Before parole becomes an option to an offender or an offender remains on parole, there are conditions and concepts and goals that must be practiced or met. Typical conditions influence parole as the inmate is released from prison. Truth-in-sentencing laws have goals in relations to parole.…
Mass incarceration started in the 1980s, when the war on drugs arose. The U.S. prison system is a failure on every level. There are a total of 2,418,352 federal and state prisons in the United States and 2.3 million people occupy them. According to California prison focus “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens”. The U.S. has more prisons than colleges. America also has private prisons owned by greedy corporate millionaires and billionaires.The more people in prison, the more money private prisons make. Tom Beasley, co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America(CCA) stated that “you just sell prisons like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers”. According to CCA they have nearly 5,500 acres of land, and 2,500 acres are undeveloped for future growth projects. That means they want to keep putting people in jail. There are 4,575 private prisons in the United States. According to NYU School of Law “ since 2000, the effect on the crime rate of increasing incarceration has been zero. Even though the crime rate has not gone down, the government continues to put people in jail. Private prisons have continued because they make millions of dollars off of owning private prisons, and putting people in jail. War on drugs was the beginning of mass incarceration. In the 1990’s state and federal prisons started exploding at the seams because of the increase in drug use and possession of it. The drug that made the huge impact on society was Cocaine, known as “crack”. Cocaine was a powder, which was known to be more sophisticated than crack. Crack was used in poor black communities. The biggest surge in the use of crack was between 1980s and 1990s. Black and latino communities were hit the hardest in the drug epidemic. There was a high…
To understand parole one needs to know what parole is and what it means. Parole is the status and early release of a convicted offender who has been conditionally releases from prison by a paroling authority before his or her sentence is expired. Parole and Probation have similar conditions. While an offender is on parole they have certain rules they need to follow. There is another form of parole which is Federal parole. Federal parole was determined by the Parole Board under the United Stated Parole Commission. Federal parole was changed after the Sentencing Reform Act. The Sentencing Reform Act was a part of the U.S. Federal statute that was intended to increase the consistency in the United States federal sentencing; this abolished federal parole all together. Parole was introduced by Brockway Zebulon in 1876 as a way to reduce jail overcrowding and as a way to rehabilitate offenders by encouraging them to win back their freedom with good behaviors. The role of parole was to reduce prison terms based on good behavior. Another role of probation was to supervise the convicted after being granted parole and grant freedom to those who had uncertain sentences. The reduction of jail terms after good and responsible behavior use to reduce indeterminate sentences. “There are 25 percent of inmates who are freed from prison are still paroled by the paroling authority, such as a parole board” (Schmalleger, F).…
When an inmate is released from prison on parole there are certain conditions that they have to follow such as not leaving the state and they have to obey extradition request from other jurisdictions. (Schmalleger, 2011). Once the inmate is placed on parole they are assigned a parole officer that they to visit on a regular basis and the parole officer will visit them and these visits will be at random. The parolees can be visited at home; work, and school, and they are also subjected to random drug and alcohol testing because as a condition of their parole they are not to use either. Even if a parolee is not using drugs and alcohol and is at home when the parole officer comes their parole can still be revocated if they have not found employment, which is a condition of parole within 30 days.…
Generally, the America public doesn't know what factors go into a judge’s decision when sentencing offenders. Keep in mind, judges have life experiences before becoming a judge such as how they were raised as an individual. Furthermore, they could have had experience with a particular crime, either a family member or someone close to them and personal feeling toward the offender. Yet, judges still have human tendencies but have to abide by some guidelines to determine their sentencing.…
Imagine a world of people who were accused on a crime they didn’t do but had to serve punishment because there was no way out of it. Being accused of committing a crime that was not attended but still being wrongfully convicted even with innocence has affected the United States as today. People should pay more attention to thousands of these wrongly convicted criminals because thousands of these suspects are unable to afford lawyers, lack the need of DNA testing & lawyers not doing their jobs correctly.…
Unfortunately there are many reasons to blame for this but one of the main reasons is the education level of the males that are being incarcerated. While this seems like an easy fix it is a problem that starts all the way back to conception, nutrition of the child as it grows, home life, and a host of other factors. A poor educational level gives them a poor foundation in which to build their life around and leads them to crime to fulfill their needs. Many times this pattern begins at an early age as a juvenile and progress up through adulthood, leading to the so call school to prison pipeline. A 2007 study by two civil rights organizations further demonstrated the government’s emphasis on incarceration over education. Researchers found “the U.S. spent almost $70 billion annually on incarceration, probation and parole.” This figure represented a 127% increase from 1987 to 2007, dramatically outpacing the funding for higher education during the same time period (Porter, 2015). In addition, Mothers who give birth to children in poor conditions have really set the child up to be disadvantaged from the very beginning. Poor conditions, lack of nourishment and the use of alcohol and or drugs are a common occurrence and it influences the outcome of the child, which impacts it later on it…
As human beings we come up with all kinds of ideas that we think may make the world a better place. One of the main problems we struggle with in society is to stop habitual criminals from going back into the system and lower the number of prisoners residing in over populated prisons. We hear all the time that these prisons do not give people a reason to not want to return as they pretty much have life made. I mean let’s think about it, they don’t have to work, and they watch television, have video game consoles, name brand clothing, as well as visits from family and friends, what would make them want to go back into…
First focusing on the state of California prison, they were forced back in 2011 to release about 3,000 inmates. An article wrote by Derek Gilna says “A government study revealed that overcrowding in the federal prison system worsened over the five-year period from 2006 through 2011, affecting facilities of all security levels.” California has the three-strikes laws, as an offender if you were caught three times committing the same crime the third time you are sentence to be in jail for a longer period of time. This might sound like a good plan until you have offenders that are serving five to ten years for petty theft, prostitution, reckless driving or trespassing. These are petty crime that can be handle with charges and probations. Yet, in…
The clear manifest function of the high incarceration rate, is to try to lock people that have committed crimes away, so they can not commit any more crimes. The problem with this is that over all in the United States it…
The United States has the largest prison population in the world (see Figure 1). “The United States contains less than five percent of the world’s population, but twenty-five percent of all those behind bars… one in every nine American prisoners is serving a sentence of life with little chance of parole.” (Blinder, 2015, p.3). On top of having the highest prison population, we also have to highest recidivism rates in the world. Recidivism refers to an offender recommitting a crime after they are released from prison. Our country has a criminal justice system that is more worried about punishing offenders instead of rehabilitating them.. According to the National Institute of Justice, “Within three years of release, about two-thirds (67.8 percent)…
Some say that this incarceration increase is due to the crackdown on drug users. Others say that it's due to the fact that sentenced offenders are more likely to be sent to prison for their crimes than ever before. I can only assume the reasons why our prisons are over-populated is because incarceration…
I think it takes an incredible amount of control for a person to admit to themselves their issues and correct them alone. It can be done but it is more likely assistance will be involved. I think today’s criminal justice system is not as efficient as it was created or intended to be. Whether or not it is the lack of funds or educated people to assist in the process, it needs improvement. The United States has the highest criminal standings and I think if we utilized the rehabilitation system correctly, we could reduce these statistics drastically. How does this get accomplished? Do we raise taxes again? Take more money away from schools? I cannot answer these questions alone but I feel without concentrating on this issue and offering criminals who deserve or have the right to the rehabilitation process, we will have a constant cycle of repeat offenders. I feel that our lack of aggressive punishments and strict rehabilitation is more or less giving the offenders an “option”. They do not fear the law and are not intimidated by the possible punishments. They know they will not lose a hand if they steal which is how other countries punish their thieves. We need to eliminate the “option” mentality and take control of our communities. If you commit a crime, you WILL do the…
Such sentencing laws include three-strike laws and truth-in-sentencing. Three-strike laws force sentences of twenty five years to life for people who commit three or more felonies.The truth-in-sentencing law mandates that prisoners serve most or all of their time (Whitehead). Such laws keep more people in prison for longer amounts of time. These laws result in overcrowded prisons and more prisoners in the U.S. than in any other country in the world. Although China has roughly 1 billion more people, America has more prisoners. Just since the 1970’s, the number of prisoners in America has increased drastically.…
It is true that many countries have been experiencing the growth of crime rate. In response many countries are building new prisons, but they are just increase the number of inmates instead of solving this problem. Perhaps, we need to look back at the roots of this issue and facing the possible causes.…