Theme Of Incarceration

Rap has been around for thousands of years, recently acquiring a more hip-hop like sound, focusing on content, flow and delivery. Many rap songs contain the themes of gangs, violence, drugs and crime. Immortal Technique, a rapper who grew up on the streets of New York, wrote a song called “Dance With The Devil” with all of these themes present. The song tells a somber story about a young man getting involved with gangs and trying to prove himself by selling drugs, stealing, getting in fights, and eventually raping a woman. Incarceration does not necessarily have an effect on criminals, which is shown in this song, and effective programs can be created to help prevent recidivism. Growing up in a rough neighborhood can cause young kids to fall
Recently, the use of solitary confinement has increased drastically. This extreme form of imprisonment causes psychiatric harm and lack of tolerance for social interactions. With very limited access to friends and family, prisoners feel shut out of the rest of the world. Surrounded by other criminals and gang members, these are the type of people they turn to. Prison is a place of isolation which cultivates anti-social criminals, making reentry into society even more of a struggle for them. Released criminals have a hard time interacting with other people outside of prison because all of their interactions while in prison are with people similar to themselves. Without civilized people to learn from while imprisoned, it is an issue for them to understand how the outside culture runs. Attempting to gather their life back together can be a challenge due to the many differences of between criminal life and civilization. Without the correct assistance, the offender often resorts back to the criminal lifestyle because they are more comfortable with it. Recidivism also occurs because it is free for the incarcerated. People living a hard life with little money or a place to live, sometimes fall back to imprisonment. While prison is not the nicest place to live, food, shelter and even television is provided to them for free. For a person with nothing, this can lead them to committing crimes and a jail sentence.
Including people on probation or parole, these numbers jump to one in thirty-two adults under a type of correctional control. With these numbers so high, it is not surprising that recidivism is also very high. To keep up with the rapidly rising prison populations, governments continue to spend more on correctional facilities. Even so, recidivism rates still remain high, and have actually increased in some states. Nationally, about forty percent of criminals return to prison within three years of release. In New Hampshire and South Carolina, recidivism rates within three years of discharge have increased by 10% and 18% respectively. It is clear that with such high numbers, the current prison situation is not having enough of effect on the criminals that pass through