...Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “2BR02B” a doctor named Dr. Hitz invented the idea of population control to solve the world’s problems. A man named Edward Wehling Jr. is in the hospital, because his wife is having triplets. In order for the family to keep the babies, they must find three volunteers willing to die to maintain the population, because the government is controlling the right for the citizens to have however many babies they want to have. The power of the government is described by prohibiting overpopulation. The government enforces the law by limiting the number of offspring, taking away individuality, and encouraging suicides. Body Initially, the government limits the amount of offspring that a family can have. Dr. Hitz explains...
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...Prison Overcrowding in the United States First, we need to discuss the causes of prison overcrowding before we dive into potential solutions. The main obvious cause is fluctuating crime rates, the increase in the crime rates, in the United States leads more people to being locked up in prison, causing prison populations to sky rocket. Another main cause is changes to the laws, when changes are made, making the penalties higher, it causes people who might just go to jail for their crime, to end up in the prison system. Another serious issue that the United States prison system has is its return rate, with high lapses of criminals in today’s society the U.S has a 60% return rate. This rate cannot be tolerated, we as a society need to do something...
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...One of America's biggest problems today is the overcrowding of prisons. This began when the population of inmates started to soar in the 1980's. With the increase of rapist, murderers, and drug dealers skyrocketing, there is no reason to this overpopulation. The nation responds to this by building prison at a fast pace. But the construction has not kept pace with the soaring population of inmates. The number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of Federal correctional authorise at the end of 1991 reached a record high of 823,414. The increase for 1991 brings a total growth in the prison population since 1980 to 493,593 - an increase of about 150 percent in the 11-year period. California's increase of about 4,500 prisoners in 1991 was the largest gain in the number of prisoners in any single jurisdiction. The overall increase in 1994 is 8.6 percent, but Texas and Georgia reported increases of more than 20 percent. The largest increases occurred in Texas, up 28.5 percent, and Georgia, up 20.3 percent, according to a justice department report. Eight state prison systems were so crowded that they sent at least 10 percent of their inmates to local jails in 1994. The largest ever one-year increase in state and federal prison population occurred in 1989, when the number grew by 84,764, said the study of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. State and federal governments are struggling to cope with overcrowded prisons that fail to rehabilitate and often release inmates early to make room for...
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...large majority are non-violent offenders. According to Adam Liptak in his article “U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs that of Other Nations,” “The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.” Americans are often locked up for things such as using drugs or writing a bad check. Sending someone to prison should be our last resort because it’s expensive and can increase risk for future criminal behavior. Yet, even as the crime rates decrease, prisons are still overcrowded. The reason for this, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council in the article “Prison Overcrowding,” is: During the late 1980s and early 1990s, state and local governments passed tough crime legislation. For example, California passed the “three strikes and you’re out” law which called for mandatory sentencing of repeat offenders, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Policy such as this led to reduced crime rates, but increased populations in jails and prisons. While mandatory sentencing laws are being passed, laws criminalizing an increasing number of behaviors are also being passed. The result is that, not only are judges forced to send people to prison in cases where it might not be necessary, but they are forced to do so because there are...
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...II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRISONS To begin with, in order to decipher the motivations on all sides, one must first look at the philosophical ideals behind these ideas. Although moral philosophy is part of a complicated whole, these abstract standards are what keeps humans from descending into the realm of the beasts. If we fail to have any ethical codes, then what keeps us from being the very same animals that we eat for food or keep for pets? When it comes to the perplexing state of the prison industry, the lines between helping and hurting people become muddled. Generally speaking, there have been many publications that examine different parts of moral philosophy, but fail to be specific enough. However, Prisons and Prison Life: Costs and Consequences...
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...Prison Abolition Jessi Lee Jackson and Erica Meiners, authors of Feeling Like a Failure: Teaching/Learning Abolition Through the Good the Bad and the Innocent, analyze the prison system in the United States and necessitate the abolition of these organizations due to their ineffectiveness in society. The authors critique the technique of the police force alleging these institutions to either being racist, sexist, classist, or a combination of either and disproportionately scrutinize these victims causing a majority of them to end up in the prison system. The authors’ informative article continues to examine the prerequisite of abolition of these prison system and presents detailed information on the proper way of living without the need of the prison systems and promote more effective alternatives to the situation. Some of these alternatives includes ensuring the communities have viable jobs that are not dehumanizing and placing a higher set of standards on the education and health care systems to become more accountable for the uneducated and mentally ill respectively since these classifications make up a majority of the incarcerated. It also challenges individuals to find ways to communicate effectively with each other rather than relying on the police force. It highlights the importance of including this information on abolition into the education curriculum for the outcome of producing a more stable and beneficial society. According to the Critical Resistance, abolition...
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...The Conditions of Prisons Worldwide Society usually does not concern themselves with people in prison but what they fail to realize is that they could be the ones incarcerated. Every day, there are people who state they do nothing wrong to be put in prison but anyone can watch the news, and it states how people were on vacation and something unexpected resulted in their incarceration while in a foreign country. The conditions in both American and Third World prisons have poor living conditions and deprive prisoners of health care that cause them to be susceptible to life threatening diseases. Society needs to be aware of these conditions and the possibility that it may happen to them; these conditions are not suitable for human beings. Prisons worldwide have poor living conditions. There are prisons in other parts of the world that conditions are unspeakable, and just inhumane. The living conditions in the majority of United States prisons can be very poor; there are not enough beds or cots because of the overpopulation. There was a new story on a prison in Arizona where the warden had the inmates sleeping outside under canopies. The inmates still had beds or cots, but they were outside in the natural elements with no protection from the weather. Those conditions are not nearly as bad as some of the prisons in the third world countries. In Syria, prisoners are treated like slaves and are even beaten with pipes, other weapons...
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...Picture this scene: a man has been put on trial for a murder that he did not commit. He stands before a jury of 12 women and men, complete strangers to him and his case. These jurors have the man’s life in their hands, and none of them have any experience with the law. The man is charged guilty without any discourse. He will spend the rest of his life in an overcrowded, poorly funded prison with no chance of rehabilitation or parole. This man is just one of thousands that are wrongfully convicted during jury trials every year. Would his fate have differed if the judge, who had been through law school and had plentiful knowledge about how the laws work, had made the decision instead of the strangers? The jury system in America is outdated, causes...
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...The Problem of Prison Overcrowding in the United States "The Land of the Free has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners. In all, about 2.2m Americans fester behind bars: one in every 107 adults" (ALEC.Org).With that many Americans in prison, providing enough space for each individual in becoming quite a difficult situation. The amount of space that is available for each inmate, the amount of time each inmate is incarcerated for, and the living arrangements, as well as many other factors, are all involved with the problem of overcrowding. Many people think that if a person commits a crime, then they should be locked up for good and the world would be a better place. Tougher laws are one idea that people come up with to create a safer world. It is true that we would all probably be safer, but then we would have an even bigger problem with our prison system being overloaded. The United States prison system is already crowded and creating tougher laws would just increase the problem. The states are constantly making changes to their approach concerning prosecution. They are lengthening the confinement time for some crimes and shortening the time for others. This also is a huge addition to the overcrowding problem, as well as the seesawing of crime rates. Sometimes the crime rates are going through the roof, while at other times a violation is at its lowest. When rates are high, overpopulation becomes more of an issue. (Portland) The U.S. has to find ways to...
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...Imagine living in a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation. A set of identical septuplets must avoid being taken in by the government. While investigating the disappearance of one of their own, they come face to face with danger. Taught by their grandfather, Terrance Settman, who raised and named them: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each can go outside once a week as they share a common identity, impersonating their late mother, Karen Settman. The sisters are only free to be themselves in prison of their own apartment. As a result, the siblings fake their identities, sharing information with the rest of the sisterhood every night until one day, Monday goes missing. Films and television play a huge role in our lives in some way. Whether it’s going out to see the latest movie in theaters or catching up on Netflix. My...
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...Ganelle Curry Professor Meredyth Puller English 102-12 February 27, 2013 Literary Research Paper This literary research paper is based on the book Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works by Kurt Vonnegut. Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works consists of 25 short stories most of which had previously appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Ladies Home Journal, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Collier’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Esquire, Venture, and Cosmopolitan. The title story appeared in Playboy magazine the same year the collection was released. Eleven of the stories were reprinted from Vonnegut’s 1961 short story collection Canary in a Cat House (Vonnegut). This paper will focus on four futuristic science fiction stories from the collection. These stories, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, “Harrison Bergeron”, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, and “Unready to Wear” all share a dystopian science fiction theme. Science and technology are supposed to make the world a better place, but instead, Vonnegut concludes they only create a new set of problems (Farrell, “Science and Technology in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut”). Television is often a target of satire in much of his fiction from the 1950’s. He describes it as desensitizing and numbing while deceiving the masses (Werlock). Vonnegut uses satire and pessimism throughout these dystopian stories. Satire is a special form of literature...
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...people feel it is time to do away with parole, while others are fighting for its survival. As with any controversial change, there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument, all of which are very convincing. The basic arguments for and against the abolition of the parole system at the state level can be easily defined. One of the strongest arguments against the destruction of the parole system is the overpopulation problem in most prisons. Since the early 1980's, the population of inmates in correctional institutions has grown astronomically. Between 1986 and 1991, prisons have seen a 41% increase in the population of violent crime offenders. For drug related offenses, the number has increased three-fold. So it would make sense to argue that eliminating parole would make this problem even worse, right? Well, not exactly. Inmate populations are so extreme, that prisoners are sitting on waiting lists. When an inmate is released from prison, the vacant spot is filled instantaneously. In this respect, the parole system is actually doing nothing to fix the overpopulation problem, and increasing operating costs. This was illustrated when between 1976 and 1984, 10 states passed new laws that included the abolition of parole. Only one state, Indiana, had an increase in inmate population. In fact, Minnesota and Washington State both had major reductions in their prisoner populations. The remaining 7 states showed no changes in their inmate population. The next step in evaluating...
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...History of State and Federal Prisons Kenneth Washington CJS/230 Theresa Degard History of State prisons The state prison systems of today were founded on the nineteenth-century penitentiary, which was based on the legal reforms of the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. One more name for the state jail is the Department of Corrections which has quite a lot of security levels. For jails there is maximum security which is one earliest as well as the biggest. Additionally, it has much security in order to protect the inmates. Also there is higher security which is a bit less rigid like the maximum security. Next there is medium security that several states have in the smaller and jails which is more constructive. Additionally, in place of walls there are fences. Typically the prisoners are not as harmful having fewer people who break free. Also there is minimum security in the jails which normal contain the rooms and dormitories. Moreover, there are lots of security guards too. Typically individuals with less serious sentences as well as brief sentences are put I minimum security. Lastly, we have the open security jails that contain work -release programs, society based services, in addition to half way homes. These kinds of programs with the jails overpopulations in addition to attempting to rehabilitate the culprit and prepare them back for community. History of Federal prisons The federal jails were signed into by President Hoover...
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...and Federal Prison Systems Paper CJS/230 State and Federal Prison Systems There are many different state and federal prisons. Some of these prisons are government owned and operated, and others are privately owned. Prisons are for criminals that are serving more than a year’s time. State prisons were created and based on the 18th century age of enlightenment designs. Over a million people are in diverse types of state level and government operated prison systems. Every state started with one prison which was based on the Auburn prison in New York (Foster, 2006). Each state can have from three to a hundred prisons depending on their necessity for them. In time because of overpopulation, and unique cases such as women and children being criminals there was a need to expand prisons, and to create a place for women and juveniles to go to serve their time. In state and federal prisons there are several various levels of security. Today’s prisons have security levels such as minimum security, medium security, maximum security, closed-high security, and open security. There are many prisons that are considered multi-level prisons and they consist of multiple security levels. State prisons can have anywhere from 10,000 to 150,000 inmates at any given time (Foster, 2006). I believe that one way state prisons can get overcapacity problems under control is to not keep people in there that are first time offenders or they have committed very small crimes. Most state prisons are over capacity...
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...Mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines were initially established several years ago to assist with the war on drugs. While this is an understandable intent, it has since been adjusted to cover other offenses as well. What once was created with good intentions has now evolved to the point of stripping judges of their duty. Mandatory minimums prevent judges from sentencing the criminal to the fitting amount of time for the crime they committed. This has led to a problem with overpopulation in both federal and state prisons. While many can rightly argue that mandatory minimums create a standard in the justice system, many of the people in prison are there serving an irrational sentence. Take, for example, Lee Wollard, a gentleman spending 20 years in Florida state prison for simply...
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