...in the number of people incarcerated in correctional institutions. An issue that continues to arise is related to low levels of education and skills prior to and upon release from prison. “Ninety-five percent of American prisoners will eventually be released back into society and will either continue their past criminal behaviors or adopt new, socially acceptable lifestyles. (Scott 148) Gaining an education has been associated as a major factor in tackling the social and psychological needs of prisoners. One of the main objectives is to change the inmates’ attitudes regarding work and responsibility; and also prepare inmates for the competitive job market they will face upon release. In the end, with education programs we should be able to reduce the recidivism rate. 2. Key Issue Discussion In general education, specifically college education, is required in today’s labor market....
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...importance of any correctional facility’s physical plant to the fulfillment of particular objectives has been long recognized. Historically, correctional facilities have been the architectural expression of competing philosophies of incarceration of the time. In the 18th century, when incarceration was instituted as the primary form of punishment in western societies, the prison itself became the means of punishment. As the prevailing punishment method, early purpose-built correctional design reflected punitive patterns reproducing ideals of enforced solitude and intimidation. Prison reform movements at the end of the century and beginning of the 19th century were also followed by reform-oriented design concepts, with the “separate and silent systems” (Pennsylvania and Auburn models respectively), being two of the first architectural manifestations in which the design of the prison building and the availability of space became a factor impacting the reformative potential of the offenders through isolation and labor, therefore including separate cells and larger spatial configurations where prisoners could work together. Although today’s goals of incarceration have little in common with those of centuries ago, with few exceptions, the architecture of incarceration has remained largely standardized...
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...Corrections releases prisoners on a daily bases. The time that these prisoners spend within the four walls of a prison cell varies by years. Once released a large percentage of them end up back in prison because they lack the skills needed to function successfully in society. The other problem that they encounter is being able to find a job. Many job applications today ask if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony, those that must answer yes are given less job opportunities than those that have not. Also, if they have been convicted of a felony it becomes part of their permanent record and when a place of employment completes a background check this individuals felony shows up. Released prisoners going back to...
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...A person with a mental disability can act uncontrollably at times, causing them to commit a crime. In the United States, people with mental illnesses have been confined in jails and prisons between 1770 and 1820. Incarcerating such people was considered inhumane, so mentally ill people were placed into hospitals instead of jails up until 1970. Ever since the 1970s, people with mental disorders are being imprisoned for their crimes(Torrey). America once considered incarcerating the mentally ill to be inhumane, but then they suddenly changed their mind and have considered it to be legal. Ever since the 1970s, numbers of imprisoned people with mental illnesses has exponentially increased, “In 2012, there were estimated to be 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in prisons and jails. There were also approximately 35,000 patients with severe mental illness in state psychiatric hospitals”(Torrey). There is approximately ten...
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...Prisons have seen an increase in population largely due to the War on drugs (Austin, et al., 2001). The highest majority have been males, however the female population has increased as well. Nearly 1.5 million children have a least one parent incarcerate ( Austin, et al. ,2001). Incarceration rates have risen steadily since the 1980's. Many of the reasons stated are income equality, low levels of trust and legitimacy, weak welfare states, politicized criminal justice system and conflict in the criminal culture. ( Bohm and Haley, 2011). The number of inmates has been increasing steadily in prisons from 329,821 inmates at the end of 1980 to over 126% increase in the early 1990's. Also in local community jails the number of inmates increased 89% from 1982 to June 2009 ( Bohm and Haley, 2011)....
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...What are the best practices for services and programming available for prisoners? Introduction There are about 2.3 million people currently in the nation’s prisons and jails. (that would be 1 in 10 Americans). The US leads the world in mass incarceration. The US has more people in jail than China and Russia combined. (Stern, 2014). The majority of people would relate punishment with prison. And they are not far from the truth as prisons are facilities that give retribution to people for their bad choices, and deter them from committing new crimes. However, the majority of prisons also offer social services to prisoners so when they leave, they have the needed instruments to reintegrate into society. Most prisons offer numerous programs...
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...Prison labor is a form of legal slavery or involuntary servitude among prisoners in state penitentiaries. Prison labor is explicitly permitted by the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution that serves as a punishment for the action of committing a crime (U.S. Const. amend. XIII). Prison labor is the re-enslavement of Americans, that has largely discriminated against African Americans and other minorities. There is legislation associated with the increase of prison populations that has mainly targeted African Americans, including but not limited to mass incarceration through the War on Drugs and the use mandatory minimums. The War on Drugs, implemented by Richard Nixon’s administration, expedited the disproportionate mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos for mandatory minimums relating to drug-related crimes (drugpolicy.com)....
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...Community Corrections or Incarceration Are community corrections a better solution than incarceration? Michelle Brooks ITT Technical Institute Community Corrections or Incarceration Abstract In this research paper will read about different subjects and topics that pertain to incarceration and community corrections. The incarceration rate is going up in the United States while at the same time community corrections is slowly fading away because of limited support from the local communities and government officials within each state. In this research I hope to find out those community corrections has more to offer than incarceration. In conclusion incarceration is not the right way but community corrections will be. Community Corrections or Incarceration Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Background on Community Corrections Background on Incarceration Effectives of Community Corrections Effectives of Incarceration Programs dealing with Community Corrections Programs while Incarcerated Theory Interview with Mr. Sharron Wilson Result Reference Page Community Corrections or Incarceration Introduction Community Corrections is a better solution than incarceration because it offers many different alternative programs for several different types of offenders. Incarceration also offers similar programs...
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...Introduction The prison system in America has been a constant issue of mass-incarceration, a lack of rehabilitation, and a rate of reentry that far exceeds that of any other nation, yet this problem’s escalation has done little to bring it to the platform of reformation. The prison system has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars, and a majority of these citizens are completely unaware of the needlessness of the costs with which they are burdened. With 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S., Americans cannot afford to continue to turn a blind eye to the economic issues presented by the current prison system (Council of Economic Advisors 3). Due to prison growth, an increasing incarceration rate, and a lack of rehabilitation and...
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...The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. America holds 5% of the world’s population, yet it houses 25% of the world’s prisoners (Walmsley 2013). The approximate amount of spending on our nations prisoners is 74 billion dollars, annually (Silver 2014). With the cost of rising incarceration in the U.S. and climbing recidivism rates, it is more apparent than ever that the American Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”) is in great need of reform (Wagner 2014). The PIC enforces a recidivism cycle in which more than 50% of prisoners return to prison less than 3 years after release, thus being referred to by the PEW Research Center as “The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons” (2011). Not only is this cycle inflicting...
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...Mayeux agrees with Gopnik’s ideas about incarceration, and she hopes that many people will read his argument. Gopnik strongly believes that America’s criminal-justice system is not properly punishing criminals. He reports that criminals with minor offenses should not be so harshly punished, suggesting that the justice system should eliminate mandatory sentences and that a judge should decide the criminals sentence by using common sense. The author also supports his argument by describing how being in prison is like locking oneself into their bathroom and living there for the next ten years, and by pointing out that in prisons, “more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year” (Gopnik). Clearly Gopnik is trying to get as much attention on the...
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...of incarceration on a juvinile, how little the corrections facilities actually rehabilitate the youth, the issues concerning juvenile corrections and how these and other factors contribute to the youth’s mindset both during and after prison. Part 2 * Haney, Craig. “Prisoners Once Removed.” http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/haney.pdf, The Urban Institute Press, n.d. Web. 24 November 2014 This source is a scholarly article converted to PDF, and is thoroughly cited from other articles. It talks about imprisonment on individual and state levels, describing the impact of the United States prison system psychologically on prisoners. Other articles I have found on the internet have cited this article frequently, many who seek to reform the prison system have used this article against the consequences of the prison system, especially on youth. * Matsuda, Kristy. “Impact of Incarceration on Young Offenders”, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227403.pdf, U.S Department of Justice, 27 April 2009, Web. 24 November 2014. Matsuda discusses the impact of incarceration on youth, basically what my article is about, in a research paper for The U.S department of Justice. The paper utilizes Californian inmates, age 16-25 males, released between 1998 and 99, based on information obtained from the California department of corrections. * Fagan, Jeffery; Kupchik, Aaron. “Juvenile Incarceration and...
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...African-American Males, Incarceration and Structural African-American Males, Incarceration and Structural Inequality Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment or as many would like to state forms of rehabilitation. With that being the case, the United States, while being considered one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world boasts the highest “rehabilitation” rate in the world. The staggering part remains that not only do we have the highest prison population but our incarceration rate continues to grow as our creativity or desire to solve this problem continues to stagnate. One of the major issues when researching incarceration rates is the obvious elevated rate of young African-American males that are sentenced. While the percentage of African-American incarcerated males is extremely high the length of their sentences are shockingly elevated compared to the majority of population in the United States. “One in every nine African-American males aged 25-29 were in prison or jail in 2009, compared to one in twenty-seven Latino males and one in sixty white males in the same age group, according to the Sentencing Project”. ("State of Young America," 2009, para. 11) The question currently being dealt with in the United States is how do we accommodate all of these prisoners? Our countries answer has been quite simple, to build more prisons or as some would sugarcoat it, “rehabilitation facilities”. The correct question...
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...institutions which label people into social categories such as the educational system and the formal labor market. The three articles discussed below explore the different faces of inequality in society. These articles are Incarceration and Stratification (2010), The Mark of Criminal Record (2003) and The Black-White Test Score Gap (2004). The overarching theme that will be pointed out below is inequality face by black people in the United States. These articles show inequalities face by black people in three different landscapes: incarceration cells, employment, and education. This paper included the role of media in the proliferation of racial inequality between white and black people. Lastly, this paper also presented the missing gaps on literature and how should we address the problem of racial inequality. Summary Inequality is present in incarceration cells. Wakefield and Uggen (2010) claimed that incarceration became a powerful “engine of social inequality that plays a massive and racialized part in the contemporary stratification system” (Wakefield and Uggen, 2010, p. 388). The study conducted by Wakefield and Uggen (2010) covers the scope of imprisonment and the process of selection into prison. The authors then proceed by giving the implications of incarceration in different aspects of their lives such as education, labor market, health, family and civic life. The method used by the author is through graphs and statistics from different institutions. They looked at the percentage...
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...the length of punishment up to judges. This sentencing is mostly used for drug offense but if the offense is non violent the time in prison is usually a decade. Mandatory minimum contributes to the fact that America has a systematic problem of increase of mass incarceration, and that men of color are being deprived of things because of criminal records . Even though some believe that it prevents drug use. Overall nonviolent drug offense should be prosecuted but mandatory minimum sentencing should be eradicated. Mass incarceration refers to the unique way the United States had locked up a tremendous population in federal, state prisons, and local jails. In the text “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness” by Dr. J. Carl Gregg , it states “ In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in jails and prisons nationwide, compared with more than 2 million...
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