...Ultimately the word “education” would mean for one to be enlightened and obtain knowledge through learning. However, the kind of education received within the United States Prison Systems is actively doing the opposite. The oppressed inmate populations are ultimately being exploited for cheap labor in order to support a capitalist society that they do not benefit from. This paper will argue that the education being withheld from prison inmates is both cultural and educational imperialism. This paper will also argue that the Prison Industrial Complex is intentionally exploiting inmates to contribute to a capitalist labor market instead of receiving education they are entitled to in order to be rehabilitated, reduce recidivism, improve their lives and ultimately better benefit society. Incarceration in the United States is the main form of punishment, rehabilitation, or both as a consequence of felony and other criminal offenses. The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails. This means a 500% increase over the past thirty years (The Sentencing Project.org). These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding, and billions of dollars being spent to house inmates, and supervise them on probation and parole after they are released, ultimately to return to prison as a repeat offender. Instead of an increased amount of funding and expansion of educational programs to keep up with the increase in inmate population...
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...Penitentiaries Vanessa Waller CJA234 March 30, 2014 Professor Jeffrey Newton The Purpose and History of Penitentiaries Development of the penitentiary system came about due to the cruel and unruly way punishment was given to criminal offenders, so more secure ways to house criminals were necessary. Before incarceration became the standard there were various other forms of punishment used in order to curb and deter crime. The Code of Hammurabi, “an eye for an eye,” was believed to be the first law established for dealing with crimes. This retributive punishment led to centuries of cruel and harsh techniques, many of which were just short of torture, for attaining “justice.” However, in time, these methods would be considered inhumane and inadequate in preventing unlawful acts. Eventually, the Walnut Street Jail was founded and would be the first proper American prison institution, with far less severe methods in dealing with offenders. Two different systems came into creation; the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems. But the key consistent factor in these early systems lied in use and profitability of using inmates for prison labor. In the early eras before prisons were fully established punishment for offenders were unsympathetic and brutal. Sentences of deadly, physical force contributed as the common potency for retaliation. Although fines were occasionally offered, they may have well been obligatory since corporal retribution was the norm. It was the lex talionis doctrine...
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...Prison Comparison Contrast Paper Cynthia Willison CJA/234 December 13, 2010 Justina Smith Prison Comparison Contrast Paper Today prisons are viewed to be instruments of punishment with the loss of freedom that is considered as a result of society’s retribution for the crimes the offenders have committed. However, incarceration was not always this form of punishment, in the 18th century different types of corporal punishment that involved infliction of pain on the human body. Corporal punishments included whipping, beating, branding, mutilation, and other types of physical punishments. Most punishments during the eighteenth-century were held in public. Executions were elaborate and shocking affairs, designed to act as a deterrent to those who watched. The 1700s were considered the colonial period and no true legal system existed within the United States at the time until the American Revolution. Many felons were transported to the American colonies where they will serve out their sentences in hard labor. Long-term prison sentences in Houses of Correction (prison) were also more widely imposed toward the end of the century (The British Library, n.d.). Prison is a term describing the facilities used to incarcerate convicted individuals and penitentiary describes the type of building. The debate to inaugurate penitentiaries instead of prisons began in the eighteenth century in England with the idea to replace corporal punishment with imprisonment with the prospects of...
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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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...Jai Jail and Prisons Comparison Paper Mary Ann Everett CJA/234 Introduction to Corrections 12/15/13 Steven Nance This paper use some information found in the CJi Interactive Multimedia and weeks readings. Have a description of jail’s place in corrections its role throughout history; a summary of the history of state and federal prisons. Comparison of the similarities and differences between security levels in jails, state prisons and federal prisons. Explanation of factors influencing growth in jails, state, and federal prisons. In colonial america where humiliation, workhouses, and corporal punishment to was used to punish criminals by 1790 where penitentiary era begins. In 1786, Pennsylvania Quakers said honest labor was a humane way to deal with convicts and to provided labor for public projects wearing thee ball, chain and bright unstylish clothes to prevent escapes. In other colonies had replaced public humiliation with incarceration and early lockups were under local control with mixing convicts of both genders from petty thieves to violent offenders. Our nation took shape each county and state maintain its own incarceration system where jails were maintain by the local sheriff’s department housed small infractions like loitering to severe crimes like murder until disposition. State or federal authorities in prisons provided confinement for offenders sentenced to over one year of incarceration. Penitentiary Era in 1790, attribute to separate and silent system...
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...Introduction The United States of America’s national anthem the “Star Spangled Banner” and the “Pledge of Allegiance” state that the United States is “land of the free” with “liberty and justice for all.” Yet, the United States houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates even though it only houses five percent of the world’s population (Martensen, 2012). Additionally the fundamental concept of the United States Criminal Justice System is that an individual is “innocent” until proven guilty. This makes one question whether, people in the United States are really held to this standard, or are certain people more prone to crime in the land of opportunity and freedom? Our society is built around the societal norms of the dominant white group and racial and ethnic inequalities are intertwined in every aspect of our society causing minority groups to struggle against a society built around white privilege. Prevalence Minorities in comparison to their population in the United States are incriminated at a higher rate than Whites. Spohn (2000) stated that “a majority of the studies reviewed…found that African Americans and Hispanics were more likely than Whites to be sentenced to prison, even after taking crime seriousness and prior criminal records into account” (as cited in Hartney & Vuong, 2009, p.10). In 2010, racially the United States population identified as being comprised of 196.8 million Whites who identified as White alone (69.1%), 38.9 million Blacks or African Americans...
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...million people in the United States that are in prison 2016-2017. Actually, the same source says that this number is closer to 2,220,300. You might be wondering why many websites and people say this. This is because many people do not want to believe that Mass Incarceration exists. Mass Incarceration is a term used by historians and others to describe the massive increase in incarceration rates during the past forty to forty five years. There are currently 1.3 million people locked up in state prisons, with 630,000 of them being locked up in local jails. Most people currently in custody are facing charges for non-violent drug offenses. Some of those people are also first time offenders. Thirty Four thousand people locked up in local jails are under the age of twentyone....
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...usually link stratifying 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...
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...the u.s The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. 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. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.) San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner. The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center...
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...Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nation's criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn't until the late 1980's when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders. Unlike jail or prisons, which create an expensive cycle of violence and crime, these alternatives actually prevent violence and strengthen communities. Community corrections programs provide many communities with local punishment options as an alternative to prison or jail. These sanction programs are lower cost alternatives to the increased prison and jail constructions, based on the cost per offender. These programs provide local courts, state departments of corrections, and state parole boards with a broad range of correctional options for offenders under their jurisdiction. The overall goals of these programs are to fit the appropriate punishment with the crime, the offender is punished and held accountable, and the public safety is protected. There are several programs available as an alternative to incarceration, the earliest being probation. Probation is still widely used for first time offenders. This program allows the offender a sort of second chance in the community...
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...SOLUTIONS TO INCARCERATION Alternative Solutions to Incarceration Meral Daniel Southern New Hampshire University Alternative Solutions to Incarceration Incarceration is the result after a crime is committed by an individual and has a number of objectives. Primarily, it is intended to keep persons who have committed a crime under secure control and to punish them by depriving them of their liberty. Imprisonment keeps them from committing further crimes while they are incarcerated “and, in theory, allows them to be rehabilitated during their period of imprisonment. The goal of rehabilitation is to address the underlying factors that led to criminal behavior and by so doing, reducing the likelihood of re-offending. However, it is precisely this objective that is generally not being met by imprisonment. On the contrary, evidence shows that prisons not only rarely rehabilitate, but they tend to further criminalize individuals, leading to re-offending and a cycle of release and imprisonment, which does nothing to reduce overcrowding in prisons or to build safer communities.” (United Nations, 2006) One effective alternative to incarceration is the use of GPS monitoring and it is becoming an increasingly important topic of consideration by state rehabilitation and correction agencies. Location tracking systems, such as GPS, have customarily been used solely to track higher-risk offenders. However, many states are beginning...
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...JAIL AND PRISON Every year the number of prisoners increase and their sentences are longer. The expenses continue to be high maintaining prisons, work farms and other secure facilities. Budgets now are tighter than ever and expectations continue to get higher. Private prisons opened after the civil war encountered legal problems for leasing convicts to replace slave labor, and civil right issues for cutting corners on food and living conditions but by the 1980’s, every state had private contracts. During Colonial America public humiliation, work houses and corporal punishment such as stock, whipping were used to punish criminals. Quakers believed that honest labor was more humane way to deal with unsocialized behavior. In 1786 convicts were provided familiar ball, chain and bright, unstylish clothes. That way if they ever tried to escape it would make it harder. As time passed by colonies began to replace public humiliation with incarceration. During this time convicts were accused women, men, petty thieves with violent offenders and all in the same prison. The Penitentiary Era in the 1790’s they separated the convicts and they all had to be silent. They sought penance in total solitude, created or aggravated mental instabilities and handicrafts introduced to help maintain sanity. The Mass Prison Era in 1825 they were congregated but silenced. Prisoners had communal meals and worked during the day. They were not allowed to speak or make eye contact with anyone. Vocation...
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...cutting off ears, and placing people in the pillory. These punishments were sometimes harsher, depending on the crimes committed. In the American colonies, executions were less common than in England. However, when such a method was used, it was most often a public hanging. Usually capital offenses, such as murder or rape, or repeated serious offenses constituted a need for an execution. Imprisonment was uncommon in colonial America since the budding colonies did not have people to spare to keep the community in order. Every person was valuable for their working ability, and losing even one worker to law keeping was neither reasonable nor an efficient use of resources. In addition, colonial communities rarely had enough extra money to build a prison and feed prisoners. Since probation was not yet known to the colonists, they used a system of nods to guarantee troublemakers would not cause any problems. Courts began to require many problem-causing people to put up money to make sure they would stay out of trouble. This system worked especially well in communities where everyone minded each other's business( Wiki, 2014). As the history of the punishments...
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...the social norms of society. Because of this need, the development of prisons were constructed to house the individuals, so they can serve their time away from free individuals. Prisons are an intricate part of our history, starting from the late 1700’s up until now our system continues to redefine itself based on the needs of society. I will explore the evolution of punishment, prison system and how prison labor impacts over time. Punishment can be defined as the correctional goal with emphasis on inflicting pain or suffering. (Seiter, 2011) Punishment is used as a form of social control, it is viewed, that, a person will refrain from wrongdoing if the consequences impact their freedom. Since the ancient times of the Code of Hammarbi, banishment, and beheading punishment has been a part of how our culture deals with offenders. We can trace back punishment to the colonial days where punishment was based on community opinion and punishment was publicly displayed to ridicule and deter others from such behavior. This type of punishment started to transform into a more organized structure because of enlightened political philosophy, a more humane approach was sought. Incarceration became the vehicle in which the American justice system dealt with deviant behavior. Sir Alex Patterson once said, “You cannot train a man for freedom under the conditions of captivity”. The first prisons in the free United States were recognized as penitentiaries to signify their prisoners as religious...
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...The Mass incarceration of people of color and felony disenfranchisement is a tool that is being utilized to continue on with legalized slavery. Through Mass incarceration and felony disenfranchisement it is easier to control people of color and legally discriminate against those who have been convicted of felonies by implementing laws that enable them to be productive citizens upon their return to society. The United States has a very dark history or oppressing the minority, this has been done through many practices such as slavery, Jim Crow laws etc. Although America has made strides in certain areas regarding equal quality of living for all, America still has ways to go. The oppressive was and discriminatory nature of America continues as...
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