Preview

Essay On Incarceration In America

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1455 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Essay On Incarceration In America
We call America the land of the free truth is no one is free. The United States has had the highest incarceration rates compared to other countries all around the world. Many illegal activities and narcotics play a huge role to becoming incarcerated. We’re born into a violent society and have no other choice but to live with it. Crime, violence, drugs and poverty are around us on a daily basis and young children see these things and think it’s normal. By certain individuals acting in ways they shouldn’t in front of young children will cause problems for us in the future. This essay will include articles giving us facts and answers on our incarceration practices and what we do to our inmates on the inside. The “Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the law online” gives us insight on out mentally ill inmates and attempts to give us solutions when it comes to people who are mentally ill and aren’t completely there. Also an article written by Chettiar Inimai and their colleagues go in-depth on how New York City reduced mass incarceration hence the title of the article. According to an article on PRB written by Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna titled …show more content…
Inmates being released from prison are vulnerable to serious relapse by the effects of drugs and alcohol. Even if we try to help them to the best of our ability then they need to depend on themselves to make sure they don’t fall again. Depending on the person they will learn from their experience in prison or just fall into a cycle so it happens over and over again. This paper has given insight and knowledge about incarcerations around our nation and how we handle inmates by either drugs or holding them within solitary

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    America land of the free and home of the great, But in all reality is America as great is…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The US correctional system punishes offenders in different ways, because each offense is on a different level some can be felonies and some can be charged as misdemeanors. In our correctional system they punishes offenders, by putting them in jail/prison. But in its early years prison punishments for offenders were cruel. In the early year of the correctional system offenders punishments were very different from their punishments now in this day and age.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Since the 1970s the rate of incarceration in the United States has quadrupled, after having been relatively flat over the prior half-century.”-Anthony Zurcher. The rate of prison incarcerations has increased so much over the years; the government can’t afford to incarcerate that many people. Karen Thomas’s article “Time to Invest in Schools, Note Prisons” shows that United States incarcerates too many criminals violent and non-violent. Joan Petersilia said in her article “Beyond the Prison Bubble” that, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation. This also supports the idea that The United States incarcerates too many people.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The purpose of this paper is to seek incarceration in society by addressing who what how when and where, on the subject of matter. My argument of the United States population being sheltering in warehouse of society known as the penitentiary system is wrong. United States’ prison population are the worst despite economy and structure systems. I will research supporting arguments from articles I found from scholarly sources and popular sources from the internet for you to challenge my argument and hopefully agree with me and if not then go on to more discussion on other topics to argue against…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benefits that were in placed to help African Americans were no longer there or they were hard to get. There were a certain amount of benefits in the African American communities that were limited to certain amount of people due to the restrictions the benefits had. Welfare was replaced with AFDC, which came with TANF, and TANF limits the amount of time you can use the benefits and restricted convicted felons with drug offenses from getting it (Alexander). This clearly is going to affect the Black communities, because if they can not get these benefits then they are going to go back on the streets to sell drugs, which is going to lead to jail. If the system wants to help people, then why put restrictions on the things they need. It seems as…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    While it has been observed and recorded that crime rates have gone down in the last thirty years, the correlation between increasing the number of prisoners and less crime is not significant (Kelly, 2015). This is due to the fact that more and more non-violent offenders have been imprisoned for minor drug related offenses that have only been interpreted as major offenses by poor policy regulation (Kelly, 2015). This only means that tax payers are progressively increasing the amount of money they pay for nothing other than a false sense of…

    • 1677 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In our country, The United States of America, we have many issues and one of them is mass incarceration. Many people are in jail because of the bail, mental issues, and poverty as well. People are also locked up for many reasons, but, sometimes they are not even guilty for anything. It has happened to so many people that they don't want to pay bail because they are not guilty at all. Others have been locked up because of mental illness.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In, “Beyond the Prison Bubble,” published in the Wilson Quarterly in the winter 2011, Joan Petersilia shows different choices about the imprisonment systems. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation (para.1). The crime rate over a thirty year span had grown by five times since 1960 to 1990. There are more people of color or Hispanics in federal and state institutions then there are of any other nationality. The prison system is growing more than ever; the growth in twenty years has been about 21 new prisons. Mass imprisonment has reduced crime but, has not helped the inmate to gradually return back to society with skills or education. But the offenders leaving prison now are more likely to have fairly long criminal records, lengthy histories of alcohol and drug abuse, significant periods of unemployment and homelessness, and physical or mental disability (par.12).…

    • 259 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In recent times there has been expressed concern about prison addiction treatment. People do agree that this is a major concern. Of course, not everyone agrees on treatment while in prison and there is a need for a solid response to this issue. This is important as we do not want to have people when they are released from prison to have the same problems or addictions as before they went to prison. Many times the reason they are in prison is illegal drugs. (Muzinic, Penic, Vukota & Palijan, 2011) Of course, there are different treatment methods to be discussed. The paper discusses prison addiction treatment methods, how treatment effects society and other items that are relevant to the topic of Prison Addiction Treatment. The research suggests that people treated while in prison have a lesser chance of ending back in prison. This shall be discussed.…

    • 2897 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    With recidivism rates soaring, the establishment of prison GED programs should be a standard way to rehabilitate prisoners who’d otherwise have no future outside of bars. An example of a character from the book who would benefit from the GED program would be Crazy Eyes, a hard timer from the FCI, who’d graduated up the hill. Outside of Danbury, Crazy Eyes was a high profile drug dealer and a career criminal experienced with the nuances of prison. If she had the access and willingness to complete the GED program, Crazy Eyes could use the qualification as a step toward reintegrating properly with the outside world. Therefore, by offering GED programs in prison, inmates like Crazy Eyes can be slowly rehabilitated toward permanent freedom while…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The United States of America promotes itself as the land of the free but, is it truly free? People believe what they see or are told without actually giving it thought, as the saying goes, “See no evil, hear no evil.” The people of today have been brainwashed to believe that what the media portrays is fact and that’s all there is to it. We are aware of what life can be like in other countries, and compare it to the United States to give ourselves the illusion that we are free. Although it may be true that we have more freedom than other nations, it is not true that the United States is an absolutely free nation. The incarceration rates of this country are devastatingly high that the prison system operates more like a business than as a correction…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prison over Crowding

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Overcrowding in prisons is one of the biggest challenges facing the American criminal justice system today. The total population of prisons and jails in the United States neared the 2.1 million mark in June 2003, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S residents was incarcerated in prison or in jail. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s state and local governments got tougher on crime by passing legislation calling for mandatory sentences for repeat offenders, such as California’s “three strikes you’re out” law and New York and other cities adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Because of these polices the number of violent crimes has dropped. Unfortunately, one unintended consequence of America’s new tough stance on crime is that our prison system has become dangerously overcrowded, forcing prison officials to release violent criminals after serving only a fraction of their sentences. The current system used to relieve overcrowding has created a “revolving door” criminal justice system. The recidivism rate among those released early from state and county prisons is extremely high. In fact, a Department of Justice study found that 67.5 percent of criminals released from prison were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years (USDOJ, 2013). A Large portion of the overcrowded conditions in the prison system is a result of the” war on drugs”. This war alone costs taxpayers a large amount of money each year because new prisons are needed to be constructed to house the ever-growing…

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Recently America has undergone a massive rise in its prison population. From growing populations, the higher crime rates that follow, and high numbers of recidivism America’s imprisonment rate has increased five-fold in the last four decades. Today’s current incarceration rate is over 700 per 100,000 of population, making it the highest in the nation’s history and in the world (Steiker, 2014). With the numbers still growing, it is time to re-examine the model of incapacitation that is in current affect throughout America’s criminal justice system.…

    • 221 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To end mass incarceration, the public’s attention needs to shift from a civil rights campaign to a moral crusade that advocates on behalf of criminals. The widespread aversion to advocacy on behalf of those labeled criminals reflects a certain political reality. Many think that spending money on criminal justice reform is unwise. Their thoughts exist because criminals are the one social group in America that everyone across political, racial and class boundaries feels free to hate.…

    • 1329 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    One of the many social problems here in America are the high rate of African Americans placed in the prison system. According to NAACP, from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million and out of the 2.3 million incarcerated 1 million are African Americans. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. 1 out of 3 African American males are expected to go to prison in their lifetime compared to the 1 out of 17 white males who are most likely to end up in prison as well.…

    • 1654 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays