The Prison System

The Improvement of the Prison System When someone gets put into prison most people see it as a time to punish that individual for the offense they were put there for. As knowledge of how these prisoners live becomes more public information, and argument has arisen on whether they are placed in prison for punishment or for rehabilitation. The prison system should be used for rehabilitation. Everyday life of an inmate is miserable for most of them. Some of the prisoners have regrets, others just look forward to returning to their life of crime, and a very few amount seem to just try to stay positive and live productively during their time inside (Dodd Jr). The overall effects of the inmates are that most of them develop what is known
When a prisoner is in need of medical treatment the medical professionals do not give all the treatment that is needed. The doctors do not care about the people or the medicine to actually help the prisoners in need. “It could be better if they had proper supervision and employees who cared, rather than milked the government for a paycheck.” (Dodd Jr). Along with the little physical mental care, there is also very little for mental health care, which is normally where they prisoners suffer the most. Being kept in regular a regular cell which is staying in there all day only interaction with guards some other inmates causes many psychological problems, but being kept in confinement creates a specific set of psychologically problems. The problem with that is there is a raising number of prisoners kept in confinement. It is proven that when someone is put in confinement there is an unhealthy level of social deprivation. The indefinite amount of time that a prisoner is kept there also adds to the psychological trauma. This confinement along with just regular life in a super-max prison may disable prisoners for free world reintegration. There are many negative psychological effects from long-term solitary- like confinement such as, impaired sense of identity, which is when the prisoner no longer knows who they are as a person, there is also hypersensitivity to stimuli, this is when
When a guard talks about his job the most common word used is stressful. The prison guards often have person conflicts due to their work and the types of people they work with. Statistics show that they have a very high suicide rate, due to the stress and personal conflicts from their jobs. To justify how they treat prisoners, they put it in their minds that the prisoners are less than human, and treat them less than human. Most of the guards develop a condition referred to as “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a mechanism where a guard initially feels bad about the way they have to treat the prisoners, and because they cannot stop feeling so badly about it they begin to justify the treatment with negative thoughts such as, “they deserve it,” and, “they are animals.” Once the guards are in this state of mind they tend to treat the prisoners worse than before. They start internationally doing things to intimidate and irritate the prisoners