The sole purpose of prison is to punish criminals for crimes they have committed, protect citizens from crime, and rehabilitate those individuals to be honest, law-abiding citizens once they are released back into the public. Wilbert Rideau, author of “Why Prisons Don’t Work”, was in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and has first-hand experience with how the prison system works. Prison is the punishment, but the punishments within the prison are inhumane and ineffective. High re-offense rates show that the public is not being protected from criminals; nor, are they rehabilitating those individuals to be productive citizens. Prisons are harming the individuals inside of them more than helping, prisons do not work.
Prison is technically supposed to be a punishment in itself, but there are in fact other punishments within the prison that men and women are facing; solitary confinement, better known as the hole or the shu. Solitary confinement is isolating individuals from the prison population when they break the rules and regulations of the prison. Solitary confinement is not only ineffective but inhumane, to say the least. Prisoners are held in cells, alone, anywhere from days to weeks. They are only out of their cell for a couple …show more content…
The first time someone commits a crime they will get probation, and be able to be free with the understanding that if they commit a crime again there will be a larger consequence next time. Probation might work for some, but most of the time it just allows those individuals to commit another crime. “Crime is a young man’s game” (Rideau 179). If punishment was enforced from the very beginning while these individuals are young enough to change their ways then society can be protected from the same crime being committed twice by the same
Prison is technically supposed to be a punishment in itself, but there are in fact other punishments within the prison that men and women are facing; solitary confinement, better known as the hole or the shu. Solitary confinement is isolating individuals from the prison population when they break the rules and regulations of the prison. Solitary confinement is not only ineffective but inhumane, to say the least. Prisoners are held in cells, alone, anywhere from days to weeks. They are only out of their cell for a couple …show more content…
The first time someone commits a crime they will get probation, and be able to be free with the understanding that if they commit a crime again there will be a larger consequence next time. Probation might work for some, but most of the time it just allows those individuals to commit another crime. “Crime is a young man’s game” (Rideau 179). If punishment was enforced from the very beginning while these individuals are young enough to change their ways then society can be protected from the same crime being committed twice by the same