Preview

Us Prison System

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
486 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Us Prison System
DeAndre Fontenot & kaestazia middleton
Dr. Richardson
LLS 1333
January 29, 2013
The U.S. Prison System The U.S. prison system was designed for a couple of reasons. First to keep cruel people off the streets and to punish people who have committed a crime. Next is Justice for the victims that have been violated, also revenge. Finally is to detest other crimes by setting sentence minimums and to rehabilitate people so they will come out a better person. It has changed a lot in the past 30 years due to the drug epidemic. 60% of people incarcerated are there for non-violent crimes. America is actually safer now then it was 30 years ago. For the first time more than one in 100 American adults are locked up. One in 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated along with one in 15 blacks. One in 355 white women along with one in 100 black women. The U.S. locks up more people than any other country in the world. The incarceration rate in the U.S. has sky rocketed since 1980 when it was 200,000, the rate in 2008 is almost 800,000. The U.S. incarceration rate is way higher than every other country. China is in second with 1.5 million people locked up. The rate is higher than even the most dangerous countries because of all the criminals that were arrested for committing nonviolent crimes. The U.S. incarceration rate is 3 times more than Poland’s. The system for rehabilitation works well for a lot of inmates. It helps keep them from being a statistic and returning to jail in 2 to 3 years. It prevents inmates from doing drugs when they get out; they sit and talk others that are going through something similar to them. They interact and learn from each other so when they get out they end up being a better person. Facts show that there should be more rehabilitation programs, many work and have positive turn outs. The lessons learned from police vs. jailing criminals are that police are really cracking down on people using and selling drugs. They are enforcing the three strike

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    In this country we incarcerate 730 in 100,000 people that is the highest ratio other than Russia. Inmates in most prisons…

    • 2667 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Since the 1970s the rate of incarceration in the United States has quadrupled, after having been relatively flat over the prior half-century.”-Anthony Zurcher. The rate of prison incarcerations has increased so much over the years; the government can’t afford to incarcerate that many people. Karen Thomas’s article “Time to Invest in Schools, Note Prisons” shows that United States incarcerates too many criminals violent and non-violent. Joan Petersilia said in her article “Beyond the Prison Bubble” that, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation. This also supports the idea that The United States incarcerates too many people.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Justice System Failing

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Senator Jim Webb writes in Clear and Frost’s article, “ America’s Criminal Justice System has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace.” And that is the truth. The criminal justice system has many flaws that need to be fixed. There are several issues that need to be handled and dealt with properly. Tweaks need to be made to ensure that criminals are sentenced properly. But the way that criminals are picked out and failed by the system is preposterous. Although the Justice System establishes rules and makes sense out of chaos, the justice system needs reform because 25% of the nation is incarcerated, there are more drug users than murderers or serial offenders, and there are private prisons that…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Contraband In Prisons

    • 977 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The United States Prison System has been around for hundreds of years. They house some of the United States’ worst people. This would include individuals convicted of crimes such as murder to the lowest crime of petit theft. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has put the spotlight on terrorism worldwide. Most people in society do not realize that the U.S. Prison System could be one of the biggest breeding grounds for terrorism and terrorism recruiting. In addition to that, the introduction of contraband has been an ongoing battle.…

    • 977 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The United States of America promotes itself as the land of the free but, is it truly free? People believe what they see or are told without actually giving it thought, as the saying goes, “See no evil, hear no evil.” The people of today have been brainwashed to believe that what the media portrays is fact and that’s all there is to it. We are aware of what life can be like in other countries, and compare it to the United States to give ourselves the illusion that we are free. Although it may be true that we have more freedom than other nations, it is not true that the United States is an absolutely free nation. The incarceration rates of this country are devastatingly high that the prison system operates more like a business than as a correction…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Incarceration Problem

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The prison system in the united states has some very serious problems, some of these being the sheer number of people that we incarcerate in this country the highest percentage in the world. The incarceration rate impacts racial minorities much more that the percent of the population that these minorities make up in the population. Also the sheer cost of the mass incarceration costs taxpayers in the United states is huge. But looking at these problems for a sociological perspective can help you understand them better.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    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)…

    • 199 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In our prison system today there are state and federal prisons throughout the United States. Our prison system is based on the created of the nineteenth century prisons that were used. Prisons confined felons serving sentences longer than a year and those sentence to less than a year stayed in jails. Prisons had a long term goals to provide inmates with a spiritual and human atmosphere were before the conditions in prisons were inhumane with horrible living conditions. The number of prisons in each state today, range from “Three in North Dakota to over 100 in Texas.” (Foster. 2006, p.123) many of the states started their prisons systems with penitentiary, and institution operated using the Auburn model and then continued to build additional as the population started to increase. (Foster, 2006, p.123)…

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Federal Prison System

    • 1528 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In the United States of America, the federal and state governments should share some power, while completely controlling others. Certain responsibilities have acquired traits that can only be provided for by the federal government, such as a national defense system. To run and maintain a standing military it takes an incredible amount of resources and manpower, as well as high-levels of leadership. However, there are other areas of policy that the states should control. The process of judicial hearings and incarceration should belong solely to the state government. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and at least 60% of all inmates in the U.S. are affected by some degree of mental illness. The variety of…

    • 1528 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Federal Prison System

    • 2164 Words
    • 9 Pages

    hanging to lethal injections, the purpose of the prison system still remains the same. It holds as a…

    • 2164 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is first important to take a close look at the crime rate occurring in America. The United States has more citizens in prison than any other country. The incarceration rate of the U.S. is second only to Russia with 666 incarcerated per 100,000. The U.S. constitutes one third of the world 's population that is imprisoned while it only makes up five percent population. (Father 's Manifesto) The criminal legal system is slightly different in every state. For example, only thirty eight states practice capital punishment while the other twelve employ life imprisonment with no parole as an alternative to putting serious offenders to death. The death penalty in the United states is one of the most criticized policies in American society. Under the Constitution 's eighth…

    • 1329 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I think prison should punish because they learn from their mistakes and the prisoners will think twice about committing crime again. For example when I was growing up I was raised in an African home where punishment for wrong doing was the believe of my parents. When my mom tells me not to go somewhere or do something and she finds out that I did it. There is no rehabilitation or warning. I get punished. I learned not to take her for granted because she believed punishment will make you learn faster than anything else. I feel like the love for freedom should keep them in the straight and narrow. I feel like we have been talking about rehabilitation but we are still building prisons because the offenders are not learning from their mistakes. They need have the Arizona law all over the united states for aggressive and violent offenders, I think that will definitely make a difference in…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    reduce crime

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages

    There are 3,365 jails in America, that’s not counting state and federal prisons. Incarceration is one of the main reasons in which crime is down because, criminals are afraid of going to jail or prison. On average 3,000 people go to jail a day in the US. The thought of prison should make people stop committing crimes. People who go to jail usually end up serving 85% of the time you are sentenced and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re getting sent to a federal prison that’s a whole different story, good luck!…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Punishing criminals by putting them in a correctional facility such as prisons can be successful in repenting the criminal as they would reflect on their own actions, allowing the guilt to make them better people, probably even seeing their own faults through other prisoners. Prisons give criminals a chance to rehabilitate themselves by using the facilities there present such as the counseling and seminars given. The fact that prisons house a lot of criminals that associate with each other has created a "criminal community", an atmosphere where crime inhibits; therefore criminals can only aid each other out to become better "crims", learning the tricks of the trade as well as toughening each other up through the highly abusive nature of the criminals there. Health wise, prisons can highly be dangerous and lethal to the prisoners; such diseases as AIDS from homosexual relationships and drug use is prevalent, as well as male rape, and even female rape, even some become mentally insane. In general however, prisons aren't a nice place to be.…

    • 1779 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    One thing is clear - there are far too many people in American prisons. There are far too many 'criminals ' in prison despite the fact that they pose no significant threat to society. As a result - otherwise productive citizens are sitting in a jail cell costing taxpayers money to look after.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays