Prisoners Rights

The United States spends nearly $81 billion per year on corrections, but where is this money coming from, where is it going, and is it actually reducing crime rates? Crime rates in the United States have fallen since 1991 and murder rates have also fallen by half in last 25 years, however the prison population has increased by 500% in the last 40 years. Increase in the number of incarcerated citizens also lead to an increase in new prisons around the country and also the crippling of the american justice system. As the author of Wages of Rebellion describes, the prison-industrial-system as the most

Racial inequality in the American criminal justice system has a strong effect of many realms of society such as the family life, and employment. Education and race seem to be the most decisive factors when deciding who goes to jail and what age cohort has the greatest percentage chance of incarceration. Going to prison no longer affects just the individual who committed the crime. Instead, the family and community left behind gain a new burden by one individual's actions. The United States still has a large disparity between Whites and Blacks and now a growing Hispanic population. This racial disparity in the educational

The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are most notable for their protection of the rights of suspected and accused individuals. All to often we forget it also covers the rights of those persons convicted of a crime. There are two positions when it comes the rights of convicted and imprisoned persons, which are rights-are-retained and rights-are-lost. In retrospect, they are both right because prisoners rights may not be granted rights nor shall rights be withheld that are not supported by law. Therefore, prisoners are given Conditional Rights because they are constrained by the legitimate needs of imprisonment. The Conditional Rights of inmates are communication and vision, religious freedom, access to the courts and legal assistance,

Minorities in these urban areas have a hard time finding employment that could support their family efficiently. Most end up dropping out of school and join or are forced to join gangs. They are more likely to turn to crime as a means of survival which increases their chances of building a criminal history. This type of criminal activity also ties back into the Three Strikes Law (Nicosia, MacDonald, & Arkes. 2013) which states that the offender will be incarcerated on their third offense, no matter how minor the charge. The lack of rehabilitative resources in the criminal justice system leads to repeat offenders also. Although it should not be the responsibility of those in society who are doing the right thing to pay for services for those who are incarcerated, we are doing ourselves an injustice if we don’t. If we are not providing rehabilitative classes, vocational/job training, or some type of counseling while prisoners are incarcerated, we are defeating the purpose of locking them up. Criminal justice referrals account for almost 37% of drug treatment admissions (Nicosia, MacDonald, & Arkes. 2013. p. 78). If we don’t address the issues that got them incarcerated in the first place, they will turn back to the only life they know that provided fast money. I

For my analysis, I decided to read the 2006 book Punishment and Inequality in America by author Bruce Western. The book takes a look into the relationship among crime, incarceration, and inequality and what really connects them together. Western shows that although there was a decrease in crime rates about 20 years ago, the reason behind this decrease is not what it may seem and that the decrease may of even come at a significant cost to those effected by the prison boom. Through my analysis, I hope to explore and convey what Western has claimed and examine if his arguments hold truth or not in dealing with our prison systems. On top of this, I will attempt to connect a few theories we as a class have learned about throughout the semester to what Western has has claimed in his book.

In his book “Punishment and Inequality in America” Western discusses the underlying racial disparities that have lead to a mass incarceration in the United States. He states that incarceration rates have increased by a substantial amount. The race and class disparities viewed in impromesment are very large and class disparities have grown by a dramatic amount. In his book he argues that an increase in mass incarceration occured due to a significant increase in crime. The increase in mass incarceration can also be correlated with urban street crime that proliferated as joblessness in inner-city communities increased (Western, 2006). He also states that an increase in incarceration rates may be due to the changes in politics and policy which have intensified criminal punishment even though criminal offending did not increase. Although these are substantial reasons as to why incarceration has increased significantly in the US there are many underlying issues. The incarceration rates amongst young black men have increased the most in the United states, black men are more likely to go to prison than white and Hispanic men (Western, 2006). This may be largely due to factors such as unemployment, family instability, and neighborhood disorder which combine to produce especially high rates of violence among young black men in the United States (Western, 2006). A rise in incarceration rates may also be largely due to to increased drug arrests which represent the racial disparity.

Mass Incarceration in the United States has been a large topic of choice because rapid growth in the prison and jail populations, the long sentences the inmates face, and the inability for some inmates to incorporate themselves back into society. Since the 1970’s the U.S. prison population quadrupled from 158 to 635 people per 100,000, causing the U.S. to gain the title of country with the highest incarceration rate. (Massoglia, Firebaugh, & Warner, 2013, p. 142; Muller, 2012) As the growth of the U.S prison and jail population rapidly increased, so did the growth of the three major contributors to that population – African Americans, Hispanics, and whites – with African American and

“Poverty goes up; Crime goes down; Prison population doubles. It doesn 't fit, unless some sort of alternative explanation comes into play. Maybe all those new nonviolent prisoners fit into some new national policy imperative. Maybe they all broke some new set of unwritten societal rules. But what?” – Matt Taibbi

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

Racial disproportionality of United States prison populations have been a controversy for several years. It is not entirely evident that the racial disproprtionality is cause to discrimination; however it does contribute to the conditions are the prisons. The criminal involvement of blacks and other minorities seems to be linked to the racial disproportionality of the prison populations. The types of crimes that are committed especially in the black community are addressed in the journal. The differences in the involvement of black offenders as it relates to more serious crimes as robberies and homicides which is a major contributor to the larger percentage of the prison system. The more serious crimes also tend to account for more of the disproportionality between black and white incarceration rates.

Incarceration rates have increased from 400,000 people in 1975 to 2.1 million in 2003; a fivefold increase, making the United States a leader in rates compared to other nations (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). These numbers bear a great burden on individuals, families, and communities in various ways. First, with 700,000 individuals being released from prison annually comes difficulty in reentering society both socially and economically; difficulty finding work, education, strained relationships, and social stigma (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). Second, the increasing rates of incarceration are disproportionately and unfairly impacting minorities, specifically African-Americans, and poor urban communities (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). A New York Times article by Furman and Holtz-Eakin (2016) states that $80 billion dollars--$600 per household--is spent on corrections annually, or a 1,700 percent increase in the federal prison budget in just thirty years. These increases have a deep historical background, many complex and interweaving factors, and require urgent reform.

Prisoners should be granted privileges depending on the type of crime they committed. There’s different types of felonies that determine how long a prisoner is going to stay in prison. Violent crimes such as rape, armed robbery, and murder are most likely to get life sentences . Most prisoners have about the same amount of rights. There’s those prisoners who committed non-violent felonies/crimes but are serving life sentences. Prisoners who committed non-violent felonies; does not involve high levels of damage or serious injury, should have more rights than someone who killed people, betrayed the nation or raped people.

Equalizing the constitutional rights of prisoners and the functions of the jail or prison can create great strain on not only the correctional facilities’ staff but on the inmates as well. The treatment of prisoners is typically left completely to the prudence of prison administrators and other correctional officials. With that being said, this paper will discuss the differences between harmonizing those constitutional rights of prisoners and the functions of the facility. It will also explain the rights that prisoners are required to have, and how these rights are balanced within other aspects of the correctional institution.

As Charon explains this, “we are socialized to accept our own place in society (Charon, 2013).” This could be interpreted to mean that low-income neighborhoods should produce low-income families, college educated parents should encourage secondary education, or that those who disobey the law must stay at the bottom of society. To again analyze data, African-Americans youth are more likely to commit crimes due to stereotyping and self-worth (as cited in Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006). These minority youth are succumbing to a failure to understand their worth, which requires a different solution that prison rehabilitation programs. Charon states that, “most who try do not succeed, not because of lack of effort or intelligence alone, but because real opportunity is denied by factors related to...minority positions (Charon, 2013).” With more minorities becoming convicted of crimes, the feeling of entrapment within the bottom rungs of society increases, and the cycle of the criminal justice system

Blacks are (proportionately) more likely than whites to live in such inner-city areas and thus more likely than whites to be arrested on drug charges.7 But one very important reason that blacks are more likely than whites to live in disorganized inner-city areas is that a greater percentage of blacks than whites are poor and unemployed. What might at first look like a straightforward racial disparity turns out to reflect economic status. 3. Blacks who travel the full route of the criminal justice system and end up in jail or prison are close in economic condition to whites who do. In 1978, 53 percent of black jail inmates had pre-arrest incomes below $3,000, compared with 44 percent of whites.8 1983, the median pre-arrest income of black jail inmates was $4,067 and that of white jail inmates was $6,312. About half of blacks in jail were unemployed before arrest and 44 percent of whites were.9 In 1991, 30 percent of whites in the prison population and 38 percent of blacks reported full- or part-time employment during the month before their arrest.10 4. Some studies suggest that race works to heighten the effects of economic condition on criminal justice outcomes, so that “being unemployed and black substantially increase[s] the chances of incarceration over those associated with being either unemployed or black.”11 This means that racism will