The Negative Effects Of Incarceration

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.

Even though prisoners are incarcerated, they still are entitled to certain rights. There is a lot of debate about which rights prisoners should have because they can’t have too much freedom, and they also can’t have too little freedom. If inmates have much freedom, chaos would reign over the facility. No inmate would learn to truly change their ways and fit back into the community successfully. If too little freedom is given, inmates would be neglected and treated like animals. The perfect balance is needed to achieve a functional correctional facility.

The reason for wanting parole to be abolished in the early 1900’s was because society as a whole did not feel that prisons and the parole system did not rehabilitate offenders enough to reduce recidivism (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Many felt that prisoners that did not deserve to be paroled were being released because of a corrupt and inadequate system. The members of the parole board as well as the parole officers were not trained enough to make the decision to release prisoners early as well as supervise them once they were released. Today, many of the states have abolished discretionary parole for several reasons. The first reason is that indeterminate sentencing and discretionary parole did not accomplish prisoner rehabilitation

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

The graying of the nation’s inmates is also an issue which continues to swell the cost of health care within the prison. According to the Pew Center, “…between 1992 and 2001, the number of state and federal inmates aged 50 or older rose from 41,586 to 113,358.” Older inmates are gradually making up a larger proportion of the overall count. While one may say that aging decreases criminal activity, such as those that result from communicable diseases mentioned from the previous paragraph, there are many more factors that should be considered. One problem is that older inmates are often preyed upon by younger, stronger inmates; therefore, older inmates may require special housing. Hearing and visual

The United States judicial system needs to make changes if they expect to control the prison population. One may assume that there is not a problem with the inmate overpopulation at the numerous prisons throughout the country, but one thing most of the prisons have in common is prison overcrowding. Geriatric offenders are the reason for prison overpopulation in the United States due to its inmates living longer, receiving longer prison sentences, and the lack of concern in which the judicial system has towards its elderly prisoners.

Although elderly inmates are receiving health care while they are institutionalized, they are not always receiving the proper health care that is needed. The overwhelming increase in the elderly prison population has caused challenges to health care administrators. According to Kuhlmann and Ruddel (2005), not only do elderly inmates have common illnesses such as high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, dementia or other diseases that one undergoes as they age, elderly inmates are also affected by transmissible diseases due to overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, or unprotected sex. Health officials also have a problem treating elderly patients who are at the top of the list for being attacked by other inmates. Even if an elderly inmate is healthy when processed into the prison system, the stressors contribute to the declines in physical functioning ensuing in amplified health care. Kuhlmann and Ruddel (2005), states the only way that elderly inmates can receive proper health care is if public health practitioners and jail administrators launch an improved long-term

Since the 1970’s the American incarceration rate has increased by a factor of 7. The United States holds the majority of the world’s prisoners. “The land of the free” is home to 5% of the world’s population, but contains 25% of its prisoners. People are also being held in jail for longer. Although most crimes are committed by young men, the number of US prisoners over age of 50 has increased by 330% since 1994.

Dementia, a disease characterized with the loss of brain functions; loss of memory, thinking and ability to reason clearly, has been on the rise in the American prisons. Law on the mandatory sentencing of criminals in the 1970s gave rise to the present high population of inmates and the costs associated. This disease associated with the elderly, is evident in the states and federal prisons with the numbers of elderly inmates on the rise, 125 000 by 2010. The budgets amounting from the costs incurred in the furnishing of specialized care to these inmates who cannot even clean or dress themselves are high. The inmates expect their health costs taken by the federal government being a part of state corrections costs still on the rise. The federal government and state agencies have to work on strategies focused at reducing the rising costs of the aging inmate population (NYT, 2012).

There are currently two million Americans who are incarcerated in our country’s prison system at this time. Each year there around roughly 650,000 released (Prisoner Reentry). These individuals are faced with many challenges when reintegrating themselves back into society. This is a very difficult time for them and often times things do not go as everyone planed. This time period is filled with disappointments, whether it be to the parole officers, their families or themselves. Leaving prison to reenter the world can cause a lot of confusion and emotions for the ex-offender. Being free leaves the responsibility up to them to make sure that they succeed in life and do not make the same mistakes twice.

The issue with aging prison members is that our legal system spends a majority of the money on our older inmates than our younger members. The three-strike rule in the United States is a big factor on why we have such a high rate with older inmates in our prisons. We imprison older members for life after they have committed more than three felonies regardless of the crime. That leads to our legal system being stuck with a lot of aging inmates. Our legal system has to pay more money in order to accommodate our older inmates because they require more medical needs. The Criminal justice system is spending a significant amount of money on our elderly sick inmates even though they are unable to commit any more crimes, leading to more problems

[In an effort to reduce crime rates over the last two decades, there was a push to increase arrests, and length of incarceration of criminal offenders. Due to the increase in numbers of offenders incarcerated and the length of their sentences the prison has an increasing population of elderly offenders. In light of this situation, the need to provide medical care for this population has become increasingly more expensive than anyone anticipated. Therefore, there has been a great deal of attention to what is known as compassionate release. In order to evaluate the arguments for and against this legislation we will look at the arguments on both sides, what values underlie each position, how medical release fits into the discussion, and alternatives to the problem.

In the United States, there’s two types of incarcerations: jail vs prison and federal vs state. The key difference between all prison systems is the size, location, and quantity of inmates and the crime rate in each area. Overpopulation has been an issue for a while mainly because for the safety for the inmates, the Three Strike Law, and also, society feeling that rehabilitation isn’t what they want for convicted felons. In the future, the system of corrections should decrease the overpopulation issue, for the budget plan, and safety of inmates.

The solution of mass incarceration simply does not work anymore; it is an outdated concept that will be shown in this brief why it does not work and why it needs to be changed. There are several issues

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