Prison City USA Analysis

In his book, Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text For The 21th Century, author Frank Schmalleger inform us that two social realities coexist in prison setting; the first, being the official structure of rules and procedures put in place by the wider society and enforced by prison staff, the second, being the more informal and intimate world of the inmate, namely the prison subculture (Schmalleger, 2001). Prison subculture, in its broad sense, refers to the customs, beliefs, attitudes, values and lifestyles of prison inmates (Dugger, 2017). Here, inmates develop their own myths, slang, customs, rewards, and sanctions; with their own values, roles, language and leadership structure (Clear, Cole, Petrosino, Reisig, 2015).

What once was used as a means of rehabilitation has now became a corrupted institution based upon the societal norms of the 21st century. In the novel, “Are Prisons Obsolete” by Angela Davis, she emphasizes the underlining problems faced within modern day prisons. More specifically on how the reformation of these prisons have ultimately backfired causing the number of imprisonments to sky rocket drastically. Which results in the concept of the prison system being a lot more harmful than helpful to the prison-based communities nationwide.

Ted Conover’s book, New Jack, is about the author's experiences as a rookie guard at Sing Sing prison, in New York, the most troubled maximum security prison. He comes to realize that being a correctional officer isn’t an easy task. This is shown from the beginning when he is required to attend a 7 week training program to become a correctional officer. He comes to realize what inmates have to endure on a daily basis. Throughout his experience into a harsh culture of prison and the exhausting and poor working conditions for officers, he begins to realize that the prison system brutalizes everyone connected to it. New Jack presents new ideas of prisons in the United States in the ways facilities, corrections officers, and inmates function with

This paper is about the book 'Behind a Convict's Eyes' by K.C. Cerceral. This book was written by a young man who enters prison on a life sentence and describes the world around him. Life in prison is a subculture of its own, this subculture has its own society, language and cast system. The book describes incidents that have happen in prison to inmates. With this paper I will attempt to explain the way of life in a prison from an inmate's view.

What the researchers found during this study was that both the behaviors and mentalities of guards and prisoners changed. Guards became more aggressive and prisoners became passive. A group of five prisoners had to actually be released from the study because of physical and emotional changes they were experiencing. Those prisoners remaining actually began acting as if they were truly incarcerated. By the behaviors they exhibited they had all but forgotten that they were free to leave at any time and not forfeit the money they had already earned. Guards, on the other hand, actually stayed at the prison longer than they were scheduled and were actually disappointed when the study came to a close while prisoners were very happy and expressed their luck at getting released early. These results clearly demonstrate that it is the environment that contributes to the behaviors observed. Those who were given the role of guard expressed the power and control they had over the prisoners. The prisoners began to become hopeless and bend to the power of the guards.

The United States currently has the highest number of prisoners in the world. According to Glaze and Herrmann (2013), approximately 6.9 million adults are under some form of correctional supervision in the United States. Crime in the United States is relatively equal to that of any other industrialized nation, so why does the United States house so many inmates irrespective of the fact that the nation cannot successfully manage a budget for the institution as well as manage the inmates? An inmate, Victor Hassine, provides insight as to what prisoners physically and mentally experience during incarceration as well as his ideas on the effects of prisons on inmates in his book, Life without Parole.

The industrial prison complex has divided America into two groups; those who are oblivious to the industry and prison abolitionists who are advocating for reform or the complete abolition of the industry. With prisons being so integrated in American society, it is hard for oblivious citizens to see the problems with the prison industry. The media uses television shows such as Orange is the New Black and Prison Break to normalize prisons in America. Prison abolitionists want the industrial prison complex abolished for an array of reasons that end in true equality for citizens. The social injustices explained earlier are reason enough to call citizens to action against the industrial prison complex.

There are many offenders within the criminal justice system, the political economy of the prison crisis in America has

Michael Gray shows how the prison affects the small town of Elmira with examples from Elmira’s newspaper, “Elmira Daily Advertiser commented on the

Many people believe mass incarceration is a pivotal issue in recent times. However, mass incarceration has been an issue that has plagued the United States and the world for many decades. The idea of mass incarceration deals with the dramatic rise of incarceration rate sin the Unite sates after the 1960s. In the United states, we hold approximately 3 million people in our jails and prisons, and over 7 million people are involve din our criminal justice system. The more troubling idea is the idea of a prison-industrial system. This idea deals with the overlapping interest of the American government with imprisonment and the criminal justice system. The government is viewing the jail system as an economic boom instead of a racist, power driving

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.

My paper will discuss the problems and a few of the effects that prison overcrowding causes towards the inmates and the guards. I will first address the issue of violence that prison overcrowding causes. My next point will be the health of the inmates discussing both their physical and mental while in overcrowded prisons. Lastly I will discuss the physical and mental health of the correctional officers and how the job could lead to correctional officers having issues in their private life.

Through out history correction systems have been constantly upgraded and enhanced. It was first designed to hold prisoners who were awaiting trial. In past history prisons were old dungeons and castles. Boats were also used to house prisoners if there was an overflow of inmates. Prisons control where, when, and what inmates do on a twenty-four seven basis. Inmates were forced to work within the prison, and were also leased out to farmers to work, which in return exhausted them making it easier for officers to control. As time goes on new ways of controlling and housing each prisoner is improving, and new technology is our key to improving that. New surveillance cameras, robots, and defense weapons are examples of how our modern day prisons

The United States prison system is an important aspect of today’s society. Without the prison system, there would be no place for the law enforcement agencies to detain the criminals that they have apprehended. Now, prisons today are much nicer than the prisons of the past; it all began with the Pennsylvania system. The Pennsylvania system was “a form of imprisonment developed by the Pennsylvania Quakers around 1790 as an alternative to corporal punishments.” (Schmalleger, 411). This prison that was developed in the 1790s used the means of solitary confinement and pushed for rehabilitation for the inmates (Schmalleger, 411). This new form of imprisonment encouraged society to create other prisons based on the same system, such as the

Unquestionably prisons take an extensive amount of money to remain opened and in working conditions, but somewhere some sort of funding needs to be placed upon helping HIV inmates and the threats that occur from them. The health care provide in prisons can be costly enough already on its state, nevertheless, the growing number of HIV inmates being placed in prison rises the concern for more funding to help care and educate these inmates. According to Clemmitt, caring for the nation's 2.3 million state, federal and jail prisoners costs the cash-strapped federal, state and local governments about $7 billion a year — and the price tag is expected to rise as prisoners age and develop age-related diseases. With these already high numbers prison