Gary Davis Demand For Prisoners Deserve To Be In Jail

Despite what you may think, private prisons have existed in the United States dating all the way back to 1852, beginning with the San Quentin state prison. Private prisons did not truly become as common as they are today though until President Ronald Reagan led a large-scale effort for increased privatization around the United States during the 1980’s. One result of this effort was a large upswing in the number of private prisons. As a result of private prisons becoming more common place, it has been seen that compared to prisons run by the government, length of sentences have gone up within private prisons, while at the same time the treatment of prisoners has gone down. This topic interests me because I believe that it should never be in the best interests of such a large and powerful group to have as many people as possible in prison for as long as possible. In my opinion, it is not ethically correct on a basic human level to ever have it in people’s best interests to keep other people in prison. I chose this topic because I have always held a strong opinion on this topic but have never had the time to do extensive research on it and either confirm or dispel my current beliefs about it.

What once was used as a means of rehabilitation has now became a corrupted institution based upon the societal norms of the 21st century. In the novel, “Are Prisons Obsolete” by Angela Davis, she emphasizes the underlining problems faced within modern day prisons. More specifically on how the reformation of these prisons have ultimately backfired causing the number of imprisonments to sky rocket drastically. Which results in the concept of the prison system being a lot more harmful than helpful to the prison-based communities nationwide.

Before getting into studying the field of criminal justice I learned that my previous knowledge about prisons and prisoners was either completely wrong or very incomplete. My first original belief was that the worst kind of people were in jail. That if you walked into a jail every person that you would see there are the worst of the worst. Another original belief was that if someone was in prison then they did something that put them there. These original beliefs came from the typical sources you get growing up, your parents, school teachers, and peers. Growing up I was taught that prison was where the terrible people went and it’s a scary place that you don’t want to be. But the moment that impacted me the most about prisoners was my senior

Like Angela Davis, I believe that the prison system needs to be abolished. The prison system which is a significant part of punishment is incompetent and deeply flawed in the United States. Prison system reform needs immediate attention while abolition permanently will require time. Nietzsche’s theory of punishment explains how punishment come about in society and Davis’s critique of the prison system helps back my argument that the prison system needs to be abolished.

Even though prisoners are incarcerated, they still are entitled to certain rights. There is a lot of debate about which rights prisoners should have because they can’t have too much freedom, and they also can’t have too little freedom. If inmates have much freedom, chaos would reign over the facility. No inmate would learn to truly change their ways and fit back into the community successfully. If too little freedom is given, inmates would be neglected and treated like animals. The perfect balance is needed to achieve a functional correctional facility.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

At the expense of the young, to the detriment of the poor, and on the backs of the immigrants is the means by which the private prison companies have constructed a business that trades freedoms for profit but more concerning is to what ends these freedoms are being exchanged. The advancement of the private prison system has changed the face of the prison industry as we know it. Because little attention has been given in the media to the private prison industry, they have been able to expand their influence and their revenue by means the average American would consider unscrupulous. Private prisons came about to act as the solution to a problem facing federal prisons, overcrowding, which was created due to the war on drugs, but in acting as a solution to one problem they created another one that could be more problematic than the one it intended to fix. Proponents of private, for profit, prisons claim that it is a better alternative than federal prisons because they can provide the same service for less and save taxpayers money in the process. They also contend that the service they provide would help to stimulate the economy. However, privatization of America’s prison systems will contribute to an increase in the incarceration rate and unfairly target certain demographics of the population, which could lead to psychological trauma affecting the people of those demography’s that it

Prison reform is an issue that has been a concern for a long period of time. The problems that Angela Davis brings up throughout her book are only some of the problems with the prison system. Whether it be the influence of corporations on prisons and legislators, the role that racism plays, or the safety of the prisoners. Her solution to these problems is the abolition of jails and prisons by creating policies that will reduce the number of people sent to prison. This would destroy the prison system as the main concept of punishment. The ways that she aims to do this is by providing physical and mental care to everybody, demilitarize schools, and change the justice system to one based around reconciliation rather than retribution. I find myself to agree with many of the concerns that she lists and believe her argument to be somewhat convincing. However, I do not believe that a complete abolition of prisons is what is necessary to fix the prison system. This paper will explore the concerns that she voices in her argument, how convincing I find them, and what I believe to be the flaws in her conclusion.

Even when people do terrible things, such as Carter, who received the death penalty because he was accused of rape, I still feel that our prison system does nothing to help these people become better citizens, but rather only pushes them towards more corruption. In prison, the atmosphere does very little to promote rehabilitation, which I believe is something that all prisons should focus on the most. If the people in prison are not taught how to return to society as improved citizens, but are rather sent to a place where their personalities become more corrupted, the system will continue to be stalled. This is where Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative can help because they are fighting against mass incarceration, which tries to prevent unreliable convictions and excessive

It is interesting to see how our prison came about. Through the years and centuries we have been trying to find the right way to deal with criminals. Yes, criminals where dealt with brutally and maybe too brutal for the crimes committed. Today someone can commit murder and get 25 years. I don't feel that during these 25 years the criminal will really get reformed. How many prisoners get out of prison and go back to society as normal people. It seems to me that they usually have been in prison for so many years they have trouble going back to society. The only way they know how to live is how they lived in prison. In prison they get a bed to sleep in, food and clothing and they don't have to work hard for it. So they are quick to commit another crime to go back there. Seeing this happen over and over I feel that you really can't reform our prisoners or the prisons they are locked up in. In Prays essay we

Angela Davis is the author of "Are Prisons Obsolete?". Davis lays out the facts about incarceration and how it has effected our society; not to mention how it has played a major role in our history. Davis outlines the significant importance that incarceration has towards minorities in America. She goes on to identifies race, gender, and class as being a part of the problem of incarceration. Davis takes the stance of not having prisons in our society, period. She does believe that we can have some sort of a reform; however she believes that can only be accomplished by a social up rise. Overall she is a firm believer in a society where no one is caged.

One public policy issue that is attracting a great deal of attention is the matter of prison reform. While a great many members of the public support improvements in the safety, security and quality of life in prisons, few will endorse this at the expense of the same for law-abiding citizens. However, according to Koh (2013), Texas is currently facing one such dilemma. According to Koh, "prison reforms may result in better conditions for inmates, but those improvements come at the expense of welfare cash assistance and other government relief for the needy, according to a study released this month by Rice University and Louisiana State University." (Koh, p. 1)

Angela Davis and Pfaff agree that everything is interconnected in society. Angela Davis argues that we should not have the prison system as know it now, we should essentially completely change it. However, Pfaff is more interested in the changes in incarceration and what we can “realistically” do to change it. He focuses mostly on prosecutors and the fact that we do not have as much data that we need in order to create the change that we need. I feel as though both Davis and Pfaff would both agree with the question- why were people so quick to assume that locking away an increasingly large proportion of the US population would help those who live in the free world feel safer and more secure?

Private prisons, especially for-profit prisons, pose a serious ethical dilemma. While private prisons may offer some budget relief, it comes at a serious ethical cost. Prison and criminal justice systems should not make a profit based on incarceration. Since the 1980’s, harsher sentences have led the prison system to focus less on rehabilitation and more on incarceration. Consequentially, focusing on punishing criminals rather than rehabilitating them leads to a higher rate of imprisonment, as prisoners continue to

In the video of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver discusses the problem of mass incarceration in the United States. He starts by talking about the extremely large prison population in America. According to Oliver America has a larger prison population than China despite having a much smaller overall population. In fact America has the largest prison population in the entire world. He then discusses how the prison population is mostly populated with minorities and that whites are extremely underrepresented in prisons. Oliver talks about how the prison population has grown eight times larger since 1970 and of that population 50% of the people in federal prisons and 25% of people in state prisons are there for a drug related crime. Oliver continues the discussion by talking about the general lack of public concern for prisoners. He uses clips from television shows as examples of how popular culture uses prison as a joke and does not take it seriously specifically when talking about sexual assault in prisons. He then shows another clip of the Director of Federal Prisons not knowing how big a solitary confinement cell is to point out that even the people in charge of prisons seem not to care about them. Oliver’s next talking point is about prisons becoming privatized and companies like Aramark and the Geo who care more about the profit of the companies than the prisoners they take care of. He ends the segment by summarizing that the conditions