole for our ourselves and letting our neighbors and country men rot away until the are unleashed back into the community. Overcrowded prisons will create very aggressive atmospheres for people who still have a chance to continue in life as a normal person. This atmosphere will cause that person to be very angry and scornful which could in pact future families and communities. If America would wake up and actually try and correct our falling brothers our society would have the ability to make our streets a safe place again.…

    • 2222 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The point of locking up so many people is to reduce crimes committed in the United States. Although mass incarceration might help a little, it is still not effective to reduce certain crimes. The first reason why prison populations have grown immensely over the past 40 years is youth crimes( which usually happen in big groups) and drug crimes. The people that get locked up for committing those crimes will be replaced by somebody else because of different types of personal issues. Some examples of those personal issues are income and addiction.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prison systems cost money to keep active, and the more prisoners a building holds, the more money it will cost. Furthermore, prisons take money from education and public safety. Yet despite the major flaws with the prison system, and although crime has decreased in the past several decades, incarceration rates have nearly quadrupled (“Criminal”). Because of this, prison costs have increased, and continue to rise. In fact, in America, about $70 billion are spent on corrections per year (ibid).…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For something to qualify as obsolete, it must be out of date or no longer produced. Angela Davis questions in her book Are Prisons Obsolete whether or not the use of prisons is still necessary or if they can be abolished, and become outdated. Davis raises many questions and challenges about the use of prisons in today’s world. A few of the leading concerns when it comes to prisons is the topic of sexual abuse especially towards female inmates, the idea of prison being a racial institution, and the establishment of prisons for profitable purposes. Criminals have full access to what life in jail is like, but many citizens who have not experienced prison are not fully educated on what actually occurs behind closed doors.…

    • 810 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The rise of modern capitalism has subjected people to criminalization which has caused disenfranchisement between groups. Similarly to slavery incarceration promotes the preservation of life which leads to the form of slavery which is present in U.S prisons today. Since the 13th amendment allows slavery as a form of punishment, prisons are able to exploit this labor in order to make a profit. Inmates are no longer seen as people and are instead seen as property which help fund the bigger financial goals. Inmates are a form of free labor and the prison system today is not oblivious to that.…

    • 1973 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    How The Prison System Is Corrupt “If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom” (Dwight D. Eisenhower). The U.S. prison system is bad and it is not working.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Mass incarceration is a unique way of saying that the United States has locked up a tremendous amount of the population in state and federal prisons, and even local jails. The U.S currently locks over 2.2 million human beings in cages, and many are for nonviolent offenses. What is this issue about? Mass incarceration rates continue to rise. There are spaces in the prisons and jails where there are situations such as no beds available.…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Incarceration In Jail

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages

    According to Mulch, “In the last 15 years, state spending on corrections grew more than 350 percent—compared to 250 percent growth for spending on public welfare and 140 percent growth for spending on education” (Mulch). Soon most of the U.S population will be behind bars, as long as there is no change in the system corporations will continue to thrive off the slave labor of the working class. In addition, the prison that are built are sold as “economic development projects,” which shows how prison is thought of as factory or sweatshop instead of a place meant to punish those who have committed horrible crimes, such as killing, raping, and kidnapping. Instead people are being convicted for minor offences such as jay-walking and in addition serving long sentences for said minor…

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the Office of Justice report, they stated “For the second year in a row, the number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities at yearend declined, as the U.S. prison population decreased by 0.9% in 2010” (Carson). This proves that the United States is slowly moving away from long incarceration and deterrence policies to more of rehabilitation. It also states, “During 2011, the number of releases from state and federal prisons (688,384) exceeded the number of admissions (668,800)” (Carson). Before, the majority of people are getting admitted not released and this shows how the government is gradually changing the ways of the how we are dealing with…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Do people really understand what mass incarceration is? African Americans and Latino’s are the ones being thrown in prisons and jails over white people. Why is that? Who is protecting our society when individuals are being thrown in jails for committing nonviolent crimes? “African Americans are subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were.”…

    • 2181 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In the United States, prison overcrowding has reached a crisis level as it becomes ubiquitous and continues to show no sign of abating within the foreseeable future. Courts in the country continue to sentence criminal offenders to serve various prison terms and fail to utilize various sentencing alternatives thus sustaining the problem. The problem has escalated in the last thirty years thus turning into a crisis. Between 1970 and 2005 for example, the inmate population in the country grew by 700% and has continued on an…

    • 1540 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Prison Reform

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    There are four main purposes to prisons: Retribution; the punishing of a criminal serves as an act of revenge for the victim and society. Deterrence; corrections are intended to discourage offenders from committing future crimes and make the rest of society think twice about breaking laws. Social protection; by limiting the freedom of offenders, society prevents them from committing additional crimes. Rehabilitation; during the nineteenth century, prisons emerged as places in which to reform criminals so that they could return to society as law-abiding citizens (Roberts, 2006). However, the American prison system is not functionally capable of significant prisoner rehabilitation.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays