The idea of sympathetic release of ill and elderly prisoners is not new. In 1994, Professor Russell published consideration of medical parole and compassionate release programs of district and fifty states of Columbia. Only three
As understood by sociologists and scholars mass incarceration is a wide term that describes the increased rate of imprisonment in the prisons of United States for the past four decades. Accounting about 5% of the population of the world, United States recently have rapidly accommodated one-quarter of world prisoners. With the population statistics, the large numbers of prisoners leaves everyone with endless questions that need urgency in answering. Why the large number in the prisons? What are the causes of imprisonment? Are the constitutional laws in United States so harsh on minor faults that should have alternative ways of dealing with? Is justice really followed to the letter completely? And most importantly, who constitutes for these prisoners?
The United States prison system struggles eminently with keeping offenders out of prison after being released. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than third of all prisoners who were arrested within five years of released were arrested within six months after release, with more than half arrested by the end of the year (Hughes, Wilson, & Beck, 2001). Among prisoners released in 2005 in 23 states with available data on inmates returned to prison, about half (55 percent) had either a parole or probation violation or an arrest for a new offense within three years that led to imprisonment (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). Why are there many ex-offenders going back to prison within the first five years of release? Are there not enough resources to help offenders before or/and after being released from prison.
Not long ago, I obtained a paid position as a Service Provider for Adult Probations in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. As a service provider, my job is to ensure an adequate level of supervision, surveillance and control for offenders released to Community Corrections by the court or through the authorized absence process, and provide support and assistance to offenders as an alternative to incarceration. It is important to note that Corrections service providers are not to be confused with volunteer probation officers who are appointed to enhance service to individuals already deemed appropriate for a community-based sentence.
Criminality in our country is often assigned to you at birth determined by trivial categories such as race, class, gender, immigration status, religion, and the list can continue forever. Life outcomes can be predetermined when taking all of these identities into account, making someone more susceptible to the reach of the mass incarceration system. However, I will be focusing on undocumented immigrants and how being seen as “illegal” is part of their daily lived experiences and how there are very strong parallels between the immigration detention centers and prisons in the United States. Undocumented people experience similar forms of social and political disenfranchisement that people affected by the criminal justice system also have to
India Geronimo provides an essay that is an analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline and the institutional incentives that contribute to this, with the majority of statistics being derived from the United States education and prison systems. This is more of an examination of the structural causes to the school-to-prison pipeline as well. Those that are poor and minorities are victims to this trend of being scoped out from being filtered out from the education system and lured into the criminal justice system. Geronimo mentions three types of institutional entrenchment, being at the inter-institutional, intra-institutional, and interpersonal levels, explaining that they are related to the systemic marginalization of minority students. After
Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.
In a news article by The Kansan, writer Jade Hudson Newson reports the correlation between high incarceration rates and discipline in high schools. Faculty member at Bethel College Gary Flory discusses the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” and the correlation between education and prison. Flory shares information about the inmates and what level of education they have and found that a majority of inmates did not have a high school diploma nor a GED. However; Flory makes sure to mention that it is not the lack of education that lands people in prison, but how they were punished in high school. Flory makes the connection that students who we suspended multiple times or expelled were more likely to drop out of high school.
For several decades there has been a considerable increase incarceration rate in state and federal prisons. This is due to the public demanding more castigatory laws along with harsher sentencing policies. In the United State there 2.3 million people are incarcerated in prisons and jails which make the United States the lead in the incarceration rate (Wright, 2010). Truth in sentencing law made it essential that offenders serve a significant portion of the prison sentenced handed down by the court before he or she can be considered or eligible for release. Policies implemented before reduced the quantity of time an offender served on a sentence, such as parole board release, goodtime, and earned-time are constrained or get rid of under
This is how the so called “school-to-prison pipeline” has been created. The pipeline is the practice of excluding youth out classroom to juvenile, prison and criminal justice systems (ACLU, 2014).
Lets take a minute to delve into the demographics of incarcerated prisoners today. According to Schmalleger, in 2012, 93% of all prisoners were male, with females picking up the remaining 7%; this is a 3% increase from 1980. 35% of all prisoners are white, 38% are black, and 21% are Hispanic (Schmalleger, 2015). Approximately two-thirds of prison inmates are between the ages of 25 and 44 years old. Why are women and minorities being incarcerated? Well, to be perfectly blunt, they broke the law. The last time I took a gander at old Lady Justice, she was wearing a blindfold; she doesn't care about your color, sex. or religion, she cares about justice. But since I am sure that is not the answer anybody is looking for on here, I'll play along.
In order to start and continue to accomplish the German and Norweigan approach to incarceration the U.S. must create new sentencing models in order to stop mass incarceration. The U.S. centers its system on incapacitation, removing the possibility for the individual to commit further crimes, and punitive sanctions to punish individuals. By 2012, the prison population grew by 705 percent, meaning just a little under 1.4 million inmates. This increase in inmates can be analyzed in the harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes, such as drug possession. Mandatory minimums are responsible for the increase, which is why in order for these methods to be effective, they must be gotten rid of and a new method for punishing certain crimes should be established.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative from Bureau of Justice Statistics ,a experiment recorded in the year of 2010 shows to us that the United States incarceration rates by race were approximately 380 white people ,966 latino people ,and 2,207 black people (Thomas).These numbers are not balanced at any rate.The US Bureau of Justice Statistics also did a test displaying that every male black child that is conceived in 2001 has a 32% chance of attending prison or juvenile detention center ,and compared to whites which is 6% that displays that blacks are five times more likely to go to jail than white males are (Quigley). Racism in the criminal justice system leads to internal problems within jails, external problems regarding criminal sentences and police, and mentally damaging toward the human being called out for the crime. Throughout all this information this led me to question; To what extent do races play a role in incarceration?
In the article "Prison Conditions for death row and life without parole imates," it includes different facts about how much money the government is actually spending on inmates in prisons. Article also includes the differences between death row inmates and life without parole inmates. For example, "Death row inmates have to eat meals alone in their cells, while life without parole inmates eat in the chew hall, or in a day room. "The article also hits keen aspects of the different lifestyles of life without parole inmates and death row inmates. Another example of this would be that life without parole inmates have more access to not be isolated and more access to more privileges rather than death row inmates.
Currently as a nation we use severity as our biggest form of deterrence; our threat of imprisonment has grown dramatically over time. In 1985 the average release time for a conviction of robbery was 32 months and in 2002 it jumped to a minimum of 53 months (Incarceration and Crime). We focus heavily on severity and longer incarceration rates; the idea is that a 10% increase in incarceration would lead to a 1.6%-5.5% decrease in crime (Lieka 2006) but this is not true. Prison rates have increased tenfold since 1970 and yet the crime rates have not dropped near those percents.The leading argument against increase in incarceration uses other states as examples of how ineffective it is; for example Florida heavily focuses on imprisonment to reduce crime with no effect (Incarceration and Crime). This idea would be great and a good mode of deterrence if those who go to prison actually learn their lessons and mend their future ways. Also if the unwanted effects of prison were at least tolerable this might deter crime but sadly even after experiment and evidence it is not a well functioning theory. The cost of funding our mass incarceration does balance out the decrease in overall crime. Besides when we have a nation who is majority hard on crimes compared to other crimes we end up severely punishing people who probably would respond better to rehabilitation than jail.