...Prison overcrowding, also called "prison crowding," is a matter of great contention and concern in current criminal justice public policy debates in both Canada and the United States. Coming to public attention as a social problem most recently in the United States in the late 1970s, prison overcrowding has coincided with the unprecedented growth in the nation's prison population over the past several decades. Because of the "war on drugs" and mandatory sentencing, the United States has become the world's foremost jailer. With just 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has 25 percent of its prisoners, approximately 2.4 million, a number that steadily increases by about 3 percent each year. In 2006, federal prisons were operating at 37 percent above capacity. The criminal justice system responded to what some jurisdictions call the "crisis" of prison overcrowding through diversion strategies, relying more heavily on jails for the overflow of prisoners, doubling up prisoners in one cell (also called double bunking), hotly debated early release strategies, and an increasing reliance on private (for-profit) prisons, to name a few. However, policy focus on capacity issues sometimes detracts from the actual conditions of privacy, security, and manageability (including meeting basic needs for nutrition, health, and sanitation) within prisons. In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice's Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons held public hearings, which...
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...Policy Development Prison crowding is becoming more and more of an issue in the United States. Every day the problem continues to grow as each person who is arrested, taken into to custody and ultimately convicted joins the prison population. Concerns have been raised when it comes to the topic of prison and its population by everyone from the public to law makers. Over the years, the growth of prison capacity has been slightly behind that of the inmate population always resulting in an overcrowding issue. “There has been no consistent evidence that crowding is associated with mortality, morbidity, recidivism, violence, or other pathological behaviors, but rather due to changes to both federal and state sentencing policies. These changes have increased the proportion of the individuals who are charged with felonies and sentence to lengthy jail and prison sentences” (Van Ness, 2008). In addressing any problem area, one first must define the terms or operational definitions. “The United States Supreme Court on November 30, 2010, heard oral argument in Schwarzenegger v. Plata about whether a federal court in California properly ordered the release of 40,000 prisoners to relieve the severe overcrowding in the state's prisons that has led to inadequate medical and mental health care for prisoners” (“U.S. Supreme Court Reviews Prison Overcrowding And Horrendous Conditions Of Confinement,” 2010). “America’s prisons now hold more than 2.3 million people, and many of the...
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...Ineffective Treatment of Addiction through the Criminal Justice System According to a recent survey, nearly “two-thirds of people polled support treatment over incarceration (Pew ResearchCenter for the People & the Press, 2014).” While a staggering “sixty-three percent favor doing away with minimum mandatory sentencing” altogether (Pew, 2014). This is extremely significant as it shows that a fundamental shift is occurring. For decades, our primary source of information concerning addiction has been our U.S. Government. Their strong emphasis on the purported “War on Drugs” has led to mass corruption on their part while simultaneously taking an active role in legislating zero-tolerance mandatory minimum sentencing. The recent Pew Poll is a prime example that the majority of Americans have seen the ineffectiveness behind our current policies. As more and more research is released on the subject of addiction, it is becoming increasingly obvious that a solely criminal approach is undeniably ineffective and in some regards, inhumane. Ineffective treatment of addicts has created; over-crowding on our criminal justice system, inexcusable financial hardships on our society, and is a major factor behind the revolving door syndrome. A quick look at the current state of our prisons can be rather glaring. The U.S. currently houses approximately 2.3 million inmates. Out of this number approximately 1.5 million have been medically diagnosed with severe substance abuse issues with an additional...
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...Sentencing Paper Ruben Varela CJA/234 08/11/2014 Introduction In this paper I will go over the state and federal objectives of punishment. Also I will discus how does sentencing affect the state and federal corrections systems. I will define determinate and indeterminate sentencing; also give my opinion of which sentencing model do you feel is most appropriate. State and Federal Objectives of Punishment Punishment can be broke down into four fundamental objectives. These objectives are deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. The first is deterrence; this is where people are discouraged from committing crimes. This can be broken down into two subcategories; specific and general. Specific is aimed at offender do not want to commit a crime because of the punishment received the last time they were caught. General is where someone is made an example to prevent others from doing the same thing. An example would be the over publicizing of inmates that receive death sentences. The second is retribution; this means that they punishment needs to fit the crime. A judge will not sentence someone to five years for a traffic violation and give a convicted murder just a few days. Judges need to take into account the full impact the crime had on everyone. The next objective is rehabilitation or reform. This aims at changing the behavior that caused the individual to commit their crime in the hopes that they will not commit the offence again. Some examples...
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...*Ensuring professionalism amung the corrections staff should be easy seeing it is a professional career. During training you are taught that there are certain things you do and dont do. Correctional officers go through a similar training that the police recruits do. Being a corrections officer is not easy your job is maintaining a jail everyday. Work environment affects jail staff. Positive work situations could also help the professionalism in the work environment. Positive relations with coworkers and work standards (rules and policies) can also have a big impact. Also Correctional officers need to change the way that they view and/or handle their jobs. In a work place you bring what you feel. If you feel sloppy about the job, thats exactly how your going to treat your your position. The attitude towards the people your serving can have a major impact achieving professionalism. In the field of corrections, careers will take time to improve itself. This industry may come off unprofessional but it is far from that. Every manager must help the correction officers keep these professional standards as well. The support from peirs will help the officers understand what is expected of them and help mandate the *Thankfully a very small percentage (less than 5) exhibits he unprofessional disruptive behavior. Very small percentage but still plays a big role when it shouldnt happen at all. * private prisions are somewhat in the same catagory as non private facilities...
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...The parole system in Australia is one that has adopted many differing opinions. The idea of parole has been debated over and over for many years. This paper aims to convey the positives and negatives of parole and in turn determine whether parole is under utilized or over utilized in Australia, or whether we have struck the right balance. Parole is defined as the "supervised conditional release of a prisoner before the expiration of his or her sentence." (Legal Terms Website, 2004). Parole is seen as a back end model of community corrections and is usually approved to a prisoner after they have completed the minimum, required time in prison set by a judge. However parole is only granted if the prisoner has behaved well in prison and cooperated with staff by abiding by set rules (Queensland Parole Orders Act, 1984). When a prisoner has completed the minimum time in incarceration of their sentence they are put before a parole board to plead their case. The parole board takes a number of things into consideration, such as their behavior and cooperation with in the prison and their likelihood to reoffend if let out on parole. The parole board may grant or deny a prisoner the freedom of parole. While on parole the inmate must cooperate with the rules and regulations placed upon him or her. And any deterrence from these rules means they will be sent back to prison to complete his or her entire sentence (White and Perrone, 2004). If granted parole the parolee is placed back...
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...Over crowding has become another issue in prisons, from 1982 to 2010 the prison population has grown from 501,886 to over 2.2 million; in 2010, including probation there are nearly 7 million offenders on record (11% in jail, 21% in prison, and 57% on probation) (Bales, Cochran, & Mears, 2014). Among the overcrowded prison populations, inmates or former inmates have filed lawsuits against the prisons they served their sentence at for the inhuman living conditions they were exposed to, such as unsanitary areas, bacteria and diseases (Byrne & Yanich, 1982). The primary reason why imprisonment is not effective is because of recidivism. Recidivism is when an individual relapses back to committing crime. Nearly 60% of offenders who are released from...
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...take away the freedom of someone who has broken the law and to keep dangerous people away from society.• Some prisons also have job training, a way for prisoners to finish school, and a way for them to learn to change their behaviors. Recidivism- continually returning back to prison.• The prisoners with the highest risk of returning to jail are robbers, burglars, larcenists, and motor vehicle thieves. Minimum and medium security- an individual has access to the basic needs in the prison. They aren’t as closely watched as the other levels of security.• Close security- Prisoners are locked up in cells and are searched for weapons, drugs or anything harmful. They are also able to go to an exercise yard from time to time. Minimum...
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...Intro to Corrections Before I watch the films in class I thought I had a pretty good insight on how prison worked and how corrections were used in the prison system. As I watched the films it gave me the visual part of the learning experience. It gave me the inside view of the system and how it works, but not only that it also showed me more on drugs in prions, fights, gangs, and the struggle to keep control of the prison. Not only had that it gone along with the book and everything we are learning in class. Now the film showed a lot of gang violence in prions. I saw how classification works better. In book it talks about how they can look at some tattoos and can tell if they are in a gang or not, now the officers in the films would use tattoos and markings to mark them violent activities. But certain tattoos will put a guy in a certain gang. This would help them classify them. This helped them be aware of certain gangs and different ways to handle them, and who to watch for and who to be more cautious with. The officers would find out new inmates and there gang history just by their tattoos. The max security prison system works a little differently with the gang situation. In the max security prison it is more about color of skin that whites stick with whites, blacks with blacks and etc. Overcrowding is no joke in prison. Now in class we learned about this and how prisons had to put multiple inmates in one room. In the video in showed exactly that! Sometimes 150 inmates would...
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...Prison Term Policy Recommendation Proposal Priscilla Williams CJA/314 September 3, 2013 Robert Williams Prison Term Policy Recommendation Proposal I have been hired as a criminologist advisor to one of the state legislature. The state legislature will soon vote on a bill that, if it passes will double the maximum prison term for anyone convicted of armed robbery. This bill is very important and needs to be examined to see if it would be a solution to decrease arm robberies. The reason I am writing this proposal is to point out different solutions that might be very beneficial. I am examining the new bill to see if the changes are necessary and beneficial. Army Robbery is a very serious crime and seems to be on the rise since the country has been in recession. Robbery is a crime of theft and can be classified as Larceny by force or by threat of force. The elements of the crime of robbery include the use of force or intimidation and all the elements of the crime of larceny. The penalty for robbery is always more severe than for larceny (Dictionary). Victims of armed robberies want nothing more than to see justice served and to feel safe. When an individual is robbed, it hurts financially, mentally, and sometimes physically. The US government also pays a very high price due to robbery. Although crime seems to be declining, the US government incurs heavy cost attributed to armed robbery crime. According to the 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, an estimate of $456 million in...
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...The State Prison System Brandon Heard CJA/204 04/28/2014 Instructor: Rudy Pichardo For decades, state prisons have been heavily populated to the point where there is not enough resources and staff to successfully manage and control the inmate population. Although there has been a decline in the population of state prisons over the last few years, there’s still a need to build more prisons and hire more correctional officers throughout the United States. According to a report published by Bureau of Justice (2014) “based on data collected by the end of 2012, describes the third consecutive year of decline of prison population in state prisons, but an increase in the number of federal prisoners. The U.S. prison population declined for the third consecutive year in 2012, from a high of 1,615,487 inmates in 2009 to 1,571,013 at yearend 2012. The U.S. imprisoned 27,770 fewer prisoners (down 1.7%) at yearend 2012 than at yearend 2011. The federal prison population increased by 1,453 prisoners in 2012 (up 0.7%), while the state prison population declined by 29,223 prisoners (down 2.1%).” (2014). From 2007 to 2011 Texas, California, and Florida had the highest amount of in-mates per state while North Dakota had the fewest (1,423). Statistics show that inmates that are released back into society and they have not committed any crimes within 4 years of being released, the chances of them going back to prison isn’t any hire than a regular citizen. State law officials are cracking...
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...the norm within any form of institution. IMPORTATION MODEL • Irwin + Cressey (1962) claim prisoners bring own social histories + traits into prison. This influences their adaptation to the prison environment. • They argue prisoners are not blank slates when they enter prison + many of the normative systems developed on the outside world be ‘imported’ into prison. DEPRIVATION MODEL • Paterline + Peterson (1999) – prisoner aggression is the result of the stressful + oppressive conditions of the institution itself. Oppressive conditions include crowding, staff exp etc. • Hodgkinson et al. (1985) found trainee nurses are more likely to suffer violent assault than experienced nurses + in prison setting, length of service was also a sig factor with more exp officers being less likely to suffer an assault (Davies + Burgess, 1988). HAZING • Bullying/disciplining younger members of a group in order to maintain ‘pecking order’. • Feb. 2006, Private Andrei Sycher was brutally beaten by older soldiers in Russia. He had to have his legs + genitalia amputated (Vyugin, 2006). • An extensive study of 11,000+ US students involved in teams showed over half had exp hazing. It happens because social context is a powerful influence on peoples willingness to aggress. AO2 • Harer + Steffensmeier (2006) collected data from 58 US prisons + found black inmates had sig higher rates of violent behaviour but lower rates of alcohol + drug related misconduct. These patterns parallel racial...
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...in our country amongst other countries I would have to say would be that there is not enough room to hold all of our criminals. Over population of inmates in prisons is an issue that is hard to control as you cannot control people from not committing crimes. There are many different problem and issues that should be addressed within our correctional system. Its very difficult to only focus on one problem/issue to focus on. One main issue that seems to pop up where ever you research for the top issue within the American correctional system is how many inmates out prisons are holding. The population of prisoner is growing much faster than we are constructing prison. Criminals such as murders who are hardly serving their complete sentences are over crowding these prisons. These murderers are being release early from these prisons because of how over crowed they have become and they now need room for other inmates that are now coming into the prison. Many problems come from releasing criminals earlier than they were supposed to. Let me set up a scenario where this may make a citizen uneasy, lets say that a person tried to kill you and your spouse but they were only successful in murdering one of you and this inmate is let out early because of “good behavior” while he was incarcerated. Why should the citizens life now be at risk because of our prisons systems inability to house convicted killers in their facilities?! Our correctional system not being able to house the inmates...
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...http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/4669/2/ GEO Group Argument that private sector can handle prisons better and cheaper than the government Somethings should not be for profit http://core.ecu.edu/soci/juskaa/SOCI2110/Prison_Industrial_Complex.htm http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/Masked_Racism_ADavis.html http://www.prisonsucks.com/ Paper Topic: The Prison Industrial Complex [Name of Writer] [Name of Professor] [Course Title] [Date] Prison Industrial Complex Prison Industrial Complex – Origin and Establishment The term prison industrial complex ‘ refers to an American criminal justice system that has been substantially transformed by almost three decades of rapid growth and by the increasing importance of private interests in criminal justice policy ... All these factors combined to provide an opening for private sector involvement in prison management and speculative prison building The third factor contributing in the transformation of the American corrections system can usefully be referred to as what Sir Leon Radzinowicz calls penal regression ... the machinery of justice in a democratic society should never be cut off (Radzinowicz , 1991 ) In the American case , massively disproportionate incarceration rates among communities of marginalized peoples , a growing tolerance for violence as a means of social control , and the replacement of rehabilitation with punishment...
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...Issues Janet Peralta, Latisha Smith, Michael Winters, Sarah Berry, Trent Neffendorf CJA/394 November 24, 2014 Becky Killian-Willis Correctional Issues Introduction The issues of mandatory sentencing have been affecting the prison forecasts, tax revenue, over-crowding in prisons, as well as flooding the court systems and backlogging cases. Mandatory prison sentences take the discretion away from prosecutors, as well as judges. An Inmate who is sentenced under a mandatory sentence does not qualify for early release, good time while in prison, and in most cases, the offender is not required to complete any supervision after release, due to the fact that he or she has fulfilled the obligations of his or her sentence. Several states, including the State of Oregon, have introduced legislation to reform their mandatory minimum sentences. With budgetary constraints in the volatile economy, the government cannot afford to continue to incarcerate individuals without the ability to modify sentences, supervision, etc. How courts are affected by mandatory minimum sentences Congress, as well as some of the state legislations introduced mandatory sentences in the 1970s and 1980s. These mandatory sentences forced the court system to hand down fixed prison sentences to those convicted of certain criminal acts. The lawmakers felt by enacting these sentences then it would help in the battle against the drug trade and hopefully prevent individuals from entering. However, while it did...
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