The Pros And Cons Of Incarceration

Michael Tarver is a 55 year old man who is serving a life sentence for murder in Atlanta, Georgia. Tarver is a diabetic with circulation problems, while in jail he got a cut on his leg. After receiving this cut he went months in confinement without proper care and because of his diabetes he was prone to infection and had to have his leg amputated. In 2012 Tarver filed a lawsuit written in longhand and filed without the consultation of an attorney. Dr. Chiquita Fye is the 65 year old woman who has been the medical director at this prison since 2006. This “lawsuit asserted that Fye was deliberately indifferent to his injury as he languished for months in the prison infirmary. Deliberate indifference to a prison inmate’s medical needs violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” (The Associated Press) Many inmates have filed lawsuits against this doctor all complaining that she neglected them of proper care. And there is so many other cases out there showing that prisons do not give proper care to inmates who need it.

The U.S. prison system is one of many great controversies when compared to other correctional systems. America’s prison population has increased by 700% (2.4 million current inmates) since the start of the war on drugs in 1971. As a result of this “war”, people that fall into the racial minority have suffered as a direct consequence of unjust legislation. Our prison system is known for its overrepresentation of minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. This unfortunately gives these groups of people a perennial negative stigma as a result. I argue that the U.S. prison industrial-complex emphatically displays signs of prejudice and racism and disproportionately incarcerates people of color at a rate higher than whites. Yes, there are skeptics who think “the left’s prison-complex” is wrong about their theory of mass incarceration but the statistical data and concrete facts in support of my argument are very compelling.

Mass incarceration has been an issue in the United States since the start of the War on Drugs, because of the political agenda attached to the “tough on crime” regimen thousands of people have suffered as a consequence. The solution to this is one that can only be possibly solved by approaching through several angles. The ten steps presented by Michael Tonry, are an innovative and have merit to some extent. However, mass incarceration results from more than unjust sentencing laws, which is his main focus. If ever we are to resolve the issue, society and the criminal justice system must come together to completely reevaluate what we consider to be “tough on crime” and redefine the purpose of prisons, strictly punishment or rehabilitation. The focus has to shift from harsh sentencing, stigma, racial discrimination to a basic form of rehabilitation and reduction of the prison system in general. The criminal justice system has to do what they are actually meant to do and focus on rehabilitation measures, and when possible completely stop interaction with the prison system all together.

At the beginning of the semester our Professor gave a speech on her personal accomplishment and to start she asked us how many of us knew someone who either was or had been incarcerated. Most of us in the class raised our hands in the affirmative, including myself. This may not seem like much in a classroom with roughly 25 students, but it does have some merit. The United States of America accounts for “5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population” (DuVernay, 13th). Within the last year California legislators have introduced Senate Bill 10 or the Bail: pretrial release bill, which seeks to eliminate pretrial detention and bail requirements for accused individuals who meet public safety criteria ("SB-10 Bail: pretrial release", 2017-2018). I argue that SB 10 doesn’t go far enough and should include that low level non-violent first offenders be offered alternative methods to incarceration. A policy such as SB 10 would allow California to serve as a model, reducing the effects of mass incarceration, creating a fairer system and eliminating coerced plea deals.

Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because

The number of prisoners in United States prisons has increased and are still growing day-by-day. The Sentencing Project, an organization that fights for a fair and effective U.S. justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addresses unjust racial disparities and practices in its article “Trends in U.S. Corrections.” They write, “The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons and jails — a 500% increase over the last forty years ”(The Sentencing Project 1). According to The Sentencing Project statistics, the number of prisoners has dramatically increased in the past four decades,

Juvenile’s incarceration is becoming enormous number. Taxpayers are financing the bill as detention centers and correctional facility become overcrowded. In the beginning of the 21st century, juveniles became out control and a get-tough policy became in effect. The court system knows they need some structure and punishment for the crimes they may have committed, and look for alternatives that can assist them in becoming a better person in society. In this assignment it will discussed the historical and economical alternatives to incarcerating for juveniles. In addition, what alternatives for correctional facility are currently in place? Finally, what significant value or punishment by not taking the juvenile from his home or their community

Imagine being locked up in a cramped prison along side thousands of other inmates just for committing a minor crime. When you are finally liberated from the strict institution that’s been barricading you from society, you find that you’re stripped of basic rights to education, welfare, and so on. Scary is it not? Well, that’s the harsh reality behind mass incarceration. Mass incarceration has been an issue ever since the dawn of the “drug wars” back in the 80’s and 90’s. Millions of people were locked up for minor crimes, mostly nonviolent drug crimes, which resulted in lengthy prison sentences due to mandatory sentencing laws such as the Crime Bill that Bill Clinton enacted in 1994. As a result, the prison population nearly quintupled and many men went missing from society. What could fuel such motivation to lock away millions of people? In “The New Jim Crow”, Michelle Alexander holds a firm belief that the racist fictional character “Jim Crow” is secretly being kept alive and that many black men are being wrongfully locked away due to racial prejudice. Although she has some compelling arguments on the topic of mass incarceration, they’re simply not the case in today’s society. Only a small percentage of the prison population is made up of inmates serving mandatory sentences and the truth behind mass incarcerations ultimately comes down to the prevention of drug-related violence as well as improper prosecutors.

Mass incarceration brought a bigger issue than people being locked up in jail. After people were released from jail they would have to go to court and figure out their situation was, figure out what would happen to then when they go back home. For those that lived in public housing and their name was the one that was on the contract they were forced to leave the house, If the individual was a parent and they were the only parent that the kids had; the parents would lose their kids and be homeless. Because the individual has been to jail and now is homeless they are no longer eligible for a job because of their criminal records. Not only are these individuals no longer eligible for housing or jobs they also can’t have custody of their kids and

Incarceration strives to isolate offenders from society but does not provide adequate therapy to change the mental states and behaviors of criminals. The recidivism rate, the rate of known and recorded relapse into criminal behavior after release from jail, proves that offenders need more than just isolation to change their behavior and eliminate their dangers to society. Communities need not only to provide help and pay attention to offenders with short sentences because of their earlier release than others. In California, an increase in parole grants in 2014 has resulted in 2,000 murderers, classified as the “highest Criminal History Category, VI,” returning to society with no therapy or assistance from reentry programs. 80% of offenders in the most serious criminal history category, the criminal group with the highest recidivism rate, relapsed and returned to prison within five years of release, and 60% of offenders returned to prison within three years of release (Prisoners and Prisoner Re-Entry, 2007; Sanchez, 2014; Sipes, 2017; St John, 2014). Overall, police officers arrest ex-offenders up to forty-five times more than they arrest members of the non-criminal population (Przybylski, 2012). Criminals need specialized psychological treatment to change their behaviors and make them safe to return to their communities. As recidivism becomes increasingly more problematic in today's society, criminal psychologists analyze the motives, incarceration experiences, and mental

Do you know that between 1955 and 1998, we have about 558,000 patients dropped to 60,000 patients in our country and state mental hospital? During this time, there have a national shift between state hospitals and community-based facilities in mental health treatment, it’s called deinstitutionalization. In 1965, the Congress has created Medicaid. It is a payment for people who are in community mental health centers. In addition, President Jimmy Carter had signed the Mental Health System Act in 1980. It provided grants in a straight line to community mental health centers, but the time of fund is very short. Because when President Ronald Reagan is on the place, he cuts one third of spend to federal mental health. According to The New

The United States is home to five percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoner. There must be a change to the current prison system which is doing more harm than good in American society and must be reformed. Reasons for this claim are that American prisons are too overcrowded with inmates, which creates a dangerous and unhuman environment. The cost to run a prison has gotten too expensive for tax payer pockets, and lastly the prison system is more as a punishment instead of rehabilitation with about sixteen percent of inmates most serious offence being drug charges. Prisons fall short of reforming criminals and the government is obligated to completely reform the prison systems in the United States.

On several occasion, I notice that the parole hearing officer has granted parole providing the offender continue to attend other drug programs or to complete a certain correctional program and return back to a hearing in one year. Next, the offender is given a chance to share what they have learned while being incarcerated. In addition, their support system such as family, friends, clergy, and correctional staff to speak on their behalf. Nevertheless, the concern of them being competent to return to society is a concern. Just this month we have had two female release from our facility due to their sentence has expired. Within less than a month one died of a drug overdose and the other committed another crime. Therefore, will all of the accolade,

How to treat criminals has been a source of very intense debates for centuries. A typical punishment for most committed crimes whose penalty is not sentencing to capital punishment, is imprisoning. This view has been challenged by a number of the very recent sociologists, who think that a couple of alternative solutions other than sending those society members to jail should be adopted. Thinking about this subject, I would believe that a combination of prison and educating the offenders is the best solution as it will be discussed here.

] In [a society moving increasingly toward group action it may become impractical, in terms of allocation of resources, to deal with systems through their components. In many cases, it would appear more sensible to transfer to the corporation the responsibility of policing itself, forcing it to take steps to ensure that the harm does not materialize through the conduct of people within the organization. Rather than having the state monitor the activities of each person within the corporation, which is costly and raises practical enforcement difficulties, it may be more efficient to force the corporation to do this, especially if sanctions imposed on the corporation can be translated into effective action at the individual level