Prison Is The United States Penitentiary

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

Maximum and Supermax prison is designed for full attention to security and surveillance. In these institutions, the inmate’s lives are organized into a militaristic approach to control the inmate’s movements, by limiting/eliminating situations that could lead to a breakdown in discipline like escaping, harming themselves, others and/or prison staff. The facilities have concrete walls that stand 20 - 30 feet high and have been sunk deep into the ground to prevent prisoners from tunneling. The fences are electrically charged and lined with barbed wire. Unlike medium and minimum facilities which can have multiple occupants to a room, max and supermax facilities can only contain one occupant because these inmates pose a threat to other inmates.

A supermax prison houses extremely violent or severely disruptive inmates. These types of prisons can stand alone, or be within a prison. Since these prisons hold what you could say as, the worst of the worst criminals such as the shoe bomber and the Unabomber, etc., it is very high security and inmates are very controlled and watched over all the time. Supermax prisons are beneficial to have especially due to the high numbers of extremely violent and disruptive inmates. Supermax prisons provide safety, improve prisoner’s behavior, they carry out punishment and maintain order, and they are goal-oriented. All of these things are probable reasons for more supermax prisons to be built.

Standing as one the most dominant agencies operating within the criminal justice system, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a detrimental factor that has proven to materialize the very aspects of which to expand the dynamics of maintaining care, control, and custody of federal inmates. Albeit as it may that the agency’s establishment fails to loom too far into the crevices of history, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has surpassed a multitude of platforms that has propelled its strengths today far beyond what its founders could have imagined. However, given the magnitude of such feat as the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been bombarded with, challenges such as, but not limited the swift rate of inmates incarcerated, has greatly hindered the

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

Today in the United States a land that claims to be the freest nation on the face of the Earth more people will wake up inside of a federal/state prison or a county jail cell than in any other country on the planet. As of 2012 this figure was a staggering 2,228,400 (jail 744,500; prison 1,483,900) add in to this the additional sum of just over 5 million people on parole (851,200) and probation (3,942,800) giving us a grand total of over 7 million citizens under some level of Federal or State supervision (Glaze and Herberman). This is up from only 1,840,421 in 1980 a percentage increase of 281.56% (Glaze and Herberman). As of 2012 over half of the inmates in the federal prison system (50.6%) were incarcerated for drug charges (Caron and Golinelli) while according to 2011 statistics just under 17% of state prisoners were locked away for offenses related to illegal substances (Carson and Sabol). The cost of maintaining this level of incarceration is in all honesty a tremendous burden upon both our justice system and our tax base. If you were to go to the website www.drugsense.org you would see their drug war clock which increases by $500 every second based upon the National Drug Control Policy’s 2010 statistics (Drugsense.org). The country needs to make serious changes in order to alleviate this Promethean like burden that has been placed on our tax payers and our infrastructure. Our system desperately needs reform in order to rescue society from these metaphorical

The corrections field has many flaw, but it also has many strong suits. A strong point for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Corrections is its maximum security prisons. The goals of a super maximum security prisons are to maintain the security throughout the whole prison system by housing the most violent criminals. (Mears, 2006) Another goal of super maximum security prisons is that they house inmates that may try to escape from lower lever prisons. (Mears, 2006) The only maximum prison that the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Corrections is the Red Onion State Prison. The Red Onion is known to be as the toughest prison in the state

The European jailing system was the method used by early English settlers for America; at the time the colonists first arrived in this country, all the knowledge they had come from England, France, and Holland, so it only made sense to develop a justice system that they were familiar with and then change it along the way. The earliest concept of common law included a set of rules that were designed to help with problem solving throughout society; these ideas were drawn upon in making decisions that were made by judges from the past. The colonists would eventually develop their own system of criminal justice; these practices are what helped develop the system that America currently uses today (Social Welfare History Project, 2012).

There are so many problem in the Unites State Prison system because of overcrowding. First I am going to talk about what cause the overcrowding in the Prison system. After that I will talk what are the affect we are facing now days for overcrowding in the prison system. Than what should we do to stop prison to get overcrowding and how is going to help out society.

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.

Other than the major issues of overcrowding, there are other issues throughout the inner workings of the system, of which includes treatment towards prisoners, budget assessments and limited rehabilitation programs to improve re-entry of former prisoners back into the system. Within the confines of various Federal Correctional Complexes, located throughout the nation, many of the country’s most heinous criminals are harbored, waiting for an imminent death in solitary confinement. It is here that lethal injection, one of the extreme forms of punishment is administered upon these indicted felons. There is even a chamber specifically created to accommodate for this act of destruction on true evil. Aside from federal orders of execution, any criminal that is put into custody under the walls of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is fully under the jurisdiction of the BOP rather than the judicial court. This further implies the tremendous amount of trust that the state puts into the BOP. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, also known as the BOP, has been a chief and vital agency in establishing a solid administration towards the care of prison inmates. The BOP is also accredited as being an irreplaceable overseer towards prison services. Established in 1930, it has proven time and time again that it is the “big dog” when it comes to the declining crime rates all across the United States; this is clearly shown through the fact that a whopping amount of 82% of inmates are being held in the

The United States prison system incarcerates more people per capita than nearly all European countries, and roughly two-thirds of those inmates that are released will be arrested again within three years (Ward et al, 2015). Some facilities have relatively successful programs that cut down on the recidivism numbers. However, the majority of prisons are focused on punishment and make no efforts at rehabilitation. Something in the American justice systems needs to change so that the cycle can be broken. To accomplish this, we can look at the justice system of other countries and try to determine whether such systems would work in the United States.

President Obama has been on a mission to reform the United States Jails and Federal Prisons. The number of incarcerations have been on the rise since 1980 and it continues to quadruple. State and federal prisons are over crowed with non-violent offenses. With overcrowded jails it has caused the economy more money and created dangerous living environments. Instead of incarceration what should be given is a realistic alternative for their actions. The government will also spend less money.

It is located in West Feliciana Parish and is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. It sits on more than 18,000 acres of land and is sometimes referred to as the “Alcatraz of the South”, or “The Farm” (Scott, 2016). Their mission statement states “to provide for the custody, control, care, and treatment of adjudicated offenders through enforcement of the laws, and management of programs designed to ensure the safety of the public, staff, and offenders, and to further reintegrate offenders into society” (Louisiana State Penitentiary, n.d.). Unlike Folsom State Prison, Angola’s mission statement does not mention the word “rehabilitation”. Even though it’s not mentioned, it appears to be successful in rehabilitating inmates with their Offender Rehabilitation and Workforce Development Program. In a time as short as two years at Angola, an inmate can learn a vocational skill and then use that skill while on parole. This program is only open to those inmates who have not committed violent or sexual offenses or repeat offenders. They must also be recommended by both prosecutors and defense attorneys and undergo an evaluation to see if they are fit for the program. Although the prison admits there hasn’t been enough inmates go through the program to effectively judge is success, of the 62 inmates that have completed it, only 19 have committed new crimes. This

After forty-two years, organizations are still actively attempting to shut Attica down. Attica’s maximum-security prison conditions have remained very poor extremely overcrowded to this day. Nationally, conditions in prisons have significantly improved, but Attica has showed little to no improvement over the