Why Do Criminals Go To Prison?

Many people believe that the prison system works, but does it really? Many studies and research has been made in order to show that the prison system is failing. Citizens of the United States of America are forced to pay for a system in order to make our country “safe”, however no one seems to inform themselves with the facts. Imprisoning people who break the law does not make them change into a better person, and the cost for having someone locked up is costly. It is evident that our prison system have failed. “47% of offenders leaving prison reoffend will within one year” (Leach). So, why do we keep on sending people to prison?

And yet, crime rates are higher than any other country on average. The United states spends billions on facilities every year. As budgets from the penal system increase, there are fewer resources for education, health care, economic development, state & local police, and other public services that prevent crime. But has this increase of incarceration made our country safer? Long prison sentences have had a decrease on crime. However, no more than 25% of it was because of incarceration. About $70 billion is spent on corrections yearly and about $240 billion is spent on facilities. “Criminals learn better how to commit crimes, but not how to be productive in the free world or how to abandon their selfishness. Solid evidence proves that returning parolees increase crime rates in their neighborhoods.” Perhaps if we spent more money on corrections rather than facilities, this might not be a problem and more people would stay out of jail. Conditions in prison have a direct effect on criminals physically, mentally, and psychologically. Prison does not appear to help offenders. “Imprisonment can be an expensive way of making bad people worse.” (Former home secretary Lord Douglas Hurd.) If the money we spent towards facilities was used for alternative solutions to reform criminals, incarceration levels would most likely decrease. Restorative justice, for example gives victims the chance to communicate with their offenders to explain the real impact of the crime. Restorative justice can also help prisoners develop relationships outside of prison, which can help with positive personal growth. I believe this gives offenders a chance to change their ways. 49% of victims involved in a victim offender programme found that it helped their recovery

In this world we live in many feel that prisons exist to punish, not counsel, offenders. That may be true that Prisons exist for punishment, but they also have an important contribution to make to reducing re-offending by engaging prisoners in rehabilitation programs and purposeful work. Society is flawed in its thinking that by putting criminals in a place away from society we would be better off. To make it worse I am sure that more that 60 percent of Americans are against social reform because they have made up their mind that once a crook, always a crook. This is flawed mainly because it seems to assume that showing people that what they've done is wrong will always accomplish something, that punishing those who commit crimes

Prison’s were established a long time ago to try to put an end to the rapidly increasing crime rate, however over time we are seeing the effectiveness of the most prisons decreasing. As a result of this epidemic, prisons have a higher recidivism rate and over 40 percents are currently operating over maximum capacity (Holder.) Through different types of research, we are finding out that our prison systems are no longer effective and there is a serious need for improvement. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate almost ¼ of the worlds prisoners (Holder.)

In a perfect world, there would not be prisons due to the lack of crime. This is not a perfect world, and many of the prisons are overcrowded. The penitentiaries are full with a mixture of violent and nonviolent prisoners. By putting nonviolent offenders in prisons with violent offender increases the likelihood of them being associated with gangs and decrease their availability of getting rehabilitation (Smith-Heisters, 2008). The majority of the offenders are nonviolent and is in prison for drug usage. The federal system was unable to produce the rights given in the 6th and 14th Amendments and medical help to the prisoners getting out on parole because of overcrowding (Smith-Heisters, 2008). “77% of the growth in intake to America’s state and federal prisons between 1978

Have you ever wonder why prisons are made? It is known that prisons are built to isolate and punish everyone that committed crime in their lives, whether it is in the past or present. However, lately there have been some arguments on whether everybody that committed crime should be put in jail or they should be allowed to stay outside of the prison, but with very strict supervisions. Nowadays, there have been some cases in which criminals are given the freedom to stay in their usual surroundings. The reason is people agree that criminals may have done something bad, but not all of them should be put in jail. There are other ways to punish those who did wrong aside from putting them in quarantine.

In society, there will always be people that take and steal and kill to collect what they feel they deserve. People that behave in such a way need to be separated from the citizens of society that are trustworthy, caring, and helpful in order to prevent the malicious citizens from taking advantage of their productive counterparts. There is no argument that individuals that break the law need to be punished so they know it is wrong. There are many types of punishment, but the one that contains the most people and best protects society from rampant crime is prison. While it is typically agreed upon that prisons are useful and even necessary, but what is typically argued is who should oversee the prisons. There are two main beliefs, the first is that the government should control the prisons to ensure prisoners are treated in the appropriate manner, public prisons. The second viewpoint is that prisons should be run by private companies, private prison, which will help cut costs, because storing inmates is quite expensive. Although each side has valid arguments, neither is largely ideal. Private prisons are not regulated enough and public prisons are too expensive, so the ideal prison is a combination of the two. Private prisons are the base that the ideal system must be molded from and it must be molded by creating several laws. The government must create these laws ensuring the prisons do not purposely return inmates to society with the intentions that

The government imprisons criminals so they can rehabilitate, and to keep them off the streets. By throwing a felon behind bars it will not teach them to change their ways. Once they get out they will go back to old ways. Prison is just a living situation for criminals to house at until they finished serving their time.

Question: Discuss the history of the prison system in the United States. Be sure to identify the various stages that the American prison system has gone through. Also identify what problems were present with each stage as you see them.

Aside from the reasons listed above, there is a breakdown of the individual: prisoners learn to function in a system that aims to have total social control, which breaks down their ability to function outside of that system. They are separated from their families and limited in their communication to the outside world. Prisoners in maximum security facilities are restricted from socializing, such as in Pelican Bay, where all meals are eaten in the cells and outdoor time happens in tiny yards confined by 20-foot-high walls (Banks, 2013). These practices all have the effect on the socialization of prisoners who will have a more difficult time returning to society. In a word, they are dehumanized. In such confinement and limitation, they are not gaining soft skills, job training, or interpersonal skills that will help them thrive “on the outside”; instead, they may actually be losing those skills as they adapt to the environment they are in. This in turn exacerbates the problems that may have landed them in prison in the first place, such as lack of socio-economic opportunity, lack of education, anger management problems, absence of respect for human life, and so on. (That said, there are low-security prisons and jails that offer programming of this nature that I will analyze at another time). If we plan on sending millions of individuals back into society after exacerbating root problems that may have led to the initial crime, how can anyone pose the argument that prison protects the public?

Most of today’s prisons focus only on punishing criminals, and not rehabilitating them. This is why so many inmates struggle to reintegrate into society and end up being arrested multiple times throughout their life. If prisons increased their focus on rehabilitating criminals and preparing them for outside life when they are eventually released, more inmates would be able to get their life back on track and become productive members of society. Some other areas of the prison system that need attention include overcrowding, health care, and the education of prisoners. Improving the prison system will benefit inmates, their families, the economy, and the community around them. There are many issues with the

Prisons not only rehabilitate, but they also deter people from going to prison. The fear of going to prison is a great deterrence for a perspective criminal. Hard life styles along with loss of freedom tend to push the criminal away from the chance of being incarcerated. Numbers show that there are fewer rapes, and fewer murders, each year, all an obvious product of prison deterrence. After all, if a person has a friend who just got out of jail, and hears all of the war stories, that person would surely not want to go to prison and end up like his friend. By making life in prison hard, the prison is doing a great job in getting the word out. Prison is no joke! They are doing their job in deterring criminals from wanting to enter the gates of hell.

The question, why do people become criminals raise a lot of views when it comes down to personal, social and environmental factors. While many think that people become criminals due to the environment and people they have grown up around, other’s think it is due to mental illness or just out of pure enjoyment. The following report will discuss how a person’s environment can impact them to become vicious killers, particularly discussing the Ivan Milat, a serial killer based in Australia, known for the case of the “Backpacker murders”.

Convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning are just the first few steps of reducing crime. All the effort, time, and money that go into keeping criminals locked up and off the streets are really for nothing in the end if he or she commits the same crime again after release. James Haley, who is the book editor of “Prisons” points out, “Every year, close to six hundred thousand inmates are released from state and federal prisons around the country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, two-thirds of former convicts commit new crimes and one-half are re-incarcerated within three years of being released from prison” (138). Are US prisons truly effective when so many prisoners are committing new crimes upon release? It is for the better interests of American safety that some prisoners are locked up for life, but this should not include the constant return of re-offenders. The life of most convicts involves committing a crime and being sentenced to jail only to repeat the same process again. Many re-offenders see incarceration as a ticket to a place to sleep and food to eat.

People commit crimes for various reasons. These various reasons got to do with social, economic, and cultural reason. These factors trigger an individual to do criminal activities. Social reasons are peer pressure, and school failure. Economic reasons are poverty. Cultural reasons are hatred. The combination of these factors is behind a person who commits crimes.