The Law Enforcement And The Judicial System

The United States is regarded as a country of innovation and progress. However, the prison and disciplinary systems in the U.S. fall short in several aspects. With the highest incarceration rate in the world, one might expect American prisons to be prepared for providing quality care and rehabilitation for inmates. Unfortunately, this is not the reality - with a growing number of privatized prisons, the quality of life for inmates and their families is dissipating. The U.S. prison system is in desperate need of reform; closing down private prisons will help in alleviating monetary pressure, reducing abuse reports, and lowering the rate of reincarceration in individuals. Prison reform should be seen as a priority, as nonviolent offenders are suffering far more than they should, and are purposely conditioned to be reincarcerated after their release. Private prisons are rapidly growing in the U.S. to keep up with a growing number of inmates. With the rising number of prisoners, prisoner abuse levels are also rising exponentially. This is due to the fact that private prisons are a booming industry that exploits prisoners for profits. Private prisons may seem beneficial at a glance; however, they enforce lax regulations and are notorious for overcrowding and “barbaric” conditions. Prisons should rehabilitate nonviolent offenders in

Crime rates are down in America, yet there is an unproportionately large number of Americans incarcerated. This paper will delve into and examine this problem and how it is closely linked to private prisons and the issues surrounding them. While private prisons claim to be cost effective and well-run, evidence has shown that these profit-driven companies ignore ethical consequences by purposefully lengthening prisoners’ sentences, target certain groups for incarceration and maintain despicable living standards for the prisoners; ultimately, these prisons have caused more harm than good for the state.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

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.

The number of privately owned prisons has grown, as has the imprisonment rate of Americans. “In 2005 more than 2.3 million Americans (or .7% of the US population) were incarcerated, in nearly 1700 state, federal, and private prisons, with many more under other forms of custodial supervision including probation and parole”(Smith and Hattery 2). “In 1980, only 474,368 citizens in the US were imprisoned, but in just a little over two decades, 2,042,270 people

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

Today, the United States has more people incarcerated than ever before. More than 2 million people in the United States alone are in prison, three times the amount than before there were sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums (Bernick and Larkin). “The Federal Bureau of Prisons is overcrowded, operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity and housing a large population of non-violent drug offenders, at a significant cost to taxpayer” (Bernick and Larkin). Every year taxpayers are paying to keep inmates incarcerated. The average cost to keep one inmate in prison for a year is around $29,000. In state prisons alone, taxpayers spend over $50 billion dollars

The United State’s prison system was initially designed to punish and rehabilitate individuals whom were convicted of a felony or other serious offense. Inmates are sentenced for a certain amount of time, or the entirety of their life based on how serious of a crime that person has committed. The Idea of imprisoning a person as a form of punishment dates back to medieval times however, it wasn’t until right before the American Revolution humane prisons started appearing in this country. Today, prisons are more populated than they have ever been and are functioning not only as a place to reform people’s morals, but also as a highly profitable investment for the wealthy to exploit. The Prison system is so devoted to making

I have explored the negatives and positives of the private prison industry in the United States in addition to the impact privatizing prisons has had on inmate quality of life and inmate population sizes. While private prisons possibly provide a limited amount of cost savings to the taxpayer, the net impact of the private prison industry on the U.S. is negative. The history and idea of private prisons has been around since San Quentin was a private for-profit prison in 1852 (“Private Jails in the US,” 2017). The modern idea and practice of privatizing and profiting from prisons has been around since the early 1980’s when, “the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit (Pauly, 2017).”

The private prison industry began in the 1980s with the rapidly increasing crime rate due to the then recently declared war on drugs. Since its beginning, the industry’s legality has been highly debated for various reasons. These reasons include

The United States of America is the nation with the most people in prison despite not having the greatest population. As a matter of fact, the U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet incarcerates about a quarter of its prisoners. Millions of these prisoners are incarcerated in for-profit prisons. Optimally, a prison is utilized for prisoners in an attempt to rehab them or remove them from the streets. However, a private prison is run by a corporation, which has an end goal of maximizing its profits. The way that these prisons make money is through stipends from the government that is granted depending on the size of the prison or primarily on the number of prisoners that the prison house. As a result, private prisons

Our country's criminal justice system is not nearly perfect. Imagine being in a jail where you must worry about being assaulted twice as much, you’re more likely to come back to after finally leaving, and they use your punishment for their profit. In our country, private prisons make this a reality for many inmates. The United States is faced with a broken criminal justice system due to privatized prisons; these greedy, for-profit prisons, are of lower quality and are a reason for high recidivism. To fix this, we must begin to fade away for these companies and return to just federal and state prisons.

In this course we have taken several field trips in order to get an understanding of the places and operations we have learned of in our previous courses in this degree program. From the patrol officers making arrests, to the courthouses where judges give sentencing, to the prisons where guilty parties serve their sentence, the Law Enforcement and Justice System is a complex yet straightforward system. Meant to grant justice to the community and prevent further atrocities to justice and peace from occurring. But for whatever reason, if these duties are broken, then the gears of justice begin to turn, and in so, the many cogs and belts that run this machine to make it one of the most efficient machines there is. Here we are to discuss my thoughts of the trip I had taken with the class to the State of Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institution or ACI for short.

While the use of remand custody was implemented to avoid potential casualties to both the community and offenders, the dramatic increase of its use caught the attention of many scholars. They argue that while the practice has its advantages, it also has crippling drawbacks such as overpopulation in prisons and the undermining the presumption of innocence; the main principle which defines the criminal justice system.

Whenever heinous crimes happen, people call for severe punishments to be brought upon the offenders. Public sentiments get so intense, in fact, that courts will often hold tougher trials and spur prosecution investigations. However, there are cases when offenders get a lesser sentence than the public sentiment sees fit, especially when the offenders are juveniles. The grounds for the judicial system’s leniency are that the reform of offenders is important, that law severity doesn’t influence crime rate, and that second convictions can be prevented.