...address criminal behavior have always influenced how and why society uses prisons. Prisons are intended to meet a variety of social goals, including incapacitation, deterrence, discipline, punishment or retribution, and rehabilitation or reformation. Some have argued that public prisons are better at all of the above while most support private prisons. The term prison privatization commonly refers to the policy of contracting out the management and operation of prisons and jails to private, for-profit companies. Prison privatization is a controversial issue, with ongoing debate over the ethics of delegating the punishment function of the criminal justice system to private actors, weather private prisons cost less to operate than public facilities, and if the quality of security and conditions of confinement differ between public and private prisons. In 2005, approximately 200 private correctional facilities operated in the United States, housing a total of 107,000 inmates. Four companies provide more than 90 percent of private prison capacity. About 6 percent of all state inmates and 14 percent of federal inmates are incarcerated in privatized facilities. The idea of privatizing prisons emerged in the 1980s as a policy remedy to the problem of growing incarceration rates, severe prison overcrowding, and constraints on increasing government funding of new prison space. Public investment in new prisons climbed eightfold from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, but was at or approaching...
Words: 1405 - Pages: 6
...A Critical Perspective on Prison Privatization April 6, 2015 A Critical Perspective on Prison Privatization Topic Statement: “Is the privatization of prisons for profit an ethical practice?” The topic of a country privatizing areas of industry is far from a novel idea, especially since the rise of capitalism. With the United States being widely considered the father of capitalism, it is almost expected to see the privatization of a key component of its judicial system, prison, becoming more and more common. Although the underlying function of a prison as a means of social reform has remained constant since its inception in 1750 BCE with the Babylonian Empire, externalities are beginning to influence a change in the governing bodies of penitentiaries (Roberts, 2006). With governments and taxpayers seeing the opportunities for cost savings, countries throughout the world are beginning to employ private operating models for their penitentiaries, with the U.S. being the primary driver of this change (Trivedi, 2014). Framework of the Issue A change in the operating sovereign of a prison, from federal to private, is controversial enough that the effects of this privatization have garnered the title of the Prison-Industrial Complex. The complex is a scholarly attempt to explain the intertwining of the profit-driven agendas of private prison companies and the correlated expansion of the US inmate population. Although cost savings for the government...
Words: 3534 - Pages: 15
...what goes on behind that wired fence. We find that some people that are convicted of crimes that they did not commit. Some people would rather turn their heads to what actually happens in a prison institution, because they feel it is no concern of theirs. Innocent women and men face a disaster in life when they find their selves incarcerated in such facility as these. The treatment in prison facilities toward prisoners with health issues or those who develop health concerns that head officials should take control over. Prisoners receive neglect in many different ways that may end their lives. In my essay, I will share with you the life of a man in prison and the treatment that he received from correctional officers. Every prison environment makes it hard to assure minimal standards for ethical research and voluntary informed consent and privacy. Privacy for those who are in these facilities has many concerns to family members who are looking in from the outside. Health issues and concerns for inmates and neglect that occurs in correctional facilities have been concerns that continue to go unnoticed. The state seems to under staff in some areas of managing inmate’s health problems. There are many who may go unattended of their health issues causing drastic or even death in the process. A prison system update yearly would help to protect prisoners and their health issues. Denying them access to medical attention is also unethical as this can result in a death. This could have been...
Words: 1642 - Pages: 7
... DIF~ERENT SET OF PROBLEMS FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS. THE GOAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR IS TO RUN HIS/HER AGENCY AS EFFICIENTLY AS ) .' ''I ,J• . 1 , POSSIBLE. BUT IN TIMES OF FISCAL CONSTRAINlj PRIVATIZATION IS SEEN AS A SOLUTION TO BUDGETARY PROBLEMS. AS WITH ALL ISSUES THERE ARE TWO SIDES. PROPONENTS OF PRIVATIZATION FEEL THAT THE PRIVATE SECTOR CAN DELIVER THE SAME SERVICES THAT GOVERNMENT CURRENTLY PROVIDES FOR LESS MONEY, BETTER QUALITY AND WITH MORE VERSATILITY. ON THE OTHER HAND, OPPONENTS FEEL THAT PRIVATIZATION REDUCES THE QUALITY OF SERVICES, LEADS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS AND CORRUPTION AND IN THE PROCESS WEAKENS GOVERNMENT J CONTROL OF THESE SERVICES THAT ARE CONSIDERED ESSENTIAL TO THE PUBLIC. THESE OPPONENTS FEEL THAT IF THE PRIVATE SECTOR COULD HAVE DONE THESE JOBS AT A REASONABLE COST IN THE FIRST PLACE GOVERNMENT WOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO PROVIDE THEM AT ALL. PROPONENTS FEEL IT IS THE FACT THAT GOVERNMENT HAS GOTTEN SO BIG THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE THE SERVICE AT A RATE LOWER THAN THEIR PRIVATE COUNTERPARTS AND THAT HAS GIVEN BIRTH TO A VARIETY OF PRIVATE CONTRACTORS WILLING TO PROVIDE THESE SERVICES AT MORE COMPETITIVE PRICES. GOVERNMENT HAS HAD A 2 MONOPOLY ON THE SERVICE AND NO ONE ELSE HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO PROVIDE THE SERVICE, WHICH HAS LED TO HIGHER COSTS. TO UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE OF PRIVATIZATION IT MUST FIRST BE DEFINED. PRIVATIZATION IS A SHIFT FROM PUBLIC TO PRIVATE J PRODUCTION. THIS PAPER WILL...
Words: 3092 - Pages: 13
......... 9 Chapter 3: INGREDIENTS OF TORT OF FALSE IMPRISONMENT ............................................................................. 15 Chapter 4: REMEDIES ..................................................................... 17 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION ............................................................... 20 Chapter 6: BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................... 22 1 haripriya91@gmail.com HARI PRIYA NALSAR TABLE OF CASES: A. K. Gopalan v. State of Madras .................................................................... 10 Altken vs Badwell (1827) Mood & M 68 ........................................................... 8 Bheema vs Chapman (1848) 8 MHC 38............................................................. 8 Bhim Singh vs State of Jammu & Kashmir ...................................................... 13 Cobbet v. Gray (1852) 4 EX 729 ..................................................................... 10 D.K. Basu v. State of West...
Words: 5441 - Pages: 22
...those practiced in England. Up until the 1780s, punishment by imprisonment was unknown in Europe or the European colonies. Punishments for criminal behavior tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others; these included the ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding, mutilations and the stocks (woodfin.org 2013). Corporal punishment was inflicted almost exclusively on the lower classes, since the rich were usually able to pay fines instead. At the time the sentence for many other offences was death. Colonialists never considered the possibility of rehabilitation; their aim was to frighten the offender into law abiding behavior. Unlike today where prisons are viewed as instruments of punishment, this has not always been the case. The common jail dates back hundreds of years, but was used solely as a means of detention, a temporary place for the prisoner until acquitted, fined, or subjected to corporal punishment (Schamalleger, F. 2010). Pennsylvania was determined to be different from other colonies. Founder William Penn brought his Quaker values to the new colony, relying on imprisonment with hard labor and fines as the treatment for most crimes, while death remained the penalty only for murder. In 1790 Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail became the first prison by the Pennsylvania Quakers. In the Penitentiary Era, which lasted from 1790 to 1825, prisoners were housed in penitentiaries, where they were supposed to do penance and be...
Words: 3118 - Pages: 13
...created to protect our rights as citizens from domestic and international threat and harm. My proposed regulation of interest, “National Standards To Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape “ is a compilation of recommendations prepared in April 2010 by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (PREA) and presented to the Department of Justice in pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. It’s important that people who care about our basic human rights as a whole not forget about those who are having these rights violated when serving their prison time in a correctional institution behind bars. Despite the person’s crime, their rights can’t be taken away and sadly, in some circumstances and environments we have to remind others that these rights remain active and lack enforcement. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “among inmates who reported inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization, 13% of male prison inmates and 19% of male jail inmates said they were victimized within the first 24 hours after admission, compared to 4% of female inmates in prison and jail”. Sadly, it is the resistance to culture change by correctional staff and inmates alike that presents the greatest challenge. It is the belief that convicted felons serving time deserve a hard punishing prison life, as if to say that serving the time sentenced is not enough. In addition, society as a whole continues to punish these individuals even after serving time or paying their debt...
Words: 1658 - Pages: 7
...Ethical Issues Research Paper Sherrill Jones AJS/532 Cristina Payne August 3, 2015 Ethical Issues Research Paper In the field of criminal justice, ethics is an integral part of the organization. The public relies on its police agencies to provide protection and maintain order in the community. It is also about a matter of trust the community places with its law enforcement agencies with regards to ethical behavior. This research paper will analyze the contemporary issues involving ethical behavior by criminal justice personnel, the decisions that govern its ethics, and recommendations. Contemporary Issues Laws and expectations change with each passing year; decisions vary with the times and public opinion. The stated goal for all is fairness combined with efficiency within the private and criminal justice systems. Justice should be obtained with equal actions regarding the constitutional rights that are afforded to all citizens including previously convicted offenders and the issue of public safety. The main concern is fairness, efficiency and just plain effectiveness. It becomes an issue when one tries to determine how effective these policies are and how much trust can be found within these findings due to personal bias and effectiveness of the figures presented. The setting up of the measurement system and how much weight this system carries for performance expectations is critical. The problem of what changes should or can be made to resolve the...
Words: 2541 - Pages: 11
...and Legal Regulation Lawrence O. Gostin Georgetown University Law Center, gostin@law.georgetown.edu Georgetown Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 976413 This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/479 http://ssrn.com/abstract=976413 297 JAMA 737-740 (2007) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. COMMENTARIES Biomedical Research Involving Prisoners Ethical Values and Legal Regulation Lawrence O. Gostin, JD U NTIL THE EARLY 1970 S , R. J. R EYNOLDS , D OW Chemical, the US Army, major pharmaceutical companies, and other sponsors conducted a wide variety of research on prisoners—a captive, vulnerable, and easily accessible population.1,2 During that time, approximately 90% of all pharmaceutical research was conducted on prisoners, who also were subjected to biochemical research ranging from testing diet drinks and simple detergents to studies involving dioxin and chemical warfare agents.3 From 1962 to 1966, for example, 33 pharmaceutical companies tested 153 experimental drugs at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, including a Retin-A (tretinoin) study in which researchers did not seek informed consent and prisoners were not adequately treated for pain.4 By the mid-1970s, biomedical research in prisons sharply declined as knowledge of the exploitation of prisoners began to emerge and the National Commission for the...
Words: 3561 - Pages: 15
...(Dieter). According to an article by the Death Penalty Information Center, “a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment in the United States” (“What’s New”), “the average cost of defending a trial in a federal death case is $620,932, about eight times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty was not sought” (“Costs of the…”). Take the state of Washington for example. A study conducted by the University of Seattle determined that “in Washington each death penalty case cost an average of one million dollars more than a similar case where the death penalty was not sought (on average $3.07 million v. $2.01 million)” (“Costs of the…”). Similarly “since the death penalty’s reinstatement in Washington in 1981, Washington has carried out five executions, each costing an average twenty four million dollars” (“Costs of the…”). This exorbitant cost can also be exemplified through the state of California, where the expenditure of maintaining the death penalty has totaled over four billion dollars since 1978 (“Costs of the…”). That is the equivalent price of 20,000 2015 Lamborghini Huracans which is allocated from the state’s budget. An article by the Death Penalty Focus Agency, an organization “committed to the abolition of the death penalty through public...
Words: 1247 - Pages: 5
...fear among whites. As well as a foreshadowment of the analogous issues in the 1980s. Moreover the introduction of harsher sentencing due to the white’s public fear illustrates the effects the majority and public opinion have on dominating the minority. Tocqueville stated, “In all the American republics the central government is only occupied with a small number of matters important enough to attract its attention. It does not undertake to regulate society’s secondary concerns, and there is no indication of that has ever conceived the desire to do so.” (Tocqueville 262) The basis of the above quote reveals the government's tendency to appease the primary...
Words: 1672 - Pages: 7
...Due to public outcry, however, 29 states have recently begun to roll back Mandatory Minimum laws, while others have given judges more discrepancy in sentencing times. In addition, the Federal Government has shrunk the severity and overarching reach of Mandatory Minimums in sentencing. These positive changes, though, are not retroactive, and inmates like Weldon Angelos require presidential pardons for premature release. Activists lobby lawmakers to fix the epidemic by proposing the repealing of Mandatory Minimums, pardoning or granting parole to many victims of Mandatory Sentencing lengths, and retroactively releasing people sentenced by Mandatory Minimums (Looman 188). They argue Mandatory Minimum Sentencing’s racist undertones pervade the...
Words: 453 - Pages: 2
...2014 FIFA World Cup was scheduled to hold in Brazil and 400,000 fans were expected for the quadrennial tournament but some concerns arose prior to the tournament that had to do with the growing rate of crime in the country especially Rio de Janeiro which is Brazil’s biggest tourist destination (Biller, 2014). In Rio de Janeiro, robbery numbers on public transport increased from 345 to 629 in August 2013 and assault with intent to rob rose by 37% (Radnedge, 2013). Due to the level of corruption and violence the police themselves in Rio inflict on the public, citizens are not encouraged to report criminal activities because they are scared of the police authorities and do not respect them (Brazil, 2014). During the first half of the year 2013 the police were held responsible for the death of 362 citizens in Rio de Janeiro and even though the police report these loss of lives as a casualty due to gun fights with criminals, the Human Rights Watch and some other groups report that some of these killings result from unconditional use of force and others do not (Human Rights Watch, 2014). All these problems highlighted shows lack of public security and poor police conduct is plaguing the city of Rio de Janeiro and adequate measures should be taken by the government to resolve these problems. In the year 2007, the Brazilian government pledged £850m to the betterment of Rio de Janeiro’s huge slum as a way to stop organised crime in the region (BBC, 2007). This is a good idea, but...
Words: 2327 - Pages: 10
...Crime statistics and incarceration rates reveal that young African American men are prosecuted and imprisoned at higher rates than their Non-Hispanic White counterparts. Although the total number of incarcerations by race does not vary significantly, the age of prisoners by race is meaningful. In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice statistics for sentenced male prisoners under state and federal jurisdiction totaled 1,537,415. Broken down by race, African American lacks totaled 555,300 prisoners with Whites totaling 465,100 and Hispanics 331,500. As the assignment scenario noted, in 2003 there was disparity between the incarceration rates for males aged 25-29 among races. As of 2011, rates for the same age group do not show as wide of a gap. In 2011, White males ages 25 to 29 comprised 14.4 percent of incarcerated males compared to 16.5 percent African American lacks and 18.8 percent Hispanics. The statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice for 2011 show that, “More than half (52%) of white male prisoners were age 39 or younger, compared to 63% of black and 68% of Hispanic male prisoners.” There remains disparity when age is factored into the incarceration rates with eleven percent more Blacks and sixteen percent more Hispanics incarcerated than Whites for those 39 and younger. In addition, one must consider that African Americans have higher rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration when they total a minority number in the population. When evaluating...
Words: 3535 - Pages: 15
...In Our Defense The title of this book is In Our Defense. It is written by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy. This book was copyrighted in 1991 and the First Avon Books edition was published in 1992. The genre is nonfiction, law. This book is about all of our rights as citizens of the United States of America and cases that prove as to why these rights are so important to us. There are, however, some controversies on the extent of how far these rights go. The first amendment most importantly protects freedom of speech. Dennis Mahon, a member of the KKK, was trying to exercise his freedom of speech, through airing a television program called “Race and Reason.” The Missouri Knights group chose public cable access to broadcast because they were free of any editorial control from the cable company. It was originally denied its request to air because there were regulations that the show had to be produced locally. It had to change its name to the “Klansas city Kable.” The main idea of the show was with the racial issues and exposing government bureaucracy. The studio was located in a neighborhood that consisted of 95% black people. The cable company was concerned that violence would occur and that viewers would cancel their subscriptions. Reverend Cleaver did not think that the show was an exercise as free speech; instead he saw it as a terrorist organization. According to the Supreme Court, the struggle between the fear of violence as a result of speech and the promise of the...
Words: 2334 - Pages: 10