Prisons : A Dangerous Place

Prison staff is now dealing with a less stable and sane person than they originally brought into prison. At this point, any aggravation can push an inmate over the edge which can lead to a riot in seconds.

There are approximately 2.2 million people that are currently incarcerated in the United States and roughly 65 million people have a current criminal record. 2.2 million individuals are detained due to past passive or violent offenses and some are wrongfully accused while capitalist companies are making a profit off of those incarcerated. The prison system is where violent and nonviolent inmates spend days or years in a cell and are usually working in the prison. During the early 1980s is when the inmate population began to grow in numbers fights would begin to be a daily occurrence and would ultimately result in murder. An example of these grotesque incidents would be considered a normal day at the Folsom State Prison in Sacramento,

The History of prisons goes through many eras. Many of these eras have a major impact on today’s prison system. The different was that the system worked and didn’t work really showed what was possibly and what should not be tried again. Each era tried to do something new are recreate something that had already been done by making changes to the way that they treated the inmates all the way to how they were housed and how much contact they had with one another. The different eras gave the present day prison system many great things to think about. Such as large capacity housing so you can properly use all the space in the prison and hold it to capacity. There is also the parole system that gives inmates a chance to work get out early and spend the rest of their sentence on the outside. These many great traits that the prison system today has all come from the hundreds of years of trial and error that occurred throughout the world.

Law enforcement officers are authorized by federal, state, and local lawmakers to arrest and confine persons suspected of crimes. The judicial system is authorized to confine persons convicted of crimes. This confinement, whether before or after a criminal conviction, is called incarceration.

The concept of the prison has existed for more than two thousand years. It probably goes back as far in time as practice of cannibalism, where victims had to wait for their turn in contributing to the chief course in the menu of their captors. Examples of prisons can even be found in the Old Testament when Joseph was incarcerated in Egypt. It was not until the 19th century that a clear shift occurred from corporal punishment to imprisonment. As societies prospered and the industrial revolution began, the formal prison system, as we know it today, developed. Throughout most of the world, the correctional system is administered by the state, and it is considered a key function that the government must fulfill: protect its citizens by

In 2011, I spent time serving in prisons with a church organization who’s goal was to change the systemic problems within the prison system. This caused me to examine all aspects of inequality and oppression that disproportionately affects people of color.

Prison’s were established a long time ago to try to put an end to the rapidly increasing crime rate, however over time we are seeing the effectiveness of the most prisons decreasing. As a result of this epidemic, prisons have a higher recidivism rate and over 40 percents are currently operating over maximum capacity (Holder.) Through different types of research, we are finding out that our prison systems are no longer effective and there is a serious need for improvement. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate almost ¼ of the worlds prisoners (Holder.)

The prisons in America seem to cause more problems than assistance in today's society. The country's penal system is overcrowded, expensive, and some argue that is ineffective as well as inefficient. The costs to staff and support these facilities increase dramatically every year. Prisons, which are supposed to be correctional facilities, are currently filled with violence and hostility. These institutions are created to control crime by deterrence, incapacitating criminals, which protects society from potentially dangerous criminals, but it is hard to tell if this is being accomplished.

James Gilligan relays an enlightening message in his article, Beyond the Prison Paradigm: From Provoking Violence to Preventing It by Creating “Anti-Prisons”, about the history and sole purpose of jails. Gilligan dates his research about jails all the way back from the first civilization known to man, Sumerian, to the jails we see and know so well today. At the beginning of time jails literally meant “house of darkness” which when compared to any of today’s jails is very similar to our maximum security facilities with solitary confinement. Jails were first used as a place to house those citizens, who chose not follow the social norms of society, and used a very

Aside from the reasons listed above, there is a breakdown of the individual: prisoners learn to function in a system that aims to have total social control, which breaks down their ability to function outside of that system. They are separated from their families and limited in their communication to the outside world. Prisoners in maximum security facilities are restricted from socializing, such as in Pelican Bay, where all meals are eaten in the cells and outdoor time happens in tiny yards confined by 20-foot-high walls (Banks, 2013). These practices all have the effect on the socialization of prisoners who will have a more difficult time returning to society. In a word, they are dehumanized. In such confinement and limitation, they are not gaining soft skills, job training, or interpersonal skills that will help them thrive “on the outside”; instead, they may actually be losing those skills as they adapt to the environment they are in. This in turn exacerbates the problems that may have landed them in prison in the first place, such as lack of socio-economic opportunity, lack of education, anger management problems, absence of respect for human life, and so on. (That said, there are low-security prisons and jails that offer programming of this nature that I will analyze at another time). If we plan on sending millions of individuals back into society after exacerbating root problems that may have led to the initial crime, how can anyone pose the argument that prison protects the public?

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, millions of Americans are convicted of a crime and incarcerated every year. Almost 23,000 of those inmates have up until now been housed in private federal prisons. On Thursday, August 18, the United States Department of Justice declared its plans to end the use of private prisons due to their inherent lack of safety and effectiveness. The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report that reached this conclusion, citing several examples of chaos within private prisons and the consequences that ensued. One notable example was the riot that occurred in May 2012 at the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi after 250 inmates protested poor food and medical care, resulting in

What comes to mind when thinking of women in a correctional facility? Maybe crime, sexual abuse, mental illness, or drugs? When contemplating a typical female prisoner these are valid areas to take into consideration. However, has anyone ever stopped to think about the quality of care they receive during their incarceration or the lack thereof? Using an experimental approach, this group aims to create a film that will shed light onto the inhumane treatment of women in prison.

America loves to claim they`re the beacon of freedom throughout the world and yet ironically, it has the highest prison population in the world. According the ACLU, America, which only makes up 5% of the world’s populace, holds nearly 25% of the world’s inmates, surpassing Russia. This doesn`t add up when compared to the statistics. If crime rate is at a low, why is the prison population so high? What is contributing to the mass incarceration across the nation? Well, with the evidence presented, it would appear that the private sector is the main contributor to this new American pandemic and more specifically, the privatization of prisons

Prisons have become asylums. There are ten times as many prisoners receiving help than there are patients in psychiatrist. It has become a simpler or only way for some to obtain help; to self-medicate and land in prison. Getting help in communities around the nation is becoming difficult Therefore, a large portion of inmates are being left untreated and have found their ways onto the prison system. Because Prisons are unequipped many are left with no psychiatry help or with only medication to hand out. Prison officials are mostly untrained for these individuals and treat them alike others unknowingly inflicting more damage to the individuals, others try their best to provide treatment but understand that the prison cycle is difficult to get

Corrections as a term in criminology involve the treatment, incapacitation, and punishment of criminal wrongdoers who have admitted to the court. The criminal court convicts and condemns those perpetrators who are found guilty of crimes. Upon sentencing, the corrections component of the criminal justice system begins to function. In the United States there are several correctional agencies including; residential facilities, juvenile and adult probation and parole agencies, and so much more. These agencies are established to correct, treat and control post-adjudicatory care to