...PRISON IN AMERICA Since the beginning of time there has been good and evil, as man developed modern society he found that a need existed to separate the bad from the good. Society needed to find a way to protect the weak and defenseless citizens from the dangers of mankind. The use of confinement to punish offenders began in Europe in the early eighteen century. The concept of incarcerating offenders for long periods of time as a way of punishment for crimes is fairly new development in America. (McShane, Williams 1996) Before 1770’s with a few exceptions serious offenders received fines, corporal punishment, death, and banishment, but they were not incarcerated as a form of punishment. (McShane, Williams 1996) Jails were made to only hold people awaiting trail and minor offenses. This was in accordance with Puritan views that man was born into sin and punishment was God’s way of dealing with sin and evil deeds. This type of thinking was thrown out due to changing ways of criminal behavior. Now enter the modern institution designed to deal with this new breed of criminal behaviors. The first prison in America is supposed to be the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia (1790) There is however another, an abandoned copper mine in Connecticut which was converted into a prison. In 1773 Newgate prison accepted its first inmate by the 1820’s it was closed due to rising costs. (McShane, Williams 1996) This was the first institution designed to incarcerate offenders with...
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...imprisoning of individuals who had done wrong in the United States of America was not possible as the system had not come into effect like other places such as the United Kingdom. When the idea of incarceration came in the US, it came in three major eras, and this was slightly before the beginning of the American Revolution as stated before. “The initial stage or age involved putting into prisons and even rehabilitating persons who were involved in any crime and during this time the American Civil War was still in progress. This era was commonly referred to as the time of Jacksonian (Roth 97)”. It was followed by a period where some new ideas and methodologies became useful, and these changes came immediately after the war. It was known as the Progressive era, an idea such as probation unspecified sentencing came into place. Then significant changes in American Penal continued to be observed up to today. A lot had changed in the US Penal system as compared to what it was in the early years when this practice was being practiced for the first time. “When America was being colonized by the British, the slaves who were brought in the form of prisoners and laborers were shipped in America using the Atlantic Ocean (Rothman 76)”. It became the first major method of imprisoning and it evolved to later being known as the prisoner trade. This was around the 1660s onwards, and thousands of people were moved to America by the English forces. During this time, the jails that were built were...
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...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 the country...
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...Prison Overcrowding is a Financial Burden John Doe AIU Online Abstract This paper explores the causes of why not enough inmates are getting the rehabilitation needed to succeed outside prison walls. It may be a lot cheaper to provide them with programs than to house them for minor offences. Lastly, this paper will look at the cost effects of housing these prisoners and what kind of programs are offered while prisoners are serving their time. Without the proper rehabilitation, the result will be that our jails will stay overcrowded and cause a financial burden on all of America. Prison Overcrowding is a Financial Burden Something needs to be done about prison overcrowding and the lack of rehabilitation programs. Without proper rehabilitation, prisoners become repeat offenders. This means we have to build new faculties just to keep up with the overcrowding. The current cost to our nation to incarcerate inmates is $30 billion per year, which is expected to quadruple in the next decade (Crawford, 2003). The result is that prison overcrowding is a serious financial burden for Americans. Rehabilitation First, prison overcrowding is a financial burden because prisoners are not getting enough rehabilitation to transition back to society. The responsibility of the Bureau of Prisons is to safely confine its prisoner population. However, another mission of the Bureau is to rehabilitate: to provide inmates with skills...
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...prison emerged in early America as the alternative to servitude. Prisons systems back during early America faced some of the same types of issues we still face today. Most of the American jails were overcrowded and very unsanitary. The jailer would also charge for special services. In some prisons today they charge almost five dollars a minute for telephone calls. After a couple major scandals surfaced about the mismanagement of private providers the correctional facilities were turned back over to the states. In the late 1900s state legislatures started contracting out prison systems to profit-making firms in order to help manage the escalating cost. Private contractors argued that they could manage prisons at a cheaper cost to the government...
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...willie Robinson Society today is so messed up that there are thousands of people that are locked up for petty crimes that have years in prison when they should really be there for a couple of months but i guess thats how there money is made, by filling prison cells. The united States Currently incarcerates 1 in nearly 100 americans adults. Americans incarceration addiction grew during the late 1980s and early 1990s as state and local governments passed "tough-on-crime" legislations. 1. for example, California's "three strikes" law 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. 2. Prisons are becoming so over populated that there isnt enough prison guards to contain them. i feel this is a major problem and the state needs to worry less about petty crimes and crack down on the major things, why give a person years for petty crimes like 3-5 bags of marijuana or crack when you should be looking for the source of it and catch the main person. Prison overcrowding is quickly becoming a major financial and controversial problem in the United States. There are now more than two-thirds of a million people in our country in jail or in prison, and soon there will be half a million in prison alone. With that being said, two-thirds are confined in less than 60 square feet of floor space. While prison conditions have improved considerably in many ways, the...
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...Jefferson Chen Professor Queen Writing 39C 21 February 2013 Essay of Prospective Claims: Michelle Alexander discusses how mass incarceration has ruined and dismantled many lives of young African Americans. The problem she discusses so passionately in her book is a relevant problem in our society today. Ever since Ronald Reagan’s presidency and forward, campaigns have been targeting crime and especially rug related crimes. While it is clear that many of these young African Americans are going to prison due to drug related crimes, stopping the war on drugs altogether is not the solution. Although stopping the drug war may seem efficient for stopping the incarceration of young blacks in the present, it does not guarantee that these same people will not commit other crimes. The cost for stopping the drug war is allowing drug usage and distribution to run rampant which can cause the society and the neighborhoods around the areas to become unsafe. Alexander discusses how there is no way around this issue and dismantling the system of mass incarceration is the only resolution; however if these poor neighborhoods were funded with government money, drug abuse can potentially become lower or even be stopped. Alexander is also discussing how a handful of reforms cannot be a solution to the problem. She argues that all the financial grants that are given to police departments for drug arrests and racial profiling should be halted. She believes that by halting the funding and supplies...
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...The United States is facing a major incarceration crisis. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, our country incarcerates a quarter of world prisoners, and African Americans represent the highest rate, by far, of those imprisoned. Today, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate that is nearly 6 times that of whites. These numbers are staggering, considering African Americans only represent 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population; yes, racial disparities in incarceration are very real in America. People of color have been facing disadvantages, disparities and discrimination for too many centuries – still today, 50 years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on “The Negro Family.” Since the end of slavery, the U.S. has been criminalizing social problems in a way no other country has, leading the criminal justice system to ensnare the most disadvantaged of us all....
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...America makes up five percent of the world’s population but 25% percent of the prison’s population. This is cause mandatory minimum sentencings, which means a person convicted of a crime must be imprisoned for a least amount of time, as opposed to leaving 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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...Analysis of “Why Prisons Don’t Work” An article written by Wibert Rideau titled “Why Prisons Don’t Work”, published in Time Magazine on March 21, 1994, was written by a man who was sentenced to die in prison. He was accused of murdering a white person in Lousiana in 1962, long before the civil rights movement really took hold. He was in prison for 44 years by the time he walked a free man. The same system of justice used in 1964 is still the same system we use today, and the only difference is that there are far many more people in prison today than ever. We should all wonder how many Wibert Rideaus are sitting in cells, in prisons, throughout America today. Let his article be a wake up call that many people are wrongfully convicted every day in the United States. The ethos of Mr. Rideau is of a very high caliber for more than one reason. The first reason is that he was in prison 44 years and strives to educate the public on why prisons don’t work. He could be home, angry and licking his wounds and yet he tells his story in an effort to use his experience for positive change. The second reason for ethos is that he is a persuasive writer whose intelligence and use of language is excellent. Third, he is committed to using the remainder of his life to do what can be done to change prison systems and punishment in America by giving us an inside view. Fourth, he has come such a long way in building a memorable career for himself after being a convicted felon and...
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...History of State and Federal Prisons Joshlyn Aday CJS/230 John Feltgen November 14, 2013 Since the beginning of the criminal justice system, when the English brought over the concept that is the foundation for our criminal justice system today, there has been a sought out concept: There must be a reason for punishing criminals other than simple vengeance. This usually happens within the criminal justice system, but not often do people have to pay for the crimes that they’ve done. As a result, the first penitentiaries, predecessors of prisons today, were built with a view to behavior modification procedures (Foster, 2006). Today we have these institutions called state and federal prisons. They’ve had their number of changes throughout the years for modification. Just as any one thing throughout the world, they have their differences as well as their similarities. Looking to the past, we can pinpoint some sort of starting line for the development of what we call the prison system. In Norfolk, England circa 1875, nearing the end of the Age of Enlightenment, Sir Thomas Beever announced the grand opening of Wymondham Gaol. Towards the end of the Enlightenment, the Western civilization, looking inward, believed it was more civilized and reformations began to touch every aspect of life, including dealings with criminals. Belief in the scientific method drove society to find more humane ways of dealing with the lawless while perhaps transforming these into law-abiding, productive...
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...Jail and Prisons Comparison Adis Hodzic CJA/234 Introduction to Corrections Professor Anthony J. Pekich March 6th, 2014 In considering the jails, as well as state and federal prisons, and in modern America, one must understand the historical contexts in which the three institutions were conceptualized and put into practice. Then a discussion of the reasons behind the drastic recent growth off these three ancient institutions must be had. Finally, a review of the security classifications which enable these facilities to carry out the business of incarceration and rehabilitation in a secure and safe manner should be conducted to round out our consideration of these ancient institutions. The role of jails and prisons is a complicated one, made more complicated by an increase in demands upon these facilities, both in terms of higher populations, and an increase in rehabilitative functions expected from them, as well as political pressures and general changes of policies over the years. By understanding the reason jails and prisons came into such wide use and the historical changes to those institutions, it can be more fully examined whether these institutions, have been successful in the missions they have been tasked with. These modern jails, in America, trace their predecessors back to England, where the very first jail, or gaol, as it was called in 1166, was built by King Henry II. Originally these buildings were designed to house offenders awaiting trial...
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...Bias in Our Court System….is it fair or unfair justice??? America was built on the premise of everyone having equal rights. After years of British tyranny our forefathers felt they wanted a system where they will not be improperly punished without facts. In fact the framers of the Constitution felt they needed a system where everyone gets a fair shot. In America everyone who is accused of a crime is supposed to have a fair trial and is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Sadly, however, some would argue America’s criminal justice system has become more twisted and unfair than ever and that the rule of law has basically been vanquished in America’s criminal justice system. Outcomes of cases are generally decided now by the prosecutors and more plea bargaining is the norm over trial by jury. Yet so many people in our society today feels that people in the system gets equal opportunities. Although some people end up with different sentences and punishments people say that the American court system is a fair system. America has slowly turned into a system where justice and fairness is overruled by money and power. In the media today many people are committing crimes and walking away with a slap on the wrist. Many social media and news shows the bias in court systems through their broadcasts of issues. The American justice system is biased in their convictions and sentencing through racial disproportion, social structure, and economic standing. Our criminal justice...
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...The epidemic that plagues America today is not a flu. It is not a cold acquired from a passing stranger on the subway platform. It is not the chicken pox with a vaccine so easily constructed. Instead it is the subliminal messages, the, “If he hits you, you hit him back,” type of sickness. A child turns on a television to find a woman being murdered; he or she promptly changes the channel to a less threatening scene: two boys fighting. The American people are obsessed with all things gruesome, yet when a troubled person commits a crime, he or she is often shunned. Violence is okay to watch and to read about but it’s forbidden to occur, even in the crumbling homes of a drug addict abusing his or her children, or inside the pristine mansion where...
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...mountain, laws that God had written and people knew if those rules wasn't followed you would be punish. There are laws that the Roman Empire created to keep peace, which also was the European who later on discovered America Confinement of People After determining the laws, key leader had to come up with ways to keep people who broke the rules away from the good citizen. One solution was to move away from biblical argument. By the 1820s, most states had amended their penal codes. In 1793 William Bradford and the attorney general of the United States showed interest in the old penal codes. Bradford (1793,1792) Places where people were held was call prison, big house and other names;during these time of adjusting the condition in some prison was horrible, and the way the prisoner were treated wasn't good either. One of the roles that prisons played in many states was based off of two systems the Auburn and Pennsylvania. The Auburn system the prisoner worked in silence but together, and the Pennsylvania system they worked silence and isolated, both systems worked in some ways but didn't in others. Prisoner started going insane and it was to much to handle. Thomas Blomberg (2000). The prisons started to grow fast during the 1800s and 1900s century, and were the prisons used methods...
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