The Convicts Case Study

“Every year, 641,000 people walk out of prison gates, but people go to jail over 11 million times each year” (Rabuy). Within the United States, the incarceration rate is extremely high. For those who are incarcerated the percentage of people with a mental illness is remarkably prominent. For some offenders, there is another route out there such as diversionary programs which have a positive outcome. Diversionary programs such as The Choice is Yours is a beneficial route for first-time nonviolent felony drug offenders.

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

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 United States prison system struggles eminently with keeping offenders out of prison after being released. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than third of all prisoners who were arrested within five years of released were arrested within six months after release, with more than half arrested by the end of the year (Hughes, Wilson, & Beck, 2001). Among prisoners released in 2005 in 23 states with available data on inmates returned to prison, about half (55 percent) had either a parole or probation violation or an arrest for a new offense within three years that led to imprisonment (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). Why are there many ex-offenders going back to prison within the first five years of release? Are there not enough resources to help offenders before or/and after being released from prison.

The transportation system that brought convicts into America was born out of new types and record levels of crime in England. (pg. 6) The crowded streets and overcrowding of the cities added to the increase in crime. England’s law enforcement and criminal justice system were ill-equipped to handle the dramatic increase in crimes committed in the city. The English penal system was in such a state of instability that new solutions had to be found for the increasing numbers of felons. The city jails were so unhealthy and disease-ridden, that many inmates died. The localities also lacked sufficient funds to care for the convicts in the already overcrowded prisons. Instead of spending money for more jails in order to accommodate more prisoners,

An overwhelming majority of the American prisoner population are male. Most prison inmates are under the age of forty. A majority of the prisoners are African American. However, African Americans outnumber white Americans in the general population, therefore the number of African American prisoners are higher.

According to Alexander, so many black men are missing because they are under the criminal justice system. In today’s society, there has been a mass incarceration of black men due to the federal program called the war on drugs. Because of this mass incarceration, a lot of black men are far from home without being able to raise their children. “Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages” (Alexander 738). African Americans were victims of slavery in the past; however, in today’s society the number of black men in prison is even bigger than the black men enslaved in the past. “More black men are imprisoned today than at any other moment in our nation’s history” (Alexander 740). The war on drugs makes this possible because

GED while incarcerated, but such opportunities depend on the availability of education programs and inmate eligibility for those programs” (Visher, Travis).

The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted a survey of prisoners from over 300 parole offices in 40 states with 17,738 prisoners participating and a 61% response rate (Beck & Johnson, 2012). The focus of the survey is sexual victimization during the entire length of the prison term served by each inmate. In all, 9.6 percent of former state prisoners, or 2,096, reported one or more events during their most recent time in prisons, jails or community-treatment facilities. To create national level statistics, the number was weighted and applied to total 49,000 prisoners nationwide or 9.6 percent of all underactive supervision at the middle of the year 2008. Therefore, the unit of analysis is each individual of the incarcerated prison population of the United States.

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.

The film explains the story of Andy Dufresne, a young city banker who is sentenced to life in prison after being wrongfully accused of murdering his wife and her lover. The film analyzing the effects of long-term incarceration on individual prisoners by exploring what is called institutionalization. It portrays how individual’s experiences within a prison can rapidly grow onto someone until it is only life one is familiar with and can relate to. It outlines how one has to rely on the institution of the prison itself to remain who he is. Shawshank blurs the line between what is considered right and wrong and furthermore exemplifies the notion that isolating and reforming criminals will turn them into law-abiding citizens.

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

America; the land of the free and the home of the brave. Free, that is, until you break one of America’s many laws and are convicted and sentenced to incarceration in the prison system. Depending on the severity of the crime, one might be sentenced to either a minimum, medium, or maximum security prison.

The average incarceration of prisoners per year is 2,418,352, however more than half of those prisoners are not provided the proper care needed for their survival. (Cooper, Sabol, West 1) Several inmates are put in unjust situations and living conditions through prison systems that majorly effect their everyday lives. Many of these issues pose threats to the prisoners but are preventable through change in the system. Prison systems around the world are flawed and need to be reworked. Inmates are constantly surrounded by an unhealthy environment full of sexual assault, lack of good health, and unfair treatment based upon disability.

You provided clear insight of mental illness in details, the different types that are suffered by offenders incarcerated, and the factors of their behavior. In fact, aggressive behavior is learned just as a child learns to walk and talk. Some mental health individuals suffer from erratic behaviors and mood swings are able to manage their behaviors through treatment and medication while others tend to stop or refuse their medication and treatment in order to continue their rapid behavior changes and mood swings. Lastly, it is a challenging task dealing with mental health individuals, in a correctional setting, offenders could deny mental health at any time making treatment and medication difficult to manage.