Summary Of Sorry For The Loss

Prisons hide prisoners from society. “If an inmate population is shut in, the free community is shut out, and the vision of men held in custody is, in part, prevented from arising to prick the conscience of those who abide by the social rules” (Sykes, 1958, 8). The prison is an instrument of the state. However, the prison reacts and acts based on other groups in the free community. Some believe imprisonment

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

We live in a society today filled with crime and fear. We are told not to go out after a certain hour, always move in groups, and even at times advised to carry a weapon on ourselves. There is only one thing that gives us piece of mind in this new and frightening world we live in: the American penal system. We are taught when growing up to believe that all of the bad people in the world are locked up, far out of sight and that we are out of reach of their dangerous grasp. Furthermore, the murderers and rapists we watch on television, we believe once are caught are to be forgotten and never worried about again. We wish on them the most horrible fates and to rot in the caged institution they are forced to call their new home. But, where do

Most of us won’t really live for a minute behind the walls in order to be empathetic with the prisoners and that’s probably the reason we normally don’t feel a thing even if we read the inner life of the American prison (Gopnik, 2012). Adam Gopnik (2012) describes the life as “ not that of lock and key but that of the lock and clock.” Time frozen behind the walls and electronic securities with panic, paranoia and

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.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,526,800 American adults that were incarcerated in 2015 (Carson). The United States incarceration rates are catching the attention of the American people, as well as major news outlets. Not only is the incarceration rate being recognized, but the privatization of the prison system is receiving recognition. Those arguing in favor of lesser and more lenient sentencing have the unique challenge of convincing people to empathize with inmates. Most Americans have difficulty empathizing with the situations that inmates face leading up to and after their incarceration due to loss of freedom being an unordinary situation for an American.

In my experience of reading the text, Behind a Convicts Eyes, I have learned many things about prison life. It has in fact changed my perception of what I thought prison life was like. Prison is in fact a fight for survival, and the weaker inmates will be used and abused by the stronger population. To clarify what I mean, many of the weaker prisoners are sometimes expected to pay for protection from other inmates, or they join prison gangs to be safe. According to the text, it would appear that the inmates actually have more control over their existence than I would have thought that they do. When I use this term, I mean it in the sense that the inmates use the system to their advantage, or at

Life without Parole; Living and dying in Prison Today. Hassine, Victor. Edited by Johnson, Robert and Tabriz, Sonia. Oxford University Press, Inc. New York, New York. 2011. 169 pages. Reviewed by Cassidy Fortman.

In conclusion, prisoners have more civil rights in American prisons than in many other countries, and prison conditions are much more humane in America than in many other countries. The challenge for the twenty-first century is maintaining a proper balance between the well-being of inmates and ensuring that incarceration is unpleasant enough to act as a deterrent to crime. The courts have developed a body of law that attempts to balance prisoners’ rights with the legitimate goals and concerns of

Introduction: Try to imagine this scenario. Taking a mini vacation in an unknown city with some friends. The night gets hectic, there is miscommunication and unimaginable words get put into the air and things happened and the police gets called. Next thing you know is your friend is in the back of the police car. Throughout my life I personally knew plenty of people who have been in the county jail and people who came from the penitentiary. Two years ago I worked at Saint Louis County Circuit Court, which is connected to the Justice Center. In Saint Louis, Missouri, we call our local county jail the Justice Center. I did a lot of research for this speech that I present to you. Today I will be speaking on imprisonment. When you do the crime you have to do the time. Throughout my speech I will be informing you on the difference between life in jail versus prison, the punishments, and life after you get released.

It goes back to the government not treating these people fairly because they are inconsiderate and because they have so much power. They use the power to justify not having to treat the people right, which causes the depression and other emotions. All they care for is themselves and to get what they want instead of caring for others. To summarize, the prisoner's emotions reveal the amount of power the governments have and how they use it: to get whatever they

Daniel Berrigan said “writing about prisoners is a little like writing about the dead.” What I think he meant was prisoners are treated as ghosts, unseen and unheard. It’s easy to simply ignore them and even easier when the government goes to great lengths to keep them hidden. The actions of people in power when the world isn’t watching are precisely the actions that need to be told. The most experimental and secretive prison units in the United States for “second-tier terrorists” (Harley Lappin, Federal Bureau of Prisons Oversight).

Prison is a painful place to be, a place where those held do not want to be and who could be dangerous. Sykes demonstrates the pains of imprisonment as being characterised by deprivations of liberty, goods and services, heterosexual relationships and loss of autonomy and security (Sykes, 1958). However, it is acknowledged that these pains are felt differently for different types of prisoners, as some may suffer more than others during their imprisonment (Crewe, 2009). These pains may also be felt differently across different prisons of the same security category (Liebling, 2011a). The survivability of prisons is largely influenced by the prison environment, including the prison governance and prison officers, the sense of order and disorder

Can you judge a person by their looks and behavior? This is one of the questions Bridget Keenan’s short story “Sorry for the loss” could leave you with. The short story is from “Eagle in the Maze – An Anthology of Stories from Rhys Davies Short Story Competition” that was published in 2008. SHORT REFERAT It’s about a Chaplain named Evie who, on her own for the first time, has to tell an inmate named Victor that his Nan is dead.

“My deepest condolences,” mutters a member of my congregation as she shuffles towards the doorway.