The Negative Effects Of Incarceration

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 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

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.

When assessing current problems associated with the prison system, many of the issues arise from the central finding that increases in the United States incarceration rates have led to overcrowding in prison which negatively impact the living conditions for inmates and working conditions for staff. To improve these conditions overall, efforts must focus on decreasing the number of inmates in state and federal facilities. Over the years, prison sentencing reform proposals have targeted revisions to sentencing guideline with a goal of reducing the number of citizens entering the prison system. In a editorial from staff at The Economist, the authors discuss one of the many reforms that could aid in decreasing the number of prisoners entering

It is not uncommon to hear of inmates and ex-inmates having lots of health problems. It is said that many prisoners have severe mental disorders and chronic and infectious disease. Living in prison they are provided a health care facility but it doesn’t stop all the things they are exposed to. Often times it has been proven that when people get out of jail they will try to use their mental incapability to their advantage. Although some of them may have some mental issues I believe that they occasionally try to take advantage of it and get what they can from it.

[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.

A great study conducted by Dr. Williams consisted of gathering workers in the prisons who worked with elderly inmates: 29 experts where chosen of which 19 were men and 10 were women. The goal and purpose of the study was to find a possible solution to help

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

Geriatric offenders are living much longer than elderly men and women of past decades, producing a growth in the prison institutions. According to

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

Overcrowding prisons can be toxic not only for the inmates but also the corrections officers who are constantly working. There are better ways to protect our communities than mass incarceration. In the United States, incarceration defers punishment based on the severity and kind of the crime and. For example, allow drug offenders to serve a shorter sentence, release more elderly prisoners, give prisoners a full year off their sentences for participating in drug rehabilitation, and send more foreign inmates to their home countries. In the article Prison Overcrowding Threatens Public Safety and State Budgets, the author informs “From the collected data, the Initiative found that the incarceration system in this country “hold[s] more than 2.4 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails” (Williams 1). This was published in 2014,

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

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).

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.

According to a report from the Human Rights Watch in 2010 there was a large population of elder inmates and statistics showed the older inmates suffered with more infirmities than younger inmates. As a result it’s much more costly to take care of an older inmate than it is to take care of a younger inmate (“Dementia Behind Bars”, 2102). Statistics also showed that ten years ago the average cost per inmate to be about 5,500 and about 11,000 for inmates 55 to 59 and 40,000 for those inmates 80 and older (“Dementia Behind Bars”, 2102). It’s a serious issue that has to be