The Death Of The Prison System

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

Throughout the years, the use of imprisonment has varied, along with its influences of society. It is thought that although prisons have been around since the thirteenth century, prisons as we know them now to be have only been around for the last three centuries. The first uses of prisons were not seen as a form of punishment instead they were used as a way of making people do something. People would be held in prison until they paid their debts, or awaiting trial and then leading up to their sentence. McGowen (1995) suggests that from the early 1700s ‘bridewells’ a house of correction have existed, however at that time being used merely for vagrants and drunks. At the end of the sixteenth century there was a shift in punishment to imprisonment, along with this came a new, more humane idea of reform. Criminals would spend their days of prison carrying out hard labour. However after the American Revolution, imprisonment took a step back and there was another change. There was mass overcrowding within the prison service and although the death penalty was still being used it was a symbol of the power of the state. Therefore, an everyday way of dealing with offenders would be transportation to the colonies, being either Australia or America.

Traditionally, there have been four justifications for punishment: deterrence, confinement, rehabilitation and retribution. While these methods can be flawed at some point in history they served as primary reasons for the justification of punishment. Recently, there has been an epistemic shift in thinking about punishment where now it is focused on retribution and incarceration. The emphasis on this method has lead to an increase in incarceration and the rise of a prison system. While we acknowledge that there will always be a need for society to punish criminals in order to protect the rights of individuals, however a prison/prison system is not the correct way to handle such problems. Currently the prison system is being used an economic tool for private companies to exploit cheap labor from inmates. Known as the prison-industrial complex private enterprises are now able to build more prisons to “benefit” society and themselves as the prison population grows. Since the 1980’s the growth in prison

We can date the United States criminal justice policies all the way back to the 17th Century. Although it is nothing compared to what we have today, there have been improvements along the way. One of the major reform needed in our corrections system are the war on drugs and overcrowded prison. The history of corrections in the U.S. has been seen through four major eras known as the Penitentiary, Reformatory, Reintegration, and Retributive Era. Each era has tried to explore the best way to deal with people who have broken the law. Based on the ideas of each era, we’ll explore which reform needs to be implemented.

Yolanda Valentin a 21-year-old prisoner, born as Daniel Valentine, looks and sounds much like a woman if it wasn’t for her sex assignment. After being placed in a cell with two male inmates, Valentin was repeatedly abused. She informed correctional officers of the continued, brutal sexual violence her cellmate was putting her through. The prison system did not respond to her. After all, from their point of view Valentin should have opted for solitary confinement to protect herself from the general population of male inmates. In solitary she would have sat quietly, by herself, for 24 hours in a cell made explicitly for violent prisoners. Valentin, a transsexual inmate in transition, asks herself constantly: “A lot of times I wake up, and I look around at my surroundings, and I see all these men. I think, ‘What am I doing here?’”(Baus).

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.

Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means

The U.S. corrections system, a subdivision of the criminal justice system, continues to undergo change. From its beginnings as laws written in stone, the corrections system has sought to punish offenders. The origin of the corrections system dates back several thousand years and has witnessed various perspectives and goals. The best method of administering punishment to these prisoners has remained an issue of dispute for many years. Events through history, such

In prisons today, rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution are all elements that provide a justice to society. Prisons effectively do their part in seeing that one if not more of these elements are met and successfully done. If it were not for these elements, than what would a prison be good for? It is highly debated upon whether or not these elements are done properly. It is a fact that these are and a fact that throughout the remainder of time these will be a successful part of prison life.

Many individuals believe that the criminal system and its institutions are flawed. These critiques have been brought on by the ineffectiveness of prisons to reform individuals, the ineptness of the system to reduce crime rates, the lack of focus on victims of crimes, as well as the racist, classist and sexist practices existing in these institutions. Therefore, we can ask ourselves if the elimination of the current penal system and the implementation of alternatives would better allow

In the world because some crimes are more severe than others, human beings decided that deprivation of liberty was the best form of punishment. The idea was to make prison a system for corrections, rather than detention alone. These ideas soon manifested in schools of philosophy and criminology were the notion was defended that punishment should be more lenient only at the cost of the greater good and aimed to change the behavior itself. Eventually these ideas gave birth to a new form of incarcerations designed to deter both rise in crime and to reform, based on self-reflection over the prisoner’s choices. Well then why are the incarcerations in the United States so high one might ask? In the United States

American prison system incarceration was not officially used as the main form of punishment in United States (U.S.) until around the 1800’s. Before that time criminals were mainly punished by public shaming, which involved punishments such as being whipped, or branded (HL, 2015). In fact, President Lincoln codified the prison incarceration system in the Emancipation Proclamation that indicated no slavery would take place in America unless a person was duly convicted of a crime (paraphrased) (White, 2015). In this era prisons were used more as a place where criminals could be detained until their trial date if afforded such an opportunity. However, one of the main problems with this idea was the fact that the prisons were badly maintained, which resulted in many people contracting fatal diseases. Yet, according to White (2015) unethical and immoral medical experiments were also conducted on inmates’ leading to health failures. Moreover, because everyone was detained in the same prisons, adolescent offenders would have to share the same living space with adult felons, which became another serious problem in that adolescent were less mature and could not protect themselves in such environments

Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.

The Unites States of America’s prison system is a flawed mess. To open the eyes of our government we must first take a stand against unlawful government decisions, and show support for the greater good of society. What are our own tax-dollars paying for, what are the flaws in the justice/prison system, why is overcrowding in prisons causing tension, and what are ways our society and government can rebuild the system that has been destroyed over the years? Most criminals in prisons are not a danger to our society because they commit crimes just to use jail as a shelter, causing the overcrowding of prisons and wasting away of what we really should be paying for.

This essay will be based on a prison rectification and the fascinating term to use to describe the punishment of offenders for the crimes that were committed. Yet corrections do offer a larger perception on how interventions pact with felonious lawbreakers. Formerly, the term penology was castoff in its place of corrections. Penal is well defined as relating to or daunting castigation and is resultant from the Latin term peonalis, meaning punishment. Penology is basically the education of castigation. Until the 1950s, the meanings, gears, and arrangements of carrying out unlawful agreements habitually used the term penal, and penal institutes (penitentiaries) and penal structures (system of government to carry out punishment) highlighted