Essay on History of the Prison System

increase of approximately $27.5 billion over the next five years that will be spent on prison and the prison system. (Riordan 2007). Overcrowding in the state prison system is a continuing problem and is increasingly uncomfortable. Capacity levels have risen in both operating and capacity in both state and federal prison systems. This has caused local and state facilities to make inmates double up in prison cells. In other words, cells that would normally hold to inmates at a time are now…

shifts the burden of funding the penitentiary system from the federal budget to the local budget level. In other words, the policy makers just shift the problem from the federal to the local level but they fail to resolve the problem. This is why AB 109 was followed by AB 117 that actually discharged provisions of AB 109. The current policies focus at the consistent social change since the traditional punitive orientation of the criminal justice system turns out to be ineffective. As the crime rates…

People often say about celebrities or political figures, “They are not above the law.” This is true, no one is above the law, but the law was made by other humans just like you and me and humans make mistakes…a lot. The prison system is something that you would have had to experienced to know enough about to judge whether it is the best option for society. My outsider and nieve view is that there is no perfect way to deal with people that hurt other people. God says to forgive thy enemy and…

The introduction, transportation, and sale of drugs within a prison can result in another felony charge for an inmate. Many inmates use commissary items such as coffee, sugar, and other items to conceal the requested drugs. For example, by handing another inmate a cup of coffee a correctional officer does not know if there are drugs within the cup unless the officer physically handles the cup. Drugs can also be passed from one inmate to another by physically putting into the inmates handle…

the higher number in prison the less resources will be available for prisoners. The less resources available to prisoners will mean less time spent on individual cases limiting the chances of success in reformation. High Prison population and Overcrowding also lead on to the fact that there will be problems within the prison concerning staff. One of the problems in terms of staff will be the numbers available. With the increasing numbers, and the reductions in the prison budget, means the staff…

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…

No person who comes to Andersonville can leave without profound soul searching. Moral, ethical and factual questions come to mind. How could something as horrible as this happen? Who was responsible? Have the guilty been punished (Roberts xii)? History books forget Andersonville, the American people want to forget Andersonville, and the government denies Andersonville, yet when an event is that horrific no one can forget or deny it. As much as America wants to forget what happened at Andersonville…

Rehabilitation as perceived within the prison context is a myth. The predominant objective of control has developed in such a manner as to exclude the successful operation of any rehabilitation process. In looking at the nature and operation of the New South Wales prison system, for example, one is confronted by a system preoccupied with notions of control and security. A very disturbing feature of the system is that the availability of such prison accommodation helps to define the…

In order to find a solution for the problem the prison system took and is still taking steps such as classifying the gang members and other violent inmates as security threat groups (STG’s). Both prison officials and law enforcement agencies refer to gangs as STG’s rather than “gangs” in order to take away from the assumptions and exposure that the word “gang” gets. There are several ways of becoming classified as a security threat group, such as self-admission, known gang tattoos, confiscation…

extinction mechanism such as incarceration, the utilization of some sort of positive reinforcement in conjunction, or in some cases in replacement of the lone punishment and extinction, will decrease the cycle of African-American males ending up in the prison system. Reparation plans have been an ongoing debate for over 100 years. Albeit a lot of the debate is relating the hardships the Native Americans of the “Manifest Destiny” as a direct result of white immigration west,…