Benefits Of Incarceration

Regardless of what you might see on TV the verdict of “not guilty by the reason of insanity” is an immensely rare plea for anyone. A majority of offenders with a mental illness still end up incarcerated. Even though the United States only makes up 5% of the world's population we account for 25% of the world's prisoners. Which converts to 2.2 million prisoners and about 1.2 million of those people have a mental illness (Fellner). Mental illness within our jails and prisons has become very prevalent within our correctional systems over the last 10 years. The number of men and women who have a mental illness that end up in jail or prison grows day by day. For those who do not go into the prison with a mental illness, will very likely develop some form of mental illness after being released from incarceration. The mentally ill do not belong in prison, the purpose for incarceration is retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation, and though it is originally meant for all of these purposes, it has lost its meaning. Correctional facilities are not built to provide treatment for the mentally ill, and the people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness cannot get the long-term treatment they need inside of a prison cell.

While it’s cheap to put someone on probation or parole, it is expensive to incarcerate a person for a year. It costs $45,000 to house and feed an inmate for one year. “There are approximately 1,325 state prisons and 84 federal prisons in operation across the country today”. (Schmalleger pg 390) If you have 2000 inmates in one prison then that will cost roughly $90,000,000 to support those prisoners for just one year and that is only for one prison. From 1991 to 2007, there was a 37% decrease in the national crime rate and a 62% increase in the rate of imprisonment. The Public Safety Performance Project released a report that predicts the nation’s prison population will rise to more than

From the article titled “The Punishment Imperative : The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America” by Todd Clear, and Natasha Frost, it goes into full detail on why the incarceration rate is failing. America incarcerates way more people that far exceeds the rate of our top allies. “With just under ten million people incarcerated in prisons and jails worldwide, America incarcerated more than one-fifth of the world’s total prison population.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 17) The United States now is in the lead in the world of incarceration, that beats countries like Russia, Rwanda, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Cuba, and the country has four times the rate of European nations. Maintaining the prisons came with a staggering price. In 2006, jurisdictions would spend around $68 billion on correctional supervision. They went from spending from $9 billion in 1982 to an 660 percent increase of $68 billion in 2006. Around the same time period, direct judicial expenditures has increased by 503 percent and the policing expenditures increased by 420 percent. The huge majority of the correctional dollars, with was around 90 percent, went to stabilize mass incarceration. “With a national average annual price tag of almost $29,000 per person per year of incarceration, it cost taxpayers at least ten times more to incarcerate a person than it would have cost to maintain him or her under supervision in the community.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 21) In general, this is an issue because the taxpayers are forced to pay a lot of money to maintain a person in prison. Locking up a serious violent offender is justified, however, for thousands of lower-level inmates, it costs taxpayers more than preventing

There are over 2million people incarcerated today in the United States and Statistics show that the rates every

In the United States, more than 2 million Americans are behind bars (Wagner, Rabuy). The massive amount of incarecerated in the United States has brought on massive spending by the government both federally and locally in order to house so much growing prison population. In fact, during the past 30 plus years the spending on prisons and pennial system has grown three times as much as spending on public education (Wikipedia).

Is it mass incarceration in the United States a form of increasing profit? Since private prisons were established, English procedures as well as European’s procedures influenced the America imprisonment system. Two major systems were developed in America during the 19th century in Philadelphia. During this time, crimes were castigated with imprisonment and later with hard labor, which was seen as a more humane method of punishment for inmates than actual physical castigation. These types of prison were established in the course of industrial development. Therefore, opportunity doors were opened to private sector involvement in such industry of prisons. According to David Shichor, “ the contractor enters the prison, efficiently organizes production, industrializes the workshops, partially pays for work done, manufactures non-craft goods and personally handles the distribution of these goods on the free market”(29).

Furthermore, Americans account for 25 percent of all prisoners, even though they make up only five percent of the worldwide population of prisoners and non-prisoners (Hawkins). Since many of them will return to jail, incarcerating large amounts of convicts does not appear to be useful. These increased incarceration rates have increased prisoners’ costs. Mark Cohen, expert on government enforcement, states that in 1998, “the cost for one career criminal was $1,500,000”. Just a decade later, that cost has significantly increased from about 2,600,000 to $5,300,000 (Cohen and Piquero). Since the total charge is a conservative estimate, it could be more or less than the actual. The dramatic increase should be alarming to everyone in the United States, and should lead people to question their government representatives on whether or not it is an appropriate amount of money to spend on criminals. For example, concerned citizens could write letters to their representatives to suggest the following plan: create programs that allow inmates to unite and speak about their problems with each other, along with a psychologist. In a recent news article, a former prisoner named Alacia Alamo speaks about the Alternatives to Violence Project (Benson). The workshop taught her how to communicate with others and enabled her to adapt a new attitude

Today, the United States has more people incarcerated than ever before. More than 2 million people in the United States alone are in prison, three times the amount than before there were sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums (Bernick and Larkin). “The Federal Bureau of Prisons is overcrowded, operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity and housing a large population of non-violent drug offenders, at a significant cost to taxpayer” (Bernick and Larkin). Every year taxpayers are paying to keep inmates incarcerated. The average cost to keep one inmate in prison for a year is around $29,000. In state prisons alone, taxpayers spend over $50 billion dollars

Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation ... who would otherwise be incarcerated.”

The United States is known for being the greatest country in the world. Land of the free, home of the brave, and leader of the free world, but the United States is actually the world's leading jailer. Incarceration rates have been increasing exponentially in the United States, however the crime rate has been on a steady decline over the last quarter of a century. These increasing number of imprisonments has resulted in the United States leading the nations by highest percentage of incarcerations per capita. The high incarceration rate in the U.S. has negatively affected the economy. As stated by Christian Henrichson “ such as employee benefits, capital costs, in-prison education services, or hospital care for inmates”, it is costly not only for state governments to maintain the correctional facilities, but many are funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers are deluded by state and federal governments by convincing them that if prisons aren’t supported and unfunded, the safety of citizens is in jeopardy due to crime rates increasing and low incarceration rates.

Incarceration strives to isolate offenders from society but does not provide adequate therapy to change the mental states and behaviors of criminals. The recidivism rate, the rate of known and recorded relapse into criminal behavior after release from jail, proves that offenders need more than just isolation to change their behavior and eliminate their dangers to society. Communities need not only to provide help and pay attention to offenders with short sentences because of their earlier release than others. In California, an increase in parole grants in 2014 has resulted in 2,000 murderers, classified as the “highest Criminal History Category, VI,” returning to society with no therapy or assistance from reentry programs. 80% of offenders in the most serious criminal history category, the criminal group with the highest recidivism rate, relapsed and returned to prison within five years of release, and 60% of offenders returned to prison within three years of release (Prisoners and Prisoner Re-Entry, 2007; Sanchez, 2014; Sipes, 2017; St John, 2014). Overall, police officers arrest ex-offenders up to forty-five times more than they arrest members of the non-criminal population (Przybylski, 2012). Criminals need specialized psychological treatment to change their behaviors and make them safe to return to their communities. As recidivism becomes increasingly more problematic in today's society, criminal psychologists analyze the motives, incarceration experiences, and mental

In 2010, state and federal prisons spent 80 million dollars collectively on incarceration. (Office of the Attorney General, 2014). Mandatory minimum sentencing generally doesn’t target the money spent on mandatory minimum sentencing would be better spent directed towards more serious criminal offenses or towards rehabilitative programs to prevent recidivism. The U.S. accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, yet it has 25% of the world’s prison population, making it the world’s largest jailer (American Civil Liberties Union). Extending the length of prison stays doesn’t necessarily mean lower crime rates. Prisoners are expensive. In 2005, the average operating cost per prisoner was $23,876 (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008). Prisoners require beds, food, medical and dental care, and mental health services which all come out of taxpayer dollars. It is much cheaper to provide rehabilitative services to prevent recidivism to nonviolent drug offenders than to incarcerate them for extended periods of time. Overpopulation in prisons also leads to overtime costs for officers to fulfill staff vacancies. In 2006, at least $25,000 was made by 15% of the corrections workforce in California (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008). Some states have cut spending on higher education and funneled more money towards fighting the War on Drugs. In 2007, five states spent more money on corrections

Do you know that between 1955 and 1998, we have about 558,000 patients dropped to 60,000 patients in our country and state mental hospital? During this time, there have a national shift between state hospitals and community-based facilities in mental health treatment, it’s called deinstitutionalization. In 1965, the Congress has created Medicaid. It is a payment for people who are in community mental health centers. In addition, President Jimmy Carter had signed the Mental Health System Act in 1980. It provided grants in a straight line to community mental health centers, but the time of fund is very short. Because when President Ronald Reagan is on the place, he cuts one third of spend to federal mental health. According to The New

Incarceration in the United States is extremely expensive, as the US has the world’s highest rate of incarcerated persons, in terms of total number and percentage of population. The number of incarcerated citizens in America has more than quadrupled since 1980, from approximately 500,000 to 2.3 million, for a multitude of reasons, such as the War on Drugs and all of the subsequent policy changes in the criminal justice system. The incarceration rate in the US is almost 3.5 times that of Mexico and between five and ten times that of European countries. In the US there are approximately 2.3 million incarcerated persons and in 2014, the country spent $80 billion on incarceration (Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, NAACP.com). That means that every resident in the US is paying about $260 per year towards these expenses, up from $77 per person in 1980; this increase is also due to the huge increase in the number of incarcerated people since 1980.

Your post was very genuine and stated how you truly feel. “Some prisoners also work in facility services such as the kitchen, laundry, cleaning, maintenance and gardening (State of Victoria, 2015, para. 2).” This is for all inmates to gain experience in jail, so they come into the community to do well. Also, most inmates that work in the kitchen are trained in the prison to become chefs. Additionally, this is the only way prison meals are served. Further, not even death row prisoners are exempt from working. The only rule is if the inmate it 65 and older or medically unstable to work (State of Victoria, 2015, para. 1). Therefore, the prisoners are working. The government just hasn’t put forth any means of making them pay for the medical services.