Life In Prisons

After reading A Woman Doing Life : Notes from a Prison for Women, I learned a lot more than I thought I knew about the life of women in jails or prisons. Erin George , the main character , gives readers an ethnographic insight on the struggles women face in prison. The hardships women face in prison consist of, and are limited to harsh shakedowns, poor medical treatment, and changes within the prison system that intentionally dehumanizes women inmates. Erin George before prison was a middle class women who seem to live a decent life, she is a mother of 3 and had a great support system within her family. She was happily married until she was convicted of murdering her husband which landed her six-hundred-three years in prison.

Prisoners are put into penitentiaries because they have committed a crime. But how many of us haven’t made a mistake in our life? The important thing is what you do after you make those mistakes. Unfortunately, prisons provide little opportunities for inmates to better themselves. During an interview with Kai Wright, an author for the Colorlines websites and a feature director of The Nation magazine, six black men shared their personal stories about life after incarceration (Wright, 2014). Most of these men’s criticisms were aimed towards the fact that their new found freedom was such an adjustment from the prison life which they had grown so accustomed to. The positive comments that were said included anything from the program helping them

Law enforcement officers are authorized by federal, state, and local lawmakers to arrest and confine persons suspected of crimes. The judicial system is authorized to confine persons convicted of crimes. This confinement, whether before or after a criminal conviction, is called incarceration.

The growth of incarceration in the United States Prison grew over the last four decades. The trend is historically unprecedented and is unique to the world. The majority of those incarcerated come from disadvantaged populations and comprises of main minorities below the age of forty. The communities have the number of people engaging in crime, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, physical and mental illness and lack of employment. The African Americans and Hispanics form the largest prison population compared to the non-Hispanic whites. The high incarceration has the huge impact on the American society since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s. The changed political environment led to policy changes. All levels of the government altered

According to Alexander, so many black men are missing because they are under the criminal justice system. In today’s society, there has been a mass incarceration of black men due to the federal program called the war on drugs. Because of this mass incarceration, a lot of black men are far from home without being able to raise their children. “Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages” (Alexander 738). African Americans were victims of slavery in the past; however, in today’s society the number of black men in prison is even bigger than the black men enslaved in the past. “More black men are imprisoned today than at any other moment in our nation’s history” (Alexander 740). The war on drugs makes this possible because

GED while incarcerated, but such opportunities depend on the availability of education programs and inmate eligibility for those programs” (Visher, Travis).

Australia has witnessed a gradual and undeniable increase in imprisonment rates for women in the last twenty years. Representing the plight of criminalized and imprisoned women is not a straightforward task. These women do not share a single lived experience, nor do they reflect a neat and simplistic narrative of individual redemption. Drawing public attention to the predicament of criminalization and imprisonment in women allows us to understand the of rising incarceration rates and what reasons may account for this growth in female incarceration rates and how it affects policy makers in their attempts to address challenges.

What comes to mind when thinking of women in a correctional facility? Maybe crime, sexual abuse, mental illness, or drugs? When contemplating a typical female prisoner these are valid areas to take into consideration. However, has anyone ever stopped to think about the quality of care they receive during their incarceration or the lack thereof? Using an experimental approach, this group aims to create a film that will shed light onto the inhumane treatment of women in prison.

In Belknap’s article, “ Incarcerating, Punishing, and Treating offending women, and girls” we are shown the horrible prison conditions that women

Prisons have become asylums. There are ten times as many prisoners receiving help than there are patients in psychiatrist. It has become a simpler or only way for some to obtain help; to self-medicate and land in prison. Getting help in communities around the nation is becoming difficult Therefore, a large portion of inmates are being left untreated and have found their ways onto the prison system. Because Prisons are unequipped many are left with no psychiatry help or with only medication to hand out. Prison officials are mostly untrained for these individuals and treat them alike others unknowingly inflicting more damage to the individuals, others try their best to provide treatment but understand that the prison cycle is difficult to get

America; the land of the free and the home of the brave. Free, that is, until you break one of America’s many laws and are convicted and sentenced to incarceration in the prison system. Depending on the severity of the crime, one might be sentenced to either a minimum, medium, or maximum security prison.

With each year that passes, news stories of crime come and go and continue to thrill the media, but one constant is where the offenders will go if or after they have been convicted: prison. As the years go on, it seems that the prison and criminal justice system are capturing more and more lives and increasing the capacity of ever overcrowding prisons. In Michigan, the rise is especially prevalent due to the presence of the Cooper Street Correctional Facility, which currently houses minimum security male inmates, and the infamous Prison of Southern Michigan, which was once the largest walled prison in the world. “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers” signs are an ever present reminder of the community impacted in more than one way.

Is keeping inmates by the hundreds in prison cafeterias instead of cells becoming the norm? This is what a documentary, Life In Prison: The Cost of Punishment, asks. It explores the lives of incarcerated peoples in three California state prisons, portraying the dire consequences of prison overcrowding. As of 2013, the total prison population in the United States was 2,217,000. This is nearly five times the total of 1980, 503,586. The United States has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, and more than the next two countries combined (China and Russia). Its rate of incarceration is 698 per each 100,000. The issue of overcrowding in jails and prisons has become a growing problem nationally since the early 2000’s. It relates to the policy areas of Corrections and the Criminal Justice system, two very complex subjects. The criminal justice system has two distinct parts: federal and state, which only exacerbates the difficulty of addressing prison overcrowding. Here we will look at and try to understand the causes and effects of the overcrowding issue, as well as analyze what possible solutions are already out there. We will show that prison overcrowding is caused by ‘tough on crime’ policies as well as a shift in corrections models, combining many solutions, will allow this issue to be controlled.

Pollack, Shoshana. 2009. “You Can’t Have it Both Ways: Punishment and Treatment of Imprisoned Women”. Journal of Progressive Human Services 20 (2): 112-128. Accessed September 20, 2015. doi: 10.1080/10428230903306344