On October 8th we visited Fresno County Jail. Fresno County Jail is ran by the Fresno County Sheriffs Office. According to the visitation there is not one specific watch commander, there are several different individuals that are watch commander which is dependent on the shift. The head of the agency or director is Sheriff Margaret Mims. The inmates at this particular institution are supervised by approximately 350 individuals ranging from correctional officers, sergeants, and lieutenants. As defined by Fresno county it is the Correctional Sergeants duty to act as a lead supervisor for one or more functional work areas. Correctional Sergeants then report to Correctional Lieutenants who serve as a watch commander for an assigned work shift. Correctional Lieutenants are also the first management level classification within the correctional officer classification series. This particular jail is used to detain individuals awaiting court appearance, and to house convicted inmates sentenced to serve terms in the local jail. As I am writing this paper the current population is 2,639 where only 231 of those are female inmates. There are currently 959 sentenced inmates in the jail, and 1680 are considered to be “pretrial”.…
In chapter 9 of Corrections in America, the author summarizes the security and custody functions within a correctional facility, various treatment programs, and treatment issues associated with inmate health care. This chapter also explains how inmate needs are identified and how prison programs can lessen recidivism.…
This one problem has led to additional problems both inside correctional facilities and outside in society. For example, when overcrowding occurs and is capped at the state level, prisoners sentenced to the department of corrections remain in the county jail until a bed becomes available but in most cases the county jails are full. In many instances, the jails are under a court order capping jail population, and pressure is brought to bear on the court system to reduce the flow of offenders sentenced to incarceration. As a result, more serious offenders with fewer convictions or career criminals who manage the system effectively are given probation, and first offenders and less serious offenders with longer records are incarcerated (Muraskin & Roberts, Pg.…
In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens opens with an anaphora, about how the world is throughout the novel. A reoccurring theme throughout this story is the battle between good and evil. Most of the novel is about the struggles each force has and how most of the time good triumphs over evil. In A Tale of Two Cities, the triumph of love, the death of the Marquis, and the contrast between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay shows how good triumphed over evil.…
Stern’s (2006) book, “Creating Criminals: Prisons and People in a Market Society”, gives us the black and white truth about important topics that are not usually talked about in the media, nor acknowledged by most in American society. The author explains that she is in no way defending criminals with her literature, rather researching and informing society about the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system and the market society. She argues that many policies go in favor towards those who have money, leaving people who don’t have money behind, which ultimately leads to creating criminals. She explains the dangers of overcrowded prisons, who are the people more likely to be imprisoned, and the role of a market society within…
The purpose of the artwork is to show that African American men and women are overrepresented in the prison population. The piece represents the silencing of the incarcerated men, who were stripped of many rights. The Artist uses tar to symbolize the silencing of these individuals. Titus Kaphar also wants to shed light on the fact that so many African American children have fathers in the penitentiary system. He personally experienced not being able to find his father because the prison systems are overflowing with black men. Any of those men could be his father and he wanted to express to his audience the injustices of the penitentiary.…
The Department of Corrections (DOC), privately owned jails, parish jails, and local city jails not only face the hardship of maintaining inmate property, specific calorie counts from meals provided, medicine dispensing, doctor visits, and numerous other tasks required that Corrections Officers tend to on a typical day of work, but these facilities also face the hardship of retaining these…
The civil rights movement was based around one thing and that was equality. As African Americans fought for their equal rights men were the face and voices of the movement. Women had to fight for equality while being discriminated against by white people and black men. African American women were at a disadvantage for being black and for being women.…
Prisons are already filled beyond maximum capacity, and we continue to keep incarcerating more people. What can be done to end the problem of prison overcrowding and maintain the safety of the public? I chose this topic because I wanted to shine a light on what I consider to be an injustice. I believe that the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul. When I chose this topic, I wasn’t fully aware of the mandatory sentencing guidelines or how harsh they were. I always believed that judges had more leeway in deciding sentencing. Originally, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of criminal corporal punishment, because I believed it was cruel and something that other less civilized countries would do, not America. I believe that the prison overcrowding problem can be resolved by changing our laws regarding nonviolent offenders, abolishing the mandatory sentencing guidelines and using alternative solutions that do not involve incarceration.…
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…
From the mid-1980s drug offenses increased primarily due to the pressure put on by the war on drugs (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014). This has contributed to overcrowding of prisons across America. In order to ease the overcrowding in prisons, rehabilitation through court sentenced drug treatment programs is a practical and economical alternative. Assigning offenders to applicable drug treatment programs would decrease overcrowding caused by drug offenses, lower recidivism rates, and provide savings for the criminal justice system.…
Overcrowding in prisons is one of the biggest challenges facing the American criminal justice system today. The total population of prisons and jails in the United States neared the 2.1 million mark in June 2003, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S residents was incarcerated in prison or in jail. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s state and local governments got tougher on crime by passing legislation calling for mandatory sentences for repeat offenders, such as California’s “three strikes you’re out” law and New York and other cities adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Because of these polices the number of violent crimes has dropped. Unfortunately, one unintended consequence of America’s new tough stance on crime is that our prison system has become dangerously overcrowded, forcing prison officials to release violent criminals after serving only a fraction of their sentences. The current system used to relieve overcrowding has created a “revolving door” criminal justice system. The recidivism rate among those released early from state and county prisons is extremely high. In fact, a Department of Justice study found that 67.5 percent of criminals released from prison were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years (USDOJ, 2013). A Large portion of the overcrowded conditions in the prison system is a result of the” war on drugs”. This war alone costs taxpayers a large amount of money each year because new prisons are needed to be constructed to house the ever-growing…
Incarceration rates have dramatically increased in the United States than in anywhere else in the world. In fact, according to “Incarceration nation,” America has about 707,000 incarcerated people compared to Russia, who has about 474,000 people. Not only has this caused a problem inside the prison walls, it has also increased economic situations for stakeholders.The recent increase in incarceration rates has had negative effects on the United States economy by causing an increase in expenditure on prisons that could be better used for education. This increase in incarceration rates has also led to overcrowding in prisons, leading to unsuitable conditions for prisoners and prison workers.…
The United States has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world with currently 2.2 million people in US prison and jails – a 500% increase over the last forty years. According to The Sentencing Policy, changes in sentencing and law policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. This has resulted in overcrowding in prisons and has become a financial burden on states because they have to adjust to the growing prison system, even though it has been found that high incarceration is not an effective way to achieve public safety.…
It’s easy to forget that America has a mass incarceration problem. We keep prisoners behind bars, walls, and barbed wire, far from the rest of us. In their own little world, a world closely monitored by armed guards. Physical and social walls isolate them from the rest of us, all two million of them. You read that right! Roughly two million people are imprisoned in some way across America. Despite them having more incarcerated people than any other nation, the system is deeply flawed and in desperate need of changes. These issues is affecting 1 in 100 Americans daily, so it’s time they are addressed.…