Criminal Justice

Change over time; that is a common theme with everything in the world. The concept of punishment is no different in that regard. In the 16th and 17th century the common view for punishing people was retaliation from the king and to be done in the town square. In what seemed to be all of a sudden, there was a change in human thinking, the concept of punishment changed to a more psychological approach compared to a public embarrassment/torture approach. The following paragraphs will discuss the development of prisons and what in fact gives people gives people the right to punish; as well as the overall meaning and function of prisons. The work by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison will help with the arguments

Throughout the years, the use of imprisonment has varied, along with its influences of society. It is thought that although prisons have been around since the thirteenth century, prisons as we know them now to be have only been around for the last three centuries. The first uses of prisons were not seen as a form of punishment instead they were used as a way of making people do something. People would be held in prison until they paid their debts, or awaiting trial and then leading up to their sentence. McGowen (1995) suggests that from the early 1700s ‘bridewells’ a house of correction have existed, however at that time being used merely for vagrants and drunks. At the end of the sixteenth century there was a shift in punishment to imprisonment, along with this came a new, more humane idea of reform. Criminals would spend their days of prison carrying out hard labour. However after the American Revolution, imprisonment took a step back and there was another change. There was mass overcrowding within the prison service and although the death penalty was still being used it was a symbol of the power of the state. Therefore, an everyday way of dealing with offenders would be transportation to the colonies, being either Australia or America.

The Penitentiary Era 1790 to 1825 mass prison building era housed many prisoners with the goals of rehabilitation; deterrence and allowing the inmates to work during the day and when they returned were put into solitary confinement (Ortmeier 2006, 391). This new era was too focused on making prisoners think about their crimes and learn skills in workshops and general labor to reenter society as a productive member. Capital and corporal punishment were looked down upon by many and they did not actually fix the problems of rising crime. Often time’s prisoners were held in a large jail cells, men and women alike that resulted in rape and fighting among each other. The strengths of this era looked to keep prisoners safe and at times lessen

Solitary confinement has had a long history in the American prison system. America is the first country to adapt solitary confinement into the prison regiment. Pennsylvania had the first special housing units for inmates or “SHU”. When Europeans came to America to look at the new model for prisons in Pennsylvania they wrote reports describing to the European parliament on how prisoners were treated like caged animals. Many of them quickly realized that this was not what prisons were set out to accomplish. The purpose of a prison is to rehabilitate criminals and bring them back into society as an individual that has the best mental tools and skills to make their respective communities better. Putting inmates in solitary confinement for more than 48 hours can only lead to awful emotional pain and mental problems which can result in self-destructive behavior to regain the self-control that is being deprived through this process of isolation and expulsion.

Have you ever sat back and thought of the multiple different people that need the criminal justice professionals? A lot of people think that the police, child protection and probation officers are a waste of time but they actually save lives. Adolescents who can no longer live with their parents are placed in others home until it is safe to go back home, homeless people without homes are placed in shelters as well as women that are abused in domestic violence situations. People from every walk of life, race and culture experience these situations. People within the criminal justice profession protect these individuals and help them find a way out of the environment they are in.

These principles are points that the US prison and penal system needs to adapt and incorporate into the US penal

The History of prisons goes through many eras. Many of these eras have a major impact on today’s prison system. The different was that the system worked and didn’t work really showed what was possibly and what should not be tried again. Each era tried to do something new are recreate something that had already been done by making changes to the way that they treated the inmates all the way to how they were housed and how much contact they had with one another. The different eras gave the present day prison system many great things to think about. Such as large capacity housing so you can properly use all the space in the prison and hold it to capacity. There is also the parole system that gives inmates a chance to work get out early and spend the rest of their sentence on the outside. These many great traits that the prison system today has all come from the hundreds of years of trial and error that occurred throughout the world.

The aspect on working in prison has changed but only for the safety of the prisoners and guards. If helped some of the prisoners have something to do during the day, a way for them to be productive. Then on the other hand in the beginning they were forced to work no matter if they liked it or not, there were even stories of them being sold as slaves. Cell blocks in the beginning were huge; they had a restroom, bed, work area, and exercise space. Now the cell

Throughout most of the eighteenth century, jails were maintained through a combination of fees and labor sales, and the state of Pennsylvania passed legislation calling for inmate labor to be used on all public projects.

American prison system incarceration was not officially used as the main form of punishment in United States (U.S.) until around the 1800’s. Before that time criminals were mainly punished by public shaming, which involved punishments such as being whipped, or branded (HL, 2015). In fact, President Lincoln codified the prison incarceration system in the Emancipation Proclamation that indicated no slavery would take place in America unless a person was duly convicted of a crime (paraphrased) (White, 2015). In this era prisons were used more as a place where criminals could be detained until their trial date if afforded such an opportunity. However, one of the main problems with this idea was the fact that the prisons were badly maintained, which resulted in many people contracting fatal diseases. Yet, according to White (2015) unethical and immoral medical experiments were also conducted on inmates’ leading to health failures. Moreover, because everyone was detained in the same prisons, adolescent offenders would have to share the same living space with adult felons, which became another serious problem in that adolescent were less mature and could not protect themselves in such environments

Confined prisoners, many of whom are later released at the end of the sentence, are excruciated with a new behavioral deficiency as a result of their time in solitary confinement. This can dangerously affect social orders/groups and it can prompt higher rates of recidivism among these prisoners. As for a psychological aspect, any human contact is critical capacity for keeping the faculties in place and when that human contact is banned or denied, inmates can lose their capacity to work appropriately. Now and again prompt themselves to inflict self-harm as well as harm others in the population. Only one could imagine what this isolation could do to a

Solitary confinement is viewed as one of the best punishments for prisoners’ bad behavior in order to protect the rest of the inmates. Solitary confinement has proven to have the reverse effects in terms of a person’s psychological state. Solitary confinement means that the prisoners do not have normal stimulus and human communication which has its toll on the prisoners. Prisoners who are in solitary confinement only have themselves and the acoustics of their squared prison cell which tends to drive many to hallucinate, act violently, or commit suicide.

The state prisons today were founded on the basis of the 1700s to 1800’s during the Age of Enlightenment. The English correctional facility referred to as a “gaol,” commonly known as a jail. They housed men, women, children, the mentally ill along with the civil and criminals. The individuals suffered from idleness, diseases, despair and malnutrition. The gaols were maintained by local authorities, classification did not exist, and the purpose of gaol was to detain or hold people for court.

Since the early 1800s, the United States has relied on a method of punishment barely known to any other country, solitary confinement (Cole). Despite this method once being thought of as the breakthrough in the prison system, history has proved differently. Solitary confinement was once used in a short period of time to fix a prisoners behavior, but is now used as a long term method that shows to prove absolutely nothing. Spending 22-24 hours a day in a small room containing practically nothing has proved to fix nothing in a person except further insanity. One cannot rid himself of insanity in a room that causes them to go insane. Solitary confinement is a flawed and unnecessary method of punishment that should be prohibited in the prison

The corrections system in America began mostly with the arrival of William Penn and his “Great Law.” This was back in 1682; the “Great Law” was based on humane principals and also focused on hard labor as a punishment. The corrections system really began to take hold in North America in the late 1700’s with the idea’s and philosophy of Beccaria, Bentham, and Howard. These philosophies were based on the thought that prisoners could be treated and reformed back into society. This hard labor was used as an alternative to other cruel forms of punishments that were used in earlier times such as physical abuse or even brutal death.