The Issue Of Compassionate Release

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.

The incarceration of those who are mentally ill is on the continual rise. Many states juggle with the decision of placing offenders in Mental Hospital or locating them in State Prisons. Latessa and Holsinger (2011) discuss two major reasons for the increase of those with mental illness within the prison system. First, many states have no longer allow for the insanity plea during criminal trials, thus those who suffer from mental illness are not required to receive mandatory mental treatment. This is due to the discomforting idea that criminal offenders should not be given the same living conditions as those whom are patients of mental wards. Secondly, longer sentences have created a surplus of mentally ill offenders needing treatment. Soderstrom (2007) added that the lack of mental health support systems in

In a fight to reduce overcrowding, improve public health and public safety, and reduce the costs of criminal justice and corrections, federal, state and local leaders are constantly looking for alternatives to incarceration. A number of strategies have been put in place to save public funds and improve public health by keeping low-risk, non-violent, possibly drug-involved offenders out of prison or jail while still holding them accountable and securing the safety of our comminutes. These programs have been put in place to help those who don’t necessarily need to be in jail, get their priorities straight while also holding them accountable for their actions. They have been put in place to help reduce incarceration rates, but also help those who may have mental health issues or substance abuse issues that have caused them to make bad decisions (Treatment Court Divisions).

Prison reform was a viable aspect of the Reform Movements in the 1800s. Reformers wanted to evidently punish prisoners but they also wanted to make sure they maintained a sense of humanity. They did this by reconstructing prison systems, seeking ways to treat the mentally ill and more. Document A highlights the importance of good treatment to prisoners in order for them to be rescued and eventually work to become viable members of society. This document

Over the last thirty years the number individuals held in the United States Prison system has been growing rapidly. Numerous studies have found that the prison population that is growing most rapidly is the elderly population. For the purposes of this paper, the term aging and elderly population will refer to those who are incarcerated and are over the age of 61. As the number of elderly inmates continues to increase the number of stressors put on both the correctional system and the individual. In general, the correctional system faces a significant amount of financial stress in attempting to care for aging inmates, where as the inmates themselves face more emotional and physical stressors of aging, chronic illnesses, and even dying in prison. This paper aims to examine the stressors faced by the system and the individuals, as well as alternative options to continuing the incarceration of aging and elderly individuals.

Several states across the Country have enacted or attempted to enact legislation which can enable detention of a prisoner past his/her release date. This type of legislation’s general purpose is to provide a mechanism whereby prisoners who, if released pose an unacceptable risk of

Prisoners should be required to pay co-payments for the medical services that they receive in prison. The purpose of incarceration is to rehabilitate offenders to become active and productive taxpayers in their community. In order to do so, they should be held to the same standards that average law abiding citizens are. The two articles noted that even if the inmate does not have the funds to pay for the co-payments, they will not be denied treatment. Prisoners are guaranteed the same basic rights as everyone else and that includes their right to autonomy; in which they can receive or deny treatment.

In attempting to meet the needs of the elderly and the ill prisoners, the correctional departments often provide care to inmates that may not be accessible or affordable to law-abiding citizens; a reality that many criticize believing that criminals do not deserve better care than poor individuals who follow the law (Associated Press, 2012). A solution to the problem can be found in the compassionate release program. Compassionate release was introduced as a federal statute by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to allow certain terminally ill inmates spend their final days in freedom regardless whether they had completed their sentence (Williams, Sudore, Greifinger, and Morrison, 2011). In addition to the program's compassionate and humane nature, it alleviates the correctional system of a significant financial burden: terminally ill and aging inmates. By releasing terminally ill and the severely incapacitated inmates, correctional facilities lose a significant financial burden in the form of special considerations (specialized units or facilities, or hospice programs), renovations or new prison wings, and medical bills.

With these statistics in mind the budget and inmate population is likely to increase as time goes on if action is not taken in the near future. A large portion of the increase could be attributed to the national war on drugs and Wisconsin’s truth in sentencing laws which have led to more people being arrested and those who are arrested remaining in correctional facilities for a longer period of time. These policy actions coincide with the rise of the budget and inmate numbers as can be seen that the DOC budget went from Wisconsin’s 7th largest expenditure in 1989 to it 3rd largest in 2009(Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, 2010). One solution suggested to reducing the budget is to try to reduce the number of people being returned to prison without a new sentence as in 2014 they made up 42.9% of prison admissions (WI DOC, 2014) some of these have been for technical violations such as showing up late for a meeting with a parole supervisors. The suggestion to reduce these prison admissions would be for sanctions courts to be set up which don’t send the parolee back to prison for technical violations straight away but rather sanctions them with actions such as electronic monitoring, counseling or community service, a similar program to this has already been tried in

The Clemency Policy consists of discharging non-violent convicts and allowing them to leave without finishing their whole sentence. By releasing such prisoners, the federal prisons are able to house more threatening individuals without the risk of overcrowding. This policy helps these people in several different ways, such as reducing the risk of overcrowding, giving second chances, and

The idea of sympathetic release of ill and elderly prisoners is not new. In 1994, Professor Russell published consideration of medical parole and compassionate release programs of district and fifty states of Columbia. Only three

In American states that have experienced higher incarceration rates, a decline in access to quality healthcare was noticed. Incarceration does not only affect the health of the convicted individuals and their families, but the healthcare system as a whole.; this spillover does not only affect the convicted, but everyone else, including but not limited to women over 50, and people with income over the poverty threshold (Schnittker et al., 2015).In areas with a large percentage of former inmates, more people were unlikely to be satisfied with their healthcare provider and the care they received. Over 90% of the US prison population is composed of the males, and about 50% of these men have children. Because ex-convicts are

The documentary “The released” shared a very important and serious social issue, which is mental illness of prisoners. The film described the inside of the Ohio prison system as it resisted to provide care for prisoners that have mental health problems. The system there allowed prisoners to leave the jail and either go to a shelter or a residential treatment center, to get the health care they need. After the release, prisoners need to take their medications and keep track with a psychiatrist or a mental health care center. However, most of the prisoners didn’t do what is required, most of them didn’t keep up with their medications and end up by going back to jail. The reason of the release was to give them chance to recover by taking medications

“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime

While, the issue of the incarcerated population having the privilege of this scarce medical resources is extensively and generally approved or compelling recognition within the correctional health profession and there is a case-law supporting the matter of concern, that the statues of a person as an inmate must not preclude such person as a patient from receiving adequate care in respect to serious health needs, regardless of the cost of such treatment. They also have all the social and moral values since the law does not exempt them from citizenship (Puisis, 2006, p.23).