...criminal behavior is what led to the emergence of certain laws, and it is these laws that govern the punishment for the crime. Felony crimes in the United States can range from murder to burglary, both come with penalties of imprisonment. There are four main goals of imprisonment, one of which is rehabilitation. The statistics show that this goal of rehabilitation is not being achieved because inmates being released have a high rate of committing a crime within three years. Is imprisonment the proper punishment for certain crimes? I pose the following questions for discussion: What makes for deviant behavior and what are the theories behind deviance? What type of crimes exist in the United States? What parts of the court and prison system are effective, and which parts are ineffective? 1. What makes for deviant behavior, and what are the theories behind deviance? Truthfully, deviance is only in the eyes of the beholder. In India it is considered a highly sexual act to kiss your loved one and is only done in the confines of privacy. If someone...
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...Key Issues In Our Prison Population The United States is currently in a recession that is affecting middle and lower class American in many ways. Jobs are being cut down, gas prices are not constant, and the money that America once had is rapidly vanishing. One issue in particular has much to do with our prison population in Texas and every other state. As of June 30, 2009 there are 2,297,500 people including women incarcerated in the United States of America (Sabol, 2009). The US is 5 percent of the world's population and shockingly has 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Over the last 30 years, the US criminal justice system experienced the second largest increase in government investment, health care being the first. Last year, as state budget shortfalls emerged, 31 states cut education budgets while increasing money for incarceration (Rooks, 2010). This causes problems for states including Texas at the local, state, and federal. Drugs are an issue in every country in the world, but here in the United States we make it a primary issue, which is why we have so many people incarcerated. Drug offenses, account for two-thirds of the federal inmate population. This is virtually affecting the poor and minorities in our society. Because of this, money for incarceration increases and cuts down education budgets, thus also affecting our students who will be the future of our country. Policy makers in Washington D.C. must address these issues if they want the future of America...
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...became a new employee of the prison system I wondered what it was like to live in that small cell. So I went into an empty cell and sat there for 30 minutes. It only took me 15 minutes to realize that I could not bare it any longer. I realized that it must be difficult to sit there hour after hour, day after day and year after year, waiting for a day that you can leave. However, sometimes something worse happens to those who sit there wasting away. They become adapted to living that way, which they cannot exist any other way. It is very true, that inmates become better criminals when they leave the prison. It is also true that many become continual inmates meaning that is the only way for them to exist. When you place a person in a cage and treat them like animals they become animals. I must state that there are some people in our society which act like animals and they have to be treated and control like such for the safety of society. If while reading this and it comes across that I am angry, good you have picked up on that...
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...Men and women are sent to Federal, State, or Local jails depending on what crime was committed. Incarceration is when the judicial system confine a person's convicted of crimes. This confinement is whether before or after a criminal conviction. Prisons did not exist in the United States until the constitution was written in 1789. Before 1789 punishment was cruel such as public pillory which was a device to secure the head and hands, banishment from a community, disfigurement by stretching of the body, slicing off body parts and automatic death. After the constitution was written punishment changed in many different states. The death penalty exists in some states but before a person dies they are able to have a lawyer and speak for themselves. I believe people would rather have a convicted person serve time than get the death...
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...Community Corrections Paper Hope Washington CJS/230 Introduction to Corrections June 23, 2013 John Feltgen Community corrections programs oversee offenders outside of jail or prison, and are administered by agencies or courts with the legal authority to enforce sanctions. Community corrections include probation correctional supervision within the community rather than jail or prison and parole a period of conditional, supervised release from prison. The Community Corrections Division of the Department of Corrections supervises an active caseload of approximately 18,000 offenders in communities and work release facilities, providing guidance, support and program opportunities for all offenders returning to the community, holding offenders accountable to their imposed conditions, as they resume life within the community. Collaborating and supporting community resources and parties with a vested interest in successful offender transition into the community. Community based corrections can be viable for the youth but for an adult it is usually not sufficient to deter further illegal activity, we use projects like washing squad cars, litter patrol and with students we try to utilize some type of cleaning in the area of the school where they will be observed by their peers. It is great if you are not dealing with people who have committed violent crimes. Community based corrections is justifiable in today's society because many people believe making people accountable to their...
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...The disparate number of minorities in prison populations is a concern for many who believe this disproportion is due to a systematic bias in the judicial system. While many factors may contribute to this overwhelming discrepancy, I contend that the disparate number of minority populations in prison is an accurate portrayal of how crime is committed in the United States. In order to understand the cause of this disparity, I will delve into the arrest rates and sentencing statistics that attempt to show why minorities are incarcerated at a higher rate, and why they're incarcerated for longer periods of time, than their white counterpart. These two focal points, arrest rates and sentencing statistics, I believe, are the best for gathering data, considering it is where the justice system both begins and ends. Though many may think that there is a racial bias concerning the disparate number of minorities in prison working against minorities, an article entitled, “Are Blacks and Hispanics Disproportionately Incarcerated Relative to Their Arrests?” provides impressive data to oppose this claim. This article boasts being one of the first studies to include the Hispanic ethnicity in their data, which other studies omitted from, or never incorporated into, their findings, making this study much more reliable in terms of determining the cause of the referenced disparity, and more accurate in comparing the races involved. The disparity in prison populations, according to this article...
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...state prisons, and county jails in 2013. The main reason is because of high-occurrence rate of criminal deviance happened. Based on the research, races and classes are two main factors caused criminal deviances. And based on the historical data, white and black arrested rate for murder and robbery are almost the same while white arrested by forcible rape and forgery more (Around 70%). But there’s a significance difference in population of race since the report of population in 2013 showed that 72.4% of population is white alone and only 12.6% of population is black alone, which means black race has the higher criminal rate. And among the violent crime in the US, the assaults stay the highest and murders stay the lowest throughout the history. Both rates per 100,000 population committed assault and robbery crimes varied a lot throughout the history and reached the peak in 1990’s and both rates of rape and murder stayed relatively the same throughout the history. With the high requirements and costs (Around $30,000 per inmate/year) of prisons to hold these inmates, the cash-strapped states start to give their prison operation industry to private prisons. The modern private prison business first emerged and established itself publicly in 1984 when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was awarded a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Now private prison is a $5 billion industry and 8.4% of US prison population is housed in private prisons. The US...
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...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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...Jails vs. Prisons Josh Gubbs CJA/204 November 25, 2013 Erica Veljic When people think about jail and prison they think they are one in the same but they are not. This paper will discuss the differences between jail and prison as well as give the reader an insight into the life on an inmate and what they are introduced to when they are serving time behind bars. Probation and parole will also be discussed in addition to various kinds of prisons located throughout the United States and here in Connecticut. The difference between a jail and a prison is a jail is where people are housed who are awaiting trial and those who have been sentenced to a year or less behind bars. Jails also hold individuals for the military, protective custody, those who were found contempt in court, and they also temporarily detain juveniles and the mentally ill. A prison is a place where those who were sentenced to more than a year behind bars and are convicted of serious crimes. Also a prison is under the jurisdiction of federal or state where as a jail is under the jurisdiction of federal, state, county, and city laws. There are many different types of prisons as well, there are state prisons and federal prisons. The variation between the two is that state prison is where a person is sent to when they violate a state law and a federal prison is where someone goes when they violate a federal law. Now with in state and federal prisons there are multiple levels that an offender can be housed at...
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...to. The only place we get privacy is when we are at home, everywhere else there are cameras hidden watching you, without even noticing. At shopping malls, there are hidden cameras. The reason why they exist is simple: to prevent shopliftings, or in some cases, to catch shoplifters. Most customers realize that they are being watched and try to act properly, though there are some who fail to recognize or decide to ignore this fact and take the wrong path. It is not just shopping malls that have surveillance watching over people. Even when you’re driving on the street there is a hidden camera somewhere watching you to make sure you run a red light. Foucault starts Panopticism with a talk on the plague. After the explanatory introduction, Foucault presents an analysis of the prison system created by a famous economist Betham, Panopticon Readers could perceive a different conclusion as to what Panopticism is. According to my point of view Panopticism is the idea that schools are similar to prisons, and it is emphasized as well as stated throughout in the reading multiple times. The text gives a variety of examples to help the readers understand as well as analyze what the author is trying to portray. I concur with most of the ideas displayed in the text. Schools are similar to prisons due to the fact that individuals waiting for an education sit there for hours, enclosed within four walls, watched by supervisor in this case a professor. “Each individual in his place is securely...
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...According to a North Korean world article, North Koreans practice collective punishment. This means that if you go against Kim Jong Il in any way, not only will you get in trouble but the rest of your entire family will be punished. There is evidence about the political prisons that say death rates are extremely high. Grandchildren to grandparents have been sent to prison camps. Guards who have defected have reported being specifically told by Kim Jong Il that the prisoners are not people and should be treated as such. They are never meant to be released and their history is erased as soon as they enter. Although North Korea denies any of these camps exist. This is a humanitarian crisis and there is evidence that they are committing crimes against humanity. Kim Jong Il and his government should be held accountable. We CANNOT sit back and allow this to go on. Satellite imagery indicates that one prison camp being shut down but we have no idea where the 30,000 prisoners that were in that one camp are. If the United States has the technology to see camps and know they exist, why is nothing being done about them? Now I want to look at how the North Korean people are cut off from the rest of the world. The North Korean people do not have internet access and they have...
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...with slavery, and that exists in the US and we do it all over the country all the time. It is called prison labor. We are kind of familiar with the idea. Prisoners making license plates is the classic example. But that is the tip of the iceberg. Across the country convicts do work in carpentry, swing, mining, packaging, fire fighting, telemarketing, fish farming, and artisanal cheese-making. The last example is why this is back in the news. Whole food took some flak for selling felon made cheese and at pretty hefty markup. According to the Civil Liberties Union, this...
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...Mackie argues that God does not exist because of his idea of the 3-0-God which states that God has to be omniscient, omnipotent and omni-benevolent to fulfill the properties of a true God. Perhaps the strongest argument that Mackie gives is that God can only be two out of the three properties in order for evil to exist thus stating that god cannot exist because he does not fulfill all three properties. In this paper, I will argue that this argument fails because Mackie is basing his points on his own thoughts about God. Mackie starts out his argument by stating that the problem of evil proves that either no god exists or at least the god of Christianity, Judaism and Islamic does not exist since the problem of evil provokes the three properties of God. Mackie supports this claim by saying, “These additional principles are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.” (Abel p.91) and concludes this claim with, “…propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible.” (Abel p.91) Adequate solutions are also what backs up his major point about the problem of evil and states that God cannot be all knowing while being all-powerful and all-good because evil exists and would mean that God is unaware of evil in the world. God can be all-knowing and all-powerful but cannot be all-good since evil exists and gives God the false impression...
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...how it helps us today with those who choose to commit crimes. I will also cover the basis of how Constitutional given rights are upheld within the prison system itself, and how the public is involved with the goings on within the prisons. According to the article Why State Prisons by W. David Ball, state prisons in 2012 held approximately 1.3 million people which is almost twice the amount of people in county jails and more than five times the federal prison populations. This number is only estimated to go up as the years go on if left unchecked. Also according to the article, California passed policy to reform their prison and jail population problems, their state prisons now only accept violent offenders and sexual predators rather than all types of felons, with the remaining criminal elements serving their time in local jails. The state prisons began to be overpopulated due to the government taking on more and more prisoners to use as labor (road crews, ditch digging, etc;) and granted the government a flow of surplus cash as a result. That helped the economies then but is irrelevant in todays’ life, as the belief that the professional and rehabilitative power has dwindled into near oblivion. With that said, there are many who wonder whether state prisons are needed anymore, or are they a relic of the past? Prison terms were almost non-existent in the latter part of 1775, in Pennsylvania for example, there was almost no imprisonment at all, rather, they...
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... This paper provides an analysis of human rights catastrophe in our jails and prisons that people have to confront. And the author points out prisons’ growth can't be isolated from problems of our society, such as racism, poverty and global capitalism. And I want to talk about is the time for the prison approaching an end? Since 1970s, prisons have grown exponentially, because there exist a cycle of joblessness and incarceration. A plenty of people lost their jobs and prospects when corporations and deindustrialization migrate to another area. In the mean time, prisons will provide a lot of jobs and bring economic growth to some specific area that need help. When these depressed area gradually recover the economy. The cycle will set up naturally. Then the prisons offer an opportunity let people have excuse to disassociate from problems in our society, such as racism and economic and societal imbalance. Just like a sentence in the article ”It relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”(Are Prisons Obsolete? pg. 16) People most of time used to overlook problem of prison system. Conversely, people would like to regard the prisons as a solution to deal with some problems in society. This behavior not only let people ignore how much of a problem prisons are, but also helps us forget about how much we should be doing about other issues, such...
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