Incarceration Essay

Mandatory sentencing has good intentions that people should be required to serve a minimum amount of time for the crime they committed. If someone broke into a person’s house and stole a lot of their belongings, the victims would have a little assurance that the criminal will pay for what they did by going to jail for at least ten years or more. But since incarceration does not always convince or prevent ex-convicts from re-offending, many people might question why they are even let back into society. Incarceration is pricy and the purpose of this paper is to find ways that reduce the number of people locked up in a beneficiary way to society. If people are more likely to commit a crime after incarceration, then having someone serve ten years of prison for having drugs on them will probably increase their rate of reoffending more than if they were in there for a shorter period of

Mass incarceration is one of very many huge problems we have here in America. But when you really look into the core of the situation, whose fault is it really. Right away you think it is the criminals fault for getting arrested in the first place right? More people should be well behaved and not end up in prison? But what a lot of people fail to notice are the ones that actual do the actual sentencing. In Paul Butlers book, Lets Get Free he writes, “I became a prosecutor because I hate bullies. I stopped being a prosecutor because I hate bullies.”

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

It is thought that punishment prevents an individual from committing a future crime, or reoffending. Despite this belief, research examining the effects of incarceration and prison conditions has demonstrated

The “get tough approach” to crime control has been prevalent since the 1960s. This approach takes the stance to a more firm and no tolerance policy against crime, hence the term “tough” in the actual title. “"Tough" crime control normally denotes more emphasis on police resources, faster apprehension of criminals, quick trials, and more severe sentences for guilty offenders” (Skoler 1971:29). The “get tough approach” emphasizes the need to arrest and punish criminals over rehabilitation and addressing the social factors that underlie criminal behavior (Barkan and Bryjak 2011). Deterrence of other criminals through severe punishments is the primary focus. The “get tough approach” of criminal justice institutions has been under scrutiny due to the outcomes that we will discuss further on. The purpose of this paper is to simply present the pros and cons that have resulted from the “get tough approach” on crime. The paper will try and remain completely unbiased to the “get tough approach” and solely focus on results that have come from said approach. We will begin by discussing the background and history of the “get tough approach” and what led to its development. We will then discuss things such as incarceration rates (US Department of Justice), crime rates (Dilulio 1995) juveniles in prison (Hinton 2015), policies that have been implemented (Shephard 2002), correctional costs, and destabilized urban neighborhoods (Barkan & Bryjak 2011; Black 2007; Mauer 2006) that result

Recent sociological studies have focused on pressing social issues such as urban crime and mass incarceration, and examining the invisible link between urban crime, poverty and race. Research indicates that mass incarceration has always worked to the detriment of African Americans, especially the low-income earners (Western, 2006). The aftermath of this trend is that the employment prospects of former felons are significantly diminished (Pager, 2007). Felon disfranchisement in turn distorts the local and national politics of the county (Uggen, 2006). This paper focuses on addressing the contemporary trends and ramifications of mass incarceration of African Americans, and elucidating on the criminal justice policy and the factors contributing to the intangible but real racial divide.

In the United States there is in extremely high rate of incarceration and mass imprisonment. Policies and ideas for change are being brought to the table on a daily basis. Is it worth it? Is the question that we always have to ask ourselves and will justice truly be served at the end of the day. Well throughout this course I have found that there is never a true solution to crime rates in general only ideas to decrease problems that have yet to stop rising. For example, the War on Drugs in the early 1980’s and the “broken window” policy in the mid 1970’s are both examples of putting water on the fire but never putting the fire completely out. These policy have

They say that black folks don’t read, and it’s a sad but true statement. I know this will ruffle some feathers but this is very deep and unfortunately very true. I know you have heard the urban myth before, which states “The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book”. For instance how many black folks go to church without a bible, but will wholeheartedly accept what the pastor is saying? All because you can relate to it and because if the position and role that pastor plays? This is indicative of one of our collective issues as a people. Why is black highschool and college dropout rates increasing and why is the black incarceration rate increasing? The new slavery is incarcerating Black men and women to do the cheap labor. In 2009- 2010, there were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white classmates. For many students of color,

Until the early 1970s, the sentencing of crime convicts was based on the principle of rehabilitation of juvenile and adult offenders. Legislatures set maximum authorized sentences for various types of crimes and judges decided on the prison term or probation or fines. Correctional officials and parole boards had the powers to reduce the time served for good behavior and release prisoners early. In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted to deterrence by imposing mandatory minimum sentences for certain types of crime, heavier sentences for habitual offenders and the “three-strike” rule for felony convictions. Public opinion supported these changes in the belief that prison terms were just retribution for crimes and incarceration kept criminals off the streets (Mackenzie, 2001).

The minimum security is federal prison camps adjacent to other federal prisons near military bases. Male prisoners who need only minimum security are set up in camps and those who will be transitioned [Passive voice] back into society and served their sentence will be set-up in a halfway house.

One out of every 100 Americans. This number could mean a lot of things, but in this case it means 1 out of every 100 Americans is incarcerated. While every system has its flaws, this statistic alone is a red flag that there are issues with the current criminal justice system in the United States. Some of the largest problems are the sheer number of incarcerated persons and the extreme growth of that number in recent years, as well as the noticeable differences in incarceration of people of color and white people. While there is no one solution that can solve all of these issues, there are many programs and alternatives that can ease several issues in the incarceration system concerning substance abuse and mental health.

Numbers and studies like these show that this philosophy of incapacitation leaves room for improvement. It could be more pro-active to approach a convicted felon’s sentencing with a pattern, such as, deterrence or rehabilitation.

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.

Weiss and MacKenzie (2010) also describe how some actions have been taken by the state government to reduce the prison population. One way is by doing away with mandatory minimum sentencing (p.274). This could be the first step at policy change in the penal system to reduce incarceration rate. It could explain why the Federal Bureau of Statistics

Complying with the order to release 9,600 inmates by year’s end will increase the crime rate. Since the release of one prisoner is associated with an increase of 14.86 crimes per year (Levitt 1996), compliance is projected to increase crimes by 142,656 per year. It is possible to minimize the social costs of crime despite this increase in crime rate, though. If inmates convicted of property crimes are the release’s focus, the subsequent social cost will be comparatively less than if it was otherwise implemented. Sentence enhancements have been shown to reduce certain types of crime (Kessler and Levitt 1999), but such measures are typically focused on “the most frequent and dangerous offenders” (Kessler and Levitt 1999, p. 359), and those who commit property crime are unlikely to be classified as such. So sentence reductions may increase violent crime rates, but the effect on property crime rates is unknown. The best way to comply with the order, then, is to release inmates convicted of property crimes and to not implement sentence reduction.