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Incarceration of Men, Women, and Juveniles Essay

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Incarceration of Men, Women, and Juveniles

Prison populations have been on the raise since the early 1970s. Today we incarcerate over 2 million men, women and juveniles in the various correctional facilities around the country. These facilities can range from local jails or detention facilities to the new so called "Supermax" prisons. Conditions can also vary across the spectrum for these different correctional institutions. Each type of inmate has his or her own challenges when faced with incarceration. Many factors play into determining "the experience" they have. Age and sex are one of the things that determine what type of institution you are committed to. Adult male prisoners are committed to adult male prisons. …show more content…

It is basically like throwing the sheep to the lions. There is just no way that this is a good use of our criminal justice system. Juveniles should be kept in their own facilities to the maximum extent possible where they can receive the treatment that just may lead them back to being productive members of society. Even though there are some of the same issues in juvenile facilities as there are in adult facilities, such as overcrowding, prisoner assaults, and custodial abuse. There are systems in place to monitor them and deal with the problems. When these things go on in adult prisons there most often is the attitude of callousness, whereby problems are looked at as part of the system, a kind of "who cares about the inmate" attitude. Adult male prisoners are subjected to harsh conditions across the country. The physical conditions that you would see on the old prison movies like "Alcatraz" are not so prevalent any more. For the most part all of these old prisons have been replaced or modernized. There still remain some issues of decaying facilities but predominantly the harsh conditions suffered by inmates today largely come from their treatment. Treatment by their fellow inmates and guards is where the abuses occur. The underlying issue to some of these abuses is the overcrowding we are experiencing in prisons across the United States. These overcrowded prisons and the tight budgets of corrections agencies force more and more

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