...Throughout the decades, studies have been conducted to address the question of whether prisons work. The prison is a system used by the State to punish criminals, which is justified by the concept of retributivism (proportional punishment) and crime reduction (Cavadino & Dignan 2007, p36; Pollock 2005, pp3-4). According to the actuarial perspective (Feeley & Simon 1992), prison works in certain circumstances, as it efficiently minimises risks to society by confining individuals of dangerous population for the purpose of social control. However, this risk-focused view of prison’s functionality is limited, as it lacks understanding of the imprisonment of vulnerable groups, since Actuarialism overlooks the cultural factors outside risk-calculations....
Words: 1053 - Pages: 5
...Johnson Correctional Officers' Experiences Summary Hello, we are Team D. Team D is a group of four members Jimmy Bolden, Deshonda Council, Michael Mosley, and Mahasolin Robinson. We see that this class have four questions to ask Team D. Deshonda Council will answer question 1 (How does the prison environment influence the way you ensure security and custody in your prison?). Michael Mosley will answer question 2 (What methods of secure custody do you use in your prison?). Mahasolin Robinson will answer question 3 (How do you ensure professionalism among the corrections staff?). Jimmy Bolden will answer question 4 (Do you work for a private or non-private prison? How do your daily work experiences differ from those of others according to the type of prison you work for?). 1. How does the prison environment influence the way you ensure security and custody in your prison? To ensure security and custody within our prison system, we as correctional officers handle maintaining and upholding the custody plus the safety of each inmate and the correctional officer that is in our prison system. As correctional officers, we are there to protect the integrity and safety of the prison system. In our correctional facility, the prisoner are classify according to their security needs such as, escape risk, prior records, and those who may have already spent time in and out of the penal system. Within our system, we have to watch constantly each inmate personal and body language...
Words: 1233 - Pages: 5
...offenders, protect the pubic, change an offender behavior, decrees crime in future and assure guilty people do something make up for crimes. How does judges judgment to person they find this person guilty? The judges look of kinds of crime and how this crime serious. Also, judges look about the law, the history of criminal, personal and financial circumstances. The judgment makes decisions independently of government. On the other hand, the judge or magistrate look about types of crime and how serious of crimes. For example, how much the victims harm and why the offender do that? Each of offenders has different sentences judge or magistrate depend about types of crime. Because it is not fair offender people have the same sentences. For example, is this person first time he or she do crimes? And is person confine his or her crime early? What are the types of sentences? The sentences have four types discharge, fine, community sentences and prison sentences. Frist type is discharge. When the court determine somebody is guilty, but do not...
Words: 1449 - Pages: 6
...Prison Work Release Does it help in recidivism? The reason I choose to write on this topic is to explain the work release program in prison for recidivism. In addition, while working in corrections I worked at a work release center. While these issues among the general public is somewhat complex, the program itself is fairly straightforward. Prison work release allows an inmate in custody with the Department of Corrections to live at a prison work release center and to go out in the community independently and find employment. The Department of Corrections does not find jobs for the inmates. The inmate must search for jobs and interview like anyone else looking for a job. Inmates walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transportation to look for a job. Once they obtain a job they use the same methods to get to their job. The Department of Corrections also does not pay for the use of public transportation. In order to find employment some centers require inmates to buy a bus pass that is valid for at least one month. However, since most inmates do not have any money to buy a bus pass they rely on family or anybody they can convince to send them money. The general public is somewhat leery about allowing inmates to be free to work with the general public. Sometimes when a person of the general public learns that an inmate is working at a restaurant they patronize they won’t return to the establishment. Some people might wonder what the purpose of it is. Will it prevent the offender...
Words: 2285 - Pages: 10
...History of the United States Prison Marshall Keese Introduction to Criminal Justice CRJ-100-201103 05/14/2011 Instructor: Andrew Blank History of the United States Prison Introduction This research paper is on the history of the prison in America. How it came to be in its present state? Things I will be writing about in this paper are the early history of the prison history in England. I will be talking about early American prisons, the goal of rehabilitation, prison labor, changes in the prison system, rehab programs, population, housing and prison organization we will hit briefly on all those aspects of the history of prisons. The reasoning behind this paper is because many people do not know why prison are the way they are now. In order to know why we have prisons the way we have them today you have to know where they came from. The main findings from my paper are from the internet. Articles that I read for this are Towards a Fair and Balanced Assessment of Supermax Prisons by Daniel P. Mears and Jamie Watson. The textbook Twelfth Edition Introduction to Criminal Justice Author Larry Siegel Chapter 16. Prison Reform in Pennsylvania by Norman Johnston P.H.D Board member Emeritus of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Wikipedia. The short History of Prison by the Howard League for Penal Reform. These articles helped me to understand how we have the prison system today. I found that...
Words: 1951 - Pages: 8
...CUSTODIAL AND NON-CUSTODIAL MEASURES The Prison System Criminal justice assessment toolkit 1 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME Vienna CUSTODIAL AND NON-CUSTODIAL MEASURES The Prison System Criminal Justice Assessment Toolkit UNITED NATIONS New York, 2006 The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations, the Secretariat and Institutions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Belgian 2006 OSCE Chairmanship concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. This publication has not been formally edited. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUE ..................................................................................... 1 2. OVERVIEW: GENERAL AND STATISTICAL DATA ......................................................... 5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 OVERVIEW OF COUNTRY AND PRISON SYSTEM.............................................. 5 PRISON POPULATION ........................................................................................... 6 PROFILE OF PRISON POPULATION..................................................................... 6 QUALITY OF DATA ......................................
Words: 26294 - Pages: 106
...that work in its field of correctional officers to be the most challenging and frustrating component of criminal justice. There is the challenge of managing the inmates daily as well as the frustrations of inevitable mismanagement at attempting to accomplish multiple goals. New challenges present themselves every day. In a very real sense, employees in a correctional system are doing time the same as the inmates are doing time. It's easy to conduct a trial and sentence somebody (Alighieri, 2004). What corrections find more difficult is what to do with these inmates after they have been sentenced for five, ten and life in prison. Much of corrections is completed is a big range because of its endless amount of prisoners that are sentenced to prison each day. An issue that also occurs in corrections is the cost of operating a correctional facility. To operate a prison each year it can cost approximately thirty billion dollars. This includes correctional officer workers, administrations that work in the correctional facility. Housing, feeding, and clothing an inmate can start from twenty thousand dollars a year and the number can grow to almost thirty thousand, all of the funds are provided from tax payers. Therefore with all of these numbers in place to pay workers and take care of the inmates, many correctional facilities continue to cut employment to save money, and with cutting money the job loads are extremely heavier on correctional workers because they must work harder...
Words: 803 - Pages: 4
...n this article Albert "Prodigy" Johnson talks about when he was in prison they didn't have the proper nutritional items they needed to be healthy in prison. He talked about the struggles he has with sickle cell and if he didn't work out and eat properly he would get very sick and possibly die. He decided after struggling with eating poorly, he would find ways to make things so, he would not get sick. He talks about how they do not have access to everything like a chef or someone at home would have. They only have one microwave, one toaster oven, and they have to share these with other inmates which is around 30-40 in the day room. They also do not have knifes to cut things with, so they use can lids to help cut food. in this article Prodigy...
Words: 505 - Pages: 3
...Jail and Prisons Comparison Paper By SARAH 2/16/2015 There are several differences between jails and prisons. Some people today, do not know what these differences are because they are unaware of how procedures work on the inside. Those who do know how prison and jails are related have been acquainted with this type of atmosphere or have played a role in being locked up. This paper is designed to show those who do not know how prison and jails work on a daily basis. . Jails are the first place most criminals go when they commit a crime. Officers are required to place suspected criminals into the back of their cars with handcuffs attached to their wrist. Transferring suspected criminals can be a hassle for some law enforcement officials because of how these criminals act in most cases. Once they are transferred, they are booked, finger printed and are placed into a holding facility. Seiter (2011), states that the normal stay in US jails is around 15-20 days, but some may stay longer based on their circumstance. Seiter(2011) also states jails are correctional facilities that are used in keeping offenders before they can be judged in a court of law as the suspect awaits verdict. Depending on their crime, suspects are held without bail or with bail before being placed before a judge. Others have to wait a certain amount of hours before leaving if they are placed in jail because of dui or dwi. When going before a judge, criminals who are convicted will either go...
Words: 1110 - Pages: 5
...The company that I am writing about is Phillips State Prison. The prison has been around for many years. I am currently an employee of this company. The company is operated by the Department of Corrections which is a security organization. The prison is a male facility and consists of 10 living units, each with two dormitories. The number of units with two-man cells is seven and a half while the remainder is a combination of two single-man cells. The combination two-single man cells houses MH/SM offenders. There are a total of 100 isolation/segregation cells. The Phillips State Prison Transitional Center has 200 beds. The mission of this facility is to ensure public safety and effectively house offenders while operating a safe and secure facility by housing offenders who have had management problems at other prisons or centers and those who could pose a risk if housed elsewhere. It provides all levels of Mental Health service to include Level IV, Crisis Stabilization. (Sex Offender Release Site) Host facility for Davis PDC and Phillips TC. The company’s strengths are preventing escapes and providing the proper accountability to count and track inmates in every move they make. The first strength that I would like to discuss is preventing escapes. The company does an excellent job in preventing escapes. They have great staff that works together as a team to come together to track the inmates. They have an accountability roster to sign each offender in and out. On this roster...
Words: 1115 - Pages: 5
...Men, women, and juveniles were all held in the same prisons in the United States prior to 1800. They were all treated the same and they were cramped and were expected to do work like laundry, cooking, and cleaning. The Indiana State Reformatory built a separate prison for women in 1873 and then Massachusetts and New York followed shortly after. The women prisons were built in a different design giving them a more spacious environment and better commodities. The treatment of the women was different from the men and referred to as “ladies”. Most of the women’s prisons incorporated labor into their daily activities which were considered to be normal, such as laundry, sewing, cleaning, and cooking. In today’s prisons women are just like all the regular prisons and some of them hold women and men in the same building but separate. The juveniles were kept in the prison with the men and women before 1800, also. The argument in regards to the children was that the normal practices were too harsh for them. They expected the children to perform the same task as the adults and this sometimes was impossible for them to do. Officials thought the treatment of the children was too cruel and unacceptable because at that stage in their lives they were still developing and they could be reformed more easily. They also argued that the children were not as mentally strong to take the harsh treatment they were receiving in the prisons with adults. They also argued that the juveniles...
Words: 642 - Pages: 3
...Comparison of Jails and Prisons Jail is usually the first place a criminals go once arrested by law enforcement. “Jails hold only about one-tenth of all offenders under correctional supervision, yet admit approximately four times as many offenders each year as all other correctional components combined” (, ). Jails intentions are to protect the public and citizens of each county by housing criminals and keep them off the streets. Majority of people cannot tell the difference when people say a criminal goes to jail when in reality he should be going to prison. There is confusion with serving time in jails and prisons. Jails are local operational correctional facilities that detain accused criminals before or after a judgment or verdict (Seiter, R., 2011). Jails usually house these criminals for no more than a year. The difference between jails and prisons is that jails are for short sentences oppose to prisons were criminals usually are incarcerated for longer periods. “The average length of stay for a jail is fifteen to twenty days, much less than the average thirty-six month length of stay within a prison”( Seiter, R., 2011p.78 p.2). Sheriffs usually operate the county jails in the different counties of each state and serve as holding of inmates before sentenced. When criminals arrested, get to the jail they will get booked, wait until they receive their sentence or bail out of jail, and await trial. Those criminals that cannot afford to post bail usually stay in...
Words: 1213 - Pages: 5
...Society Prisons are facilities to keep convicted criminals from committing crimes and to rehabilitate offenders while keeping them isolated from society. As there are more crimes committed, there are more criminals in this world causing prison facilities to overcrowd. In turn, this costs the government a significant amount of money to keep these prisoners maintained. One of the main reasons for why many prisons have become so overcrowded is because of many state laws and many parole practices. The need for an alternative route for prisoners has grown immensely. Some examples of alternative routes include parole, community service, and house arrest. Alternatives can reduce the amount of criminals in a prison facility and can help the community tremendously. The use of alternatives can not only help us as citizens, but also give prisoners another way of life. Prison systems should help society and resolve the prison from overcrowding by considering alternatives that currently exist and by considering newly proposed ideas. Prison Growth There are crimes being committed everyday and there is nothing to do to keep those crimes from being committed those crimes. As there are more crimes being committed, this means there are more and more criminals being caught by police officials. Then, those criminals are booked into a facility where they cannot commit those crimes again for the period of their sentencing. As more and more criminals are being caught, this causes prison facilities...
Words: 3255 - Pages: 14
...Prison System Comparison The purpose of state prisons and federal prisons is to confine offenders who commit an illegal act (breaking the law) against society. State prisons are for offenders who commit a criminal act or acts within that particular state. The federal prisons are for offenders who commit white-collar crimes, for political criminals, illegal aliens, and such. Both the state prisons and the federal prisons have different levels of security, depending on the crime committed and the seriousness of the crime- causing physical harm to someone or self, murder, rape, drug trafficking, and so on. The state prisons and the federal prisons considers the institutional needs of each inmate, called the initial classification, a determination on the level of security an inmate needs. Classification “determines what prison he will be sent to, what security level he will be housed in, what his work assignment will be, and what programs he will be allowed to take part in,” (Foster, 2006, p. 160). State prisons hold the majority of inmates compared to that of the federal prisons, at various levels of security. These levels of security include open security facilities to super-maximum security prison, differing slightly between the state prisons and the federal prisons. Both the state and the federal prisons deal with overcrowdings and inmates and staff suffer with safety and health issues. Because of the “War on Drugs,” more, and more people are sent to prison serving...
Words: 1193 - Pages: 5
...the events of the rebellions inside the prisons of Brazil that, in fifteen days, left one hundred and thirty people dead. These rebellions occurred in ten different prisons which are located in eight different states: Alagoas, Amazonas, Paraíba, Paraná, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Norte and Roraima. Brazil, today, is the second leading country to have the most arrests in the past fifteen years, and has the fourth largest prison population in the world (Welle). Overcrowding and recurrent committing of crimes are the two contributing factors to these rebellions. One of the biggest problems with the Brazilian prisons...
Words: 1275 - Pages: 6
