Penal System: Questions And Answers

Incarceration is thought of as a positive form of punishment, and negative form of punishment. The opinion varies with the type of person, and their experience from jail if they have gone. Most inmates while in prison will tell you it is a horrible place that should be gone. That would allow criminals to be free and that would let them cause harm to others or other illegal activities. Incarceration was not designed to be a paradise, it is a detention center for the bad, and meant for them to be punished. Without jails the world would be filled with even more evil, and would leave people in more danger than they already are.

Joe is a prisoner in a United States penitentiary convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. Johan is a prisoner in a Norwegian Correctional Facility also convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. After eight years of serving their time in custody, they are released back out into society, the world beyond their prison walls. During the following month after their release, Joe has once again been arrested for assault and attempted robbery while Johan has started making a quiet living as a deckhand on the coast for a small fishing company in Kopervik. Now both men have the same background and have come out of the same circumstances but yet only one reverts back to a life a crime, why?

The concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. Recently, there has been a growing concern over the use and implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, with many believing it reduces a judge’s ability to give out a sentence that they feel accordingly fits the crime. Many advocates for mandatory

The U.S. prison system is one of many great controversies when compared to other correctional systems. America’s prison population has increased by 700% (2.4 million current inmates) since the start of the war on drugs in 1971. As a result of this “war”, people that fall into the racial minority have suffered as a direct consequence of unjust legislation. Our prison system is known for its overrepresentation of minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. This unfortunately gives these groups of people a perennial negative stigma as a result. I argue that the U.S. prison industrial-complex emphatically displays signs of prejudice and racism and disproportionately incarcerates people of color at a rate higher than whites. Yes, there are skeptics who think “the left’s prison-complex” is wrong about their theory of mass incarceration but the statistical data and concrete facts in support of my argument are very compelling.

This is true because of the drastic number of blacks getting arrested for small crimes compared to whites. The black arrest rate for drug manufacturing/selling skyrocketed by 363 percent after mandatory sentencing laws were passed. Compared to white’s which only went up 127 percent. This is an incredible high number given the fact that blacks only made up 12 percent of the population at the time. These massive amounts of black people were getting lots of jail time for these small crimes, which led to overpopulated prisons. Soon thereafter the mandatory sentencing laws were passed the number of sentenced inmates rose 111 percent . The prisoners were getting long sentences (10 to 20 years for drugs) so prisons weren't turning out people they

More and more people in Britain are being sentenced to jail time: this is a fact. In 2004, there are currently over eighty thousand inmates.[1] (Peter Reydt, 2004 / Scottish Executive, 2003) Crime is on the increase but our prisons are already overcrowded. Consequently, new prisons will be required to accommodate prisoners. Where will the money come from to pay for the construction of new prisons?

The “Prison Industrial Complex” was a term that was used by anti-prison activist within the prison abolishment movement to argue the attendant interest of prison industrialization, and t development of a minority prison labor force (Davis, 2003). This giant prison enterprise is an essential component of the U.S. economy, and has as its purposes such as profit, social control, and an interweaving of private business and government. These giant financial institutions recognized that prison building is one of the fastest growing industries and one of the best stock performers in the United States. The notion that global private cooperation’s currently rely on the prison complex as vital source of profit gives reason to believe that prison privatization trends of both the increasing presence of corporations in the prison economy and the establishment of private prisons connect to the historical efforts to create a profitable punishment industry based on free black male laborers.

The United States is home to five percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoner. There must be a change to the current prison system which is doing more harm than good in American society and must be reformed. Reasons for this claim are that American prisons are too overcrowded with inmates, which creates a dangerous and unhuman environment. The cost to run a prison has gotten too expensive for tax payer pockets, and lastly the prison system is more as a punishment instead of rehabilitation with about sixteen percent of inmates most serious offence being drug charges. Prisons fall short of reforming criminals and the government is obligated to completely reform the prison systems in the United States.

The Unites States of America’s prison system is a flawed mess. To open the eyes of our government we must first take a stand against unlawful government decisions, and show support for the greater good of society. What are our own tax-dollars paying for, what are the flaws in the justice/prison system, why is overcrowding in prisons causing tension, and what are ways our society and government can rebuild the system that has been destroyed over the years? Most criminals in prisons are not a danger to our society because they commit crimes just to use jail as a shelter, causing the overcrowding of prisons and wasting away of what we really should be paying for.

Why are Australia’s founding fathers convicts? Many of the criminals in Victorian England were sent to Australia in exile. There was not enough money to build more prisons in England, so they were transported somewhere where Britain would not have to deal with them. There are multiple reasons for overpopulating the continent with lawbreakers other than just Britain’s financial problems. A majority of the convicts were thieves or women who were out past curfew. Researching this topic shows how a numerous count of people were unfairly exiled, treated worse than prisoners in Britain, and that figuring out how to balance money and prisoners took a long time for Victorian England.

A correctional facility is a prison where criminals are being held restricted. The main two institutions are jails and prisons. The type of offense and how much time he/she is given will determine whether they will be in a jail for a short period of time or sent to prison for a long period of time. Many type of criminals are held in these institutions like murders, kidnappers, drug dealers and rapists. The prison population is dramatically increasing every day and it’s becoming a major concern in the United States. The overpopulation is endangering the lives of inmates and correctional officers. There are too many inmates and not enough prison guards which is a major issue. For example, a huge fight breaks out and it’s five inmates versus another five inmates and there’s on three prison guards on duty. Three prison guards trying to break up a fight between ten inmates is a major issue cause more than likely those guards will end up hurt or possibly killed. Many criminals in the prison system are there because of the war on drugs. According to the data released January 25, 2014 by the Federal Bureau of Prisons 50% of criminals make up the prison population due to drug offenses. The next largest category is immigration and those criminals make up 10% of the population. These two categories make up over 60% of the prison population consisting of nonviolent crimes. Since the number of people convicted of drug offenses increased so has the prison population.

3. The conclusions section about Dan F. Sullivan’s program that sums up our thoughts about it...

Be sure to address the four types of sentencing models and the issues surrounding them (equity, truth-in-sentencing and proportionality).

How would you address these in the future or change your assessment to better address these challenges?

Consider what role this course has played in helping you determine an approach to your dissertation topic. Has your original topic and approach changed? Why? How?