One of the greatest emphases that Victor Hugo enlightens in Les Miserables is the detrimental nature of the prison system. During the time Les Miserables was penned, a vast amount of issues plagued the prison system, and many of them are touched on in the novel. The prison system was structurally and functionally crumbling during the time of Les Miserables; from excessive punishment to skewed workforce, even the miserable living/working conditions for the convicts. Hugo emphasizes countless other issues throughout the novel, but these three are constantly referenced and expanded upon. The primary issue undermining the entire novel, excessive punishment, is the key reason as to why the prison system is the way it is. Throughout Les Miserables many of the convicts are subject to excessive punishment. Working in the galleys would not be acceptable in …show more content…
Javert has been tailing Jean Valjean ever since he left the galleys a free man. I found myself asking questions along the lines of “What does Javert do all day?” “Doesn’t this guy have anything else to do except chase a former convict all over France?” This frustrated me throughout the novel because instead of examining the problems with the prison system, we have people wasting years and lots of time and money pursing a convict that was unfairly sentenced in the first place for a petty crime, and ended up on “death row” for something that should have been a fine and maybe one year of jail time at the maximum. Javert sums this up in his dialogue with Valjean in the movie. “Now prisoner 24601, your time is up and your parole’s begun. You know what that means?” “Yes, it means I’m free.” “No. Follow to the letter your itinerary, this badge of shame you wear until you die. It warns that you’re a dangerous man.” (Les Miserables Movie-Musical). Javert has no clue that what he is working on is a total waste of
The United States prison system struggles eminently with keeping offenders out of prison after being released. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than third of all prisoners who were arrested within five years of released were arrested within six months after release, with more than half arrested by the end of the year (Hughes, Wilson, & Beck, 2001). Among prisoners released in 2005 in 23 states with available data on inmates returned to prison, about half (55 percent) had either a parole or probation violation or an arrest for a new offense within three years that led to imprisonment (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). Why are there many ex-offenders going back to prison within the first five years of release? Are there not enough resources to help offenders before or/and after being released from prison.
Jacoby claims the imprisonment system has far more inhumanities than flogging. He berates the prison system’s inadequacies, such as the ever-growing prison population, prisoner yearly
Throughout the movie Les Miserables directed by Bille August, Paris is shown as an unforgiving society in the late 1700's and early 1800’s. Once a person has done something wrong, they will never be trustworthy citizens, or even a part of society. The cruel nature of society is on display by the prejudice shown by Javert to both Fantine and Jean
According to Wilbert Rideau's opinion, prisons do not work, and there are various reasons why this happens. As indicated in the last paragraph essay, one of the major problems of prisons circulates in the fact that politicians take the easy way to make the people think they are doing something to combat crime. They invest in police and prisons that do nothing but keep us in a repetitive circle without giving us any solution. Although prisons do have a role in society safety, they do not provide people total security. Actually there are big criminals that are not in prison and the ones who are in prison are not getting rehab.
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.
Conditions inside the prison were no better. For starters, many of the prisoners were those who had committed menial crimes. Worse so, many were war heroes, back from Vietnam who couldn’t find a job and thus had to go about other illegal means to stay alive, and thus were thrown in prison. Attica prison in particular was famous at the time among prisoners for having the most horrific treatment of their inmates. Guards did whatever they could both legally and illegally to keep their prisoners in perpetual fear and discomfort. The prisoners were not just treated like children, but as animals. The one thing prisoners treasure the most is their contact with the outside world. It keeps them sane and allows them to remain in some type of contact both with their families as well as with what is going on outside the prison walls. But, guards did whatever
The Unites States of America’s prison system is a flawed mess. To open the eyes of our government we must first take a stand against unlawful government decisions, and show support for the greater good of society. What are our own tax-dollars paying for, what are the flaws in the justice/prison system, why is overcrowding in prisons causing tension, and what are ways our society and government can rebuild the system that has been destroyed over the years? Most criminals in prisons are not a danger to our society because they commit crimes just to use jail as a shelter, causing the overcrowding of prisons and wasting away of what we really should be paying for.
In California, legal executions were authorized under the Criminal Practice Act of 1851. On February 1872, capital punishment was integrated into the California Penal Code. Explaining the historical development of capital and corporal punishment, including the methods of punishment used over the years and the Latin roots of capita and corpus. There are four primary United States constitutional amendments which safeguard inmates’ rights and how these amendments protect prisoners or inmates. The goals of rehabilitation and punishment, as well as probation and parole, and areas as it relate to inmate as well as for the community. Why is it one of the Colorado prisons important to our correctional system? Why are
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.
Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV. Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison. Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.
Charles Dickens visited the United States in 1842, were he witnessed solitary confinement in Eastern State Penitentiary just outside Philadelphia. Dickens viewpoints on the prison system in America is that he “persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those who benevolent gentlemen who carry execution, do no know what it is that they are doing”. The lets the audience know what Dickens believes to be the negative part of the Prison Discipline. Dickens states that not many men are capable of enduring long period of agony and torture. The prison system to Dickens led him to be convinced that “There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has the right to inflict upon his fellow creatures”. This lets us conclude that Dickens’s assessment toward the Prisons has a more negative aspect. To support his claims of why the prisons have a negative aspect is seen through the numerous prisoners, he visited during his tour of the American prisons. He included an individual who was about to be released after two years in solitary confinement. Dickens reaction toward the man was that he felt his “Heart bled for him; and when the tears rolled down his checks…to ask, with his trembling hands nervously clutching…whether there was hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to witness”. Dickens states that “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries
Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.
In many cases we are forced to believe that the prison system is fair and equal to all, although that may not be the case. The prison system at first glance seems fair and equal but after looking closer you will find many times it’s not fair at all. For example, “an African American male could spend more time in jail for possession of crack than a white man with the same amount of powder cocaine” (Harmon 372). This is just one example of how society has been taken advantage of in the prison system. Some people are subject to years in prison although they should not be while others enjoy life even though they should be in prison. The injustice in the sentencing of prisoners is an ongoing problem in society, as some criminals get of easy for horrible crimes others criminals suffer unfairly all because of color of their skin.
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
Like Angela Davis, I believe that the prison system needs to be abolished. The prison system which is a significant part of punishment is incompetent and deeply flawed in the United States. Prison system reform needs immediate attention while abolition permanently will require time. Nietzsche’s theory of punishment explains how punishment come about in society and Davis’s critique of the prison system helps back my argument that the prison system needs to be abolished.