Life On The Outside : The Prison Odyssey Of Elaine Bartlett

In the book “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson, the author is a lawyer and founder of the Equal Injustice Initiative who helps and defends those that are in desperate needs. Stevenson tells different stories of different cases that he had through the course of his professional career. One of the most heartbreaking stories that Stevenson shares on his books is about a boy named Charlie. Charlie is a fourteen years old who murdered his stepfather because he was abusive with his mom and left her unconscious on the floor. Charlie was sentenced to an adult prison because his stepfather was an ex-police officer. When Steven heard about Charlie’s case he ran to the prison to go see him and the first thing that Charlie tells Stevenson is how every night he would get sexually abused in prison by so many men ,and how they would do really awful things to him. “Florida is one of a few states that allows the prosecutor to decide to charge a child in adult court for certain crimes and has no minimum age for trying a child as an adult.”(Stevenson). Charlie’s case is not an unusual one. There are hundreds of prisoners currently in US prisons who are suffering ridiculous prison sentences while other prisoners with more violent, heinous, and terrible crimes have been sentenced to lesser time in jail or are already out. In order to understand why this is still a problem, it’s important to first understand the current issues facing prisons today and what effects come from these issues. Then

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

Youth in high risk communities rely on crime to get what they need or want, either because their families cannot afford their needs or simply because their parents are already working hard to afford the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter. I admit that up until I read this book I never stopped to think about the problem we face with mass incarceration; reading it made me realize how desensitized I am from some tough social realities, as an upcoming social worker it will be my goal to be more aware of issues that not many talk about or advocate for. People go through life carrying the stigmas and stereotypes they were raised with and it is our personal responsibility to challenge our perceptions and beliefs. It is easier to believe stereotypes rather than take the time to research their validity, and we conform to the idea that people are in prisons because they did something wrong and deserve to be penalized. Reality is that there are inmates whom perhaps were wrongfully convicted and in worst cases innocent, they just couldn’t afford a lawyer or accepted a guilty plea because they were told it was their best option.

Since mandatory sentencing began in the mid-1980s, the United States prison system has seen a dramatic upswing in incarceration rates (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008, p. 1). “The United States’ increasingly punitive sentencing philosophy has resulted in an overreliance on incarceration, resulting in an incarcerated population that has soared from approximately 340,000 in the early 1970s to nearly 2.3 million today” (Raeder, 2012). “Parents held in the nation’s prisons—52% of state inmates and 63% of federal inmates—reported having an estimated 1,706,600 minor children, accounting for 2.3% of the U.S. resident population under age 18” (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008, p. 1).

Bruce Western’s, Punishment and Inequality in America, discusses the era of the “Prison Boom” that occurs from 1970-2003—when incarceration rates climbed almost five times higher than they had been in the twentieth century—while stating the effects and consequences that mass imprisonment created within the United States penal system. By discussing the disparities of incarceration between sex, age, race and education level, and how post-incarceration affects opportunities such as marriage and high-waged employment. Western provides an analysis of how the risk of incarceration accumulates over an individual’s lifespan.

MK Asante, in his book Buck: The Memoir, highlights the devastation of mass incarceration on the family structure and on individuals, particularly young individuals, who are incarcerated. Asante utilizes an informal tone and jargon the way in which the penal and justice systems dehumanizes those it is meant to reform. Asante’s informal approach and use of jargon turns the issue of mass incarceration into a conversation that engages readers. His feelings about the penal system and justice system are spelled out in the form of a narrative, thus making it easier for the reader to remain engaged. Brian Stevenson focuses on a variety of factors and their contribution to mass incarceration such as a lack of knowledge about mental health and the deterioration of one 's well being as a result of imprisonment. He utilizes anecdotes

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.

The United States’ ever-expanding prison and jail population has brought about many questions regarding the side-effects of mass incarceration, namely involving the effects on the children and families from which those incarcerated are removed. Regardless of the perspectives on the appropriate position of incarceration in the criminal justice system, imprisonment disrupts many positive and nurturing relationships between parents and their children. In fact, more than 1.7 million children have a parent who is incarcerated in a state or federal prison as of 2007 (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). These youths are at risk for developing behavior and school problems in addition to insecure attachment relationships. Parental incarceration, which may also be coupled with economic disadvantage and inconsistent living arrangements (Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper, & Mincy, 2009) can be an extremely difficult experience for children. It should come as no surprise that families with children suffer economic strain and instability when a parent is imprisoned, considering how each parent in today’s world typically needs to set aside time to earn an income to support their family, and most are unable to support their homes on one income. While it may be considered intrusive to some to intervene in the lives of children and families with incarcerated parents, research has suggested that there are positive societal benefits to intervening in the lives of incarcerated parents and their

When we think about prisons, jails, and courthouses, our minds are meant to draw a connection to cold, hard, justice and fair punishments for guilty and deserving parties. Yet, in our judicial and prison systems around the world, this idea is nowhere close to reality. From inhumane punishments, to mass incarceration, and “trapping” people in the system based on race or financial status, justice is far from being served.

In the U.S., our criminal justice system incarcerates more people than any other country on earth. Incarceration rates have skyrocketed over the past 30 years due to stricter laws and harsher penalties for drug use and possession. As a result of these high incarceration rates, many households and society, in general, has been adversely affected by the absence of men and women from their families and from their communities. While being in confinement is definitely tough on those incarcerated, the ones left on the outside are also greatly affected. Several studies have shown that this absence has had a dramatic impact on children as they struggle to survive without mothers and fathers. This is a significant sociological issue because this societal phenomenon can have lasting effects and create family voids that can contribute to the deterioration and arrested development of the offspring of those who are incarcerated.

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

The American corrections system has many facets to it as well as many challenges that each and every individual within its system must learn to cope with. Not everyone who is in some sector of the corrections system can deal with what corrections entails because the life that they led outside of the corrections system isn’t always the same. This can especially be said for women who find themselves part of the corrections system simply because of the role that women generally face within their homes.

Imagine you are a little innocent girl who did everything right, but one day your father didn’t. Due to this, his chair is empty at your first soccer game, his smiling face isn’t there to support you for your first day of highschool, and when you need someone to pick you up when you are down, you are left to drown in your tears alone. As if this isn’t hard enough, your family struggles to meet their basic needs without him around. Even though you tell yourself it isn’t true, you know it’s because your father is locked up for years to come. Every ounce of hatred a heart can have is how you feel for the terrible long prison terms keeping your father locked away for so long. Moreover, these long prison terms are unethical because they are a poverty trap and affect all citizens in a negative way, and not just the people who commit crimes. The U.S. has many changes to make to their justice system, but they definitely need to start with the long prison terms.

The experience restrictions on labeling children and emerging adults leads to excluding people from those categories. By excluding them, it removes them from receiving any possible protection from harsher punishments if they were to be incarcerated. The reason behind the expansion of the prison system is the need to protect innocence or children. Protecting children happens by expanding the prison system and targeting populations that do not fit into a “particular racialized, heteronormative, [and] gendered” (Meiners 2011:555)

Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means