Is Recidivism Inevitable? Essay

This quote from Dave Kelly shows many of the issues with the United State’s criminal justice system today. The prison population is increasing because prisoners are being taken in at a higher rate than they are released.

Prison is obviously not working on rehabilitating prisoners because there are prisoners who are released, but they don't return to prison. Yet, the majority of prisoners released do go back to jail. Criminals think they're not going to get caught or they're so emotionally desperate or psychologically distressed that they don't care about the consequences. To lower the recidivism prisons should offer real rehabilitation to prisoners. Criminals are not all waste people; most of them could just have haven a crisis that make them commit the crimes.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Everyone knows that you can’t help someone unless they want to help themselves. When the prison system was first established, the possibilities in rehabilitation were nothing like they are

In short the United States judicial system sends criminal offenders into the largest prison system in the world, where the increasing population forces overcrowding, widens the gap between state spending and revenue and fails to prevent recidivism; we must re-evaluate and reduce our current prison system in order to reduce state debt as well as provide inmates with livable conditions and keep them from returning to prison.

Prisons not only rehabilitate, but they also deter people from going to prison. The fear of going to prison is a great deterrence for a perspective criminal. Hard life styles along with loss of freedom tend to push the criminal away from the chance of being incarcerated. Numbers show that there are fewer rapes, and fewer murders, each year, all an obvious product of prison deterrence. After all, if a person has a friend who just got out of jail, and hears all of the war stories, that person would surely not want to go to prison and end up like his friend. By making life in prison hard, the prison is doing a great job in getting the word out. Prison is no joke! They are doing their job in deterring criminals from wanting to enter the gates of hell.

People in The United States have been affected by the prison system, it has saved many lives, but on the other hand, people have prosecuted for minor crimes, to end up spending a lot of time in jail, which breaks apart families for far too long, it also creates a big rift between the people of this fine nation and their distrust of the law. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan has issued a law that has cut funding for the mental institutions in the United states as called the deinstitutionalization of mental health, and to show ways of how we can bring our mental health system into place. Also in the same era laws have been put in place to put harsher laws on drug offenders called mandatory minimum sentencing, some people like non-violent, first-time drug offender are being treated the same way as a drug lord, and a way that we can fix that is push laws in congress to loosen minimum sentencing. Not to forget to mention the death penalty, how tax payers are wasting our money on keep prisoners on death row. Having a poor mental health system, strict mandatory minimum sentencing, racial bias in our prisons, and death penalty laws has led people to enter our prison system wrongfully. By fixing those rules we can help our society grow, and achieve greatness by doing right to our prison system.

Mass incarceration is the greatest moral and racial injustice of our time. There are 2.2 million people that are imprisoned. 39% of prisoners should not be in prison. People who commit crimes should not go to prison, unless such crime is severe and harsher punishment is needed to be placed. "As a society, we have chosen to prioritize the public safety of our citizens over programs designed to enhance the personal growth of inmates."- Quarts - Allison Schrager The only rational purpose for a prison is to restrain those who are violent, while we help them to change their behavior and return to the community. Prison is meant to give offenders punishment for their actions but to also help them understand why their actions isn’t righteous. Rehabilitation programs in prison are the alternative to a lengthy sentence. It helps build the character and skills so that prisoners can be able to function as citizens in society. Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening in prison as of today. The system is very broken and certain crimes that have been committed should not result to incarceration because there are other alternatives that best suit the consequences of the crime.

In order for this trend to be stopped, prisons should focus more on how to reform criminals so that they can go back to their communities and do good for the people and not bring harm to those around them. Prisons should work to reform prisoners because most of them can be rehabilitated.

Creating positive influences on our prisoners can reap many more benefits than just educating and releasing back into society. Just as we invest money to educate our children, we can reinvest money to target populations that our prisoners come from to prevent crimes. When we teach them new skills that can better their lives, they can then teach others by example. Once an inmate enters back into society and gets a job in his or her field, stays away from crime, and makes better choices, they can make a positive impact on their communities. Younger generations can see the encouraging example set forth and know that they too can make wiser decisions and hope for the

The revolving door on American prisons is as bad for the communities across the nation as it is for the people being cycled through the system. In “Offender Reentry”, David Allender, delves into how recidivism affects both the criminals and the community. Americans are starting to realize that the current prison system is not designed to reform, only to punish criminals. Because of this many ex-convicts are released from sentencing and allowed back into the real world without the necessary social skills to properly reintegrate. The problem became obvous with sex offenders, followed by minor drug crime. Allender points out that “The limited funding for treatment programs, which occurs because no one can prove that criminal activity did not happen

Prison life can be harsh, and time spent in a isolation is even worse. A majority of those in prison spend countless hours in idleness. It would be much better if they used that time to reeducate themselves for a productive life on the outside. Some of the prisoners have serious emotional and mental problems that are never addressed and it is illogical to not attempt to correct these problems before they are released.

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.

Convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning are just the first few steps of reducing crime. All the effort, time, and money that go into keeping criminals locked up and off the streets are really for nothing in the end if he or she commits the same crime again after release. James Haley, who is the book editor of “Prisons” points out, “Every year, close to six hundred thousand inmates are released from state and federal prisons around the country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, two-thirds of former convicts commit new crimes and one-half are re-incarcerated within three years of being released from prison” (138). Are US prisons truly effective when so many prisoners are committing new crimes upon release? It is for the better interests of American safety that some prisoners are locked up for life, but this should not include the constant return of re-offenders. The life of most convicts involves committing a crime and being sentenced to jail only to repeat the same process again. Many re-offenders see incarceration as a ticket to a place to sleep and food to eat.

From their inception, prisons have attempted to act as both a deterrent and a rehabilitator. However, in certain times one of these is