Essay On Incarceration And Recidivism

The policy options that will be discussed are establishing efficient and beneficial rehabilitation systems in prisons, establishing educational systems in prisons, eliminating private prisons, and reducing mandatory sentencing laws. These are a few of the many ideas and solutions that the United States can take in order to reduce its high incarceration rate.

The purpose of this study was to show that an effective drug treatment program in the criminal justice system is a necessity and to show that treatment will reduce recidivism thus reducing crime in society as a whole.

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

The United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one million more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. County, State, and Federal prisons are so over populated that the private sector has opened up corporate facilities to house convicted persons. The cost each year to hold a person rises, placing larger financial demands on the judicial system. The Judicial System of the United States should reevaluate the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders to alleviate the high number of people in the prison system.

Dependent Variable. The effectiveness and the impact of the drug court will be assessed by analyzing the recidivism rates between the treatment group and the comparison group of probationers. Recidivism will be measured by examining both felony and misdemeanor charges and arrests, and drug related arrests will further be examined. Outcome data pertaining to arrests will be collected from the months of June, July, and August of 2016, allowing for an average follow-up time of 517 days. The data to be collected will include official rearrest results upon the completion of the drug treatment program and upon the completion of a probation sentence for the comparison group. Through the arrest results, further examination will be conducted on the severity of the crimes committed and whether they involved drug offenses.

Over-incarceration in the United States is an issue that is quite known, but there hasn't been much done in order to reduce the amount of inmates incarcerated. In specific, Dade County Jail located in Miami has received criticism regarding the over population of inmates in their facility. So much that processing procedure of new inmates was switched from Dade County Jail to Turner Guilford Knight. " The main jail, across from Miami-Dade criminal courthouse, was built in 1959 and never intended to hold such a large population. Inmates sued for overcrowding in the 1970s — a federal judge later declared the conditions unconstitutional." (Ovalle, "Notorious Miami-Dade psychiatric jail ward finally shuttered", 2015) During its operating times, Dade

Drug abuse is shown to be connected to all different kinds of crime in the United States, and in many circumstances, crime is inspired by drug abuse and addiction. In fact, 80% of criminal offenders abuse drugs or alcohol (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). Also, 60% of those who are arrested test positive for illicit drugs when they are arrested, and 60-80% commit another crime, typically drug-related, after leaving prison (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). And, even after these individuals put in the time in prison that would allow them to go through the uncomfortable process of detoxing, 95% of them will chose to go back to drug abuse after prison (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). Given these overwhelming statistics, it is clear that drug abuse, and repeated or continued drug abuse, are a serious problem facing the criminal justice system.

Currently, drug courts have been proven to be successful at reducing recidivism of offenders. In the United States there are about 120,000 people receiving help in order to rehabilitate them and to try to reduce the chances of recidivism (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2011). These programs require individuals to participate in the programs for a minimum of one year. During this year the individuals are required to appear in court and be drug tested at

Phillips article emphasized the discouraging information that substance abuse and recidivism go hand and hand. Phillips draws the viewer’s attention to some statics that was published in 2000 stating a prisoner will face issues with substance abuse following release because more than 73% of people with a criminal past is related to drug abuse and incarceration. Phillips aids the audience to the research that was conducted inside an East Coast prison where the participants were the convicted felons themselves. They were all men of various ages, diverse, and different education levels. The interview was to gather information on their substance abuse past to determine if it would

Prison in America has long been known to be a system of punishment as opposed to a rehabilitative program, and this form of incarceration is affecting the rates of recidivism in the states. A comprehensive average of about 59% of incarcerated Americans return to prison within two years (Fazel 2015). Policies within American prisons are strict, and misconduct of any sort has the possibility of being punished by “disciplinary action”. Schedules conducted by guards, which impose scheduled bathing, meals, recreation, and work hours, take away the freedom for prisoners to perform such tasks at their own leisure. In comparison, only 20% of incarcerated citizens in Norwegian prisons become re-incarcerated within two years; Iceland

The United States Correctional System is often challenged as to whether it wants to rehabilitate drug offenders or punish them, and because of this it mostly does neither. Even though drug abuse and drug trafficking are widely spread national issues, the mental, social, and economic costs of "healing" through incarceration are only making the "disease" worse. Never before have more prisoners been locked up on drug offenses than today. Mixed with the extremely high risks of today's prison environment, the concept of incarceration as punishment for drug offenders cannot be successful. Without the correct form of rehabilitation through treatment within Michigan's Correctional System, drug

Lower education rates will raise recidivism rates because many prisoners who lack education and re-enter society will not be self-sufficient as education provides the basis for employment.

It is common knowledge that the American prison system has grown exponentially in the last few decades. The prison population within the last forty years has risen by two million inmates. Multiple factors such as overcrowding and cost cutting have also decreased the quality of life within prisons by an order of magnitude. With this rising statistic, it becomes increasingly urgent to understand the effect of incarceration on our prisoners and whether the reformation process is actually doing more harm than good.

Considering the high statistical averages of recidivism it is appropriate to examine whether there are factors that increase or decrease an inmate’s potentiality for

In a study that was done back in 1970 by Sutherland and Cressey, they pointed out that in the U.S. alone, “felons are overrepresented in the addict population, [and] crime rates are increased considerably by drug addiction” (1970, p. 164). Despite having proposed several hypotheses attempting to explain the correlation between drug abuse and crime, they could not reach a conclusion. A decade later, the knowledge about the drug/crime relationship had steadily increased due to numerous studies of the incarcerated or addicted population. However, the information didn’t reveal any viewpoints that made sense aside from heroin. This view was