California Prison Policies

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

California is the biggest state that has the largest prisoners’ population and it was in poverty. The state in 2005, there were twenty-four more new prisons build in California that had an addition houses for mothers. Mother was allowed to spend time with their children while in prison. This would give the mother and her child or children time to bond with each other.

Anyone who comes to the facility without prior authorization will not be acknowledged. Visitors will be allowed to visit the prisoner for a limited time. Conversations between visitors and prisoners will be monitored at all times and maybe used later if needed in a case.

The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops

AB 109 and AB 117 were introduced to ease the pressure of the federal and state budget through saving costs on the penitentiary system. In this regard, the reduction of the prison population and the transfer of a part of the prison population to county jails was one of the main provisions of AB 109 but AB 117 actually discharges provisions of AB 109. Such a paradoxical situation is the result of scarce financial resources to fund the penitentiary system at both the federal and local level. In order to reduce the pressure on the penitentiary system at the federal level, the decision to transfer the prison population to county jails or to release the

The Bureau of Prisons carefully lists the inmate’s health care rights and the inmate’s responsibilities in order have access those rights. In the Federal Correction Institution at Terminal Island, California the Inmate Information Handbook lists out the specific rights to health care access each inmate has and then the handbook lists the inmate’s responsibility to be able to access the health care. An example is the inmate has the right to access all services on Terminal Island including medical, dental, and all support services but the

Life in Incarceration did not define the end of a normal life within the state of California. In fact California's prison system brought a sense of purpose to those behind bars. In Doing Time in the Depressions second chapter, the process and key fundamentals of California's "Honor Camps", was system in which inmates were given salary towards the work they did as prisoners.Within the text it states "...California's road camps made a distinct contribution both to the solution of the prison-labor problem and to penology," (California, para. 1). Prisoners receiving paid labor for their work, and a decreased amount of physical punishment put a different light toward the Incarceration system. The camp created a positive impact within California, redefining the Prison Industry entirely.

In the case of the California’s Corcoran State Prison the prisoners were being mistreated. The situation that brought this case to the forefront was Dryburgh (2009) found that “Preston Tate was shot and fatally wounded by a corrections officer after Tate and his cellmate fought against two rival Hispanic gang member. Tate death was at the hands of a prison guard prompted two whistle – blowers to approach the FBI with tales of abuse and brutality toward inmates by correction officers”. Moreover, this was not the first time that an inmate had been shot by a correctional officer.

The article focuses on the overcrowding in California prisons. In 2011 the U.S. Supreme found in the case of Brown vs. Plata that California prison system has preventable deaths occurring every five to six days. There has been a shortage in medical staff within the California prison system. This storage range from 20% doctors to 44% x-ray technicians. California prisons are built to house 80,000 people the prisons have twice as many inmates. California prisons have packed gymnasiums containing double and triple bunks. The article states this living condition is a make shift dormitory. When beating deaths occurs the staff has no idea for hours. Because California has allowed there prisons to maintain in these condition it has been found

Some of the challenges in the perinatal care in the correctional setting include lack of prenatal care prior to incarceration, drug or alcohol dependency, psychosocial problems or lack of outside family support, victim or transgressor of past abuse or violence and the psychological challenges of being incarcerated. For many women, the reality of being in the prison system can be devastating; the separation from family, which often includes their own children, and friends can cause depression, anxiety and fear. Personal physical safety is also a concern, as prison is often described as having its own “culture”, structure and hierarchy,

California’s overcrowded prisons are a result of one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation . In order to alleviate stress on correctional facilities and to make them efficient, public safety realignment was passed by legislation in 2011. The act of realignment is shifting responsibilities of most offenders from state facilities to county facilities, and the possible changing of the duration of sentences. Furthermore, it is important to understand the effects of realignment on the prison population, and if it is effective at reducing prison populations and making treatment programs more effective.

Healthcare is a big topic no matter how you view it, but when looking at it from the point of a person who is in prison, it takes on a whole new view. Those who are in prison have federal and state laws that say that the prisons must provide them with medical facilities for their healthcare needs. This paper will identify a governmental agency that regulates the healthcare that is provided to prisoners in an institution within the United States, along with the foundation of such an agency and who regulates the licenses, accreditation, certifications, and authorization for employment for those who work within one of these

One change in a family system experiencing incarceration that affects grandparents is the difficulty maintaining family ties with the incarcerated individual. Travis, McBride, and Solomon, (2005) state that factors such as the presence of security guards, the time it takes to visit inmates, difficulty of coordinating visits, and geographic location of the prison all hinder the ability for family members to maintain ties with the incarcerated family member (Travis, McBride, & Solomon, 2005). These particular challenges in visitation are difficult for family members, such as grandparents, to

the outside society, with little or no contact at all until the inmates stay is

The permit of conjugal visits for prisoners serving life sentences will be seen as an incentive for prisoners to behave. Need I say more? According to Patterson, (2017) conjugal visits give inmates the motivation to show good behavior, therefore inmates will have the opportunity to benefit from the conjugal visits program, such as stay connected with their family ties. Yes! They are not in prison for their good behavior but do not mean they should suffer greatly. Haven’t they suffered enough? Inmates being locked away in a small room like repunzel. Inmates will have to meet a certain criteria before they are allowed to participate in the conjugal visits program. Gumdo, (2016) found that conjugal visit is seen as a reward system that promotes