Preview

Is Imprisonment the Most Effective Way of Dealing with Most Violent Offenders?

Best Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2254 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Is Imprisonment the Most Effective Way of Dealing with Most Violent Offenders?
Is Imprisonment an effective way of dealing with most violent offenders?

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jail. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” [Nelson Mandela]
Brief History on Crime and Imprisonment

Throughout history, people within organised communities and societies were amongst few if not many that would affront the rules and regulations of these communities and societies. The way in which authorities dealt with the said offenders changed throughout history, and is still changing to this day, but the most common form of restraining these offenders was to send them to prison. Prison is known to be a place where people are physically confined and usually underprivileged of a wide range of personal freedoms. Imprisoning has, in itself, not always been a form of punishment but rather a way to confine offenders until such time as corporal or capital punishment was ordered.

Introduction

Is Imprisonment an effective way of dealing with most violent offenders? This question is one of the most difficult questions to give an exact, “same for all circumstances”, response to. Because there are countless categories of criminal acts wherein someone can offend, there are countless categories of solutions. “As prison has the highest profile of any sanction in common use in our kind of society, it plays an important part in reassuring people that ‘something is being done’ about the problem of law and order, and the social threats which they are persuaded to take most seriously.” This essay will discuss the effectiveness of imprisonment with most violent offenders and what needs to be done to improve some aspects of this course of action. Today we see prisons as a way of protecting society from those who are at risk of harming the majority and not co-operating with the law. Modern society has a view

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Throughout the centuries, both the system and the concept of prison have undergone many radical changes that eventually led to the formation of the prison as we know it now. In the 16th and 17th centuries, prison tended to be a place where criminals were kept in it while awaiting their punishment. It was a place, where criminals were held, rather than a means of punishment. In fact, criminals, at that time, were publically punished, rather than imprisoned, in the most torturous ways such as whipping, and slaughtering. However, in the 18th century, people in charge decided to put an end to these cruel methods of punishing. They came up with new methods of punishing instead of using torture in punishing criminals. In fact, the incarceration with hard labor was the new method of punishing criminals. Thus, the prison itself became a tool of punishment.…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In part 3, Morris (2002, p.171) discusses why prison conditions matter and why penal reformers, including himself, have devoted their lives and travelled thousands of miles to other countries in search of answers to questions that would improve prison correction from what is corrupt or defective. Morris (2002, p.172) suggests human rights are relative to all human beings whether free or imprisoned and he considers prisons as a smaller community within the world. Thus, the infliction of unnecessary torture and pain cannot be justified and therefore must be prevented and eradicated.…

    • 2326 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In, “The Jail,” John Irwin describes what it is like for a criminal to initially be arrested and further processed into a prison. It is at this time that a person first experiences a complete loss of freedom. Before, they had choices and could do as they wished with their lives, whether it be positive or negative. Once under arrested, these people have arguably less rights than slaves did hundreds of years prior. They have to be told when to sit, stand, where to walk, and when they can eat. I do not want to be misunderstand and say that this is always a bad thing. These measures are sometimes necessary in order to control and manage people who have not been able to abide by society’s laws.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although criminals should pay the consequence for their behavior, it should not mean that they should live in overcrowded prisons. An example of an overcrowded prison is shown in Angola, where the max occupancy was for 800 prisoners, yet they had 1,750 prisoners (Stern, 2006). When this happens, the lack of resources, space, and training from needed officers increases. Therefore, conditions become hazardous and prisoners and officers are at higher risk for diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis (Stern, 2006). Although society feels safe with criminals locked up, they have to realize that a main purpose for prisons is to help reduce crime by showing prisoners that breaking the law will cause them the loss of freedom. Ultimately, leading those criminals who are able to get out, to come out with a sense of a change behavior. However, the system that puts these women, men, and young people in overcrowded prisons are not even worried about the criminal. Instead, they keep increasing the definition of “crime”, which increase the number of criminals in an ineffective prison…

    • 1526 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abstract: Based on the ideals of a penitentiary, what it should be like? What was the principal goal of a penitentiary? What were the differences between the two prison models? What were the benefits and drawbacks of each model? Which model was considered to be the winning model?…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    CJS/230

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A penitentiary was meant to be secular and spiritual (Foster, B., 2006). A penitentiary was supposed to be a clean, healthy place for inmates to serve their time and to be treated in a human way. Most importantly, a certain punishment and a place to pay penance for their crimes.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this paper we will discuss some descriptions of jail’s place in corrections and its role throughout history on most of these offenses come with a sentence of a year or less and anyone with over a year sentence is usually sent to a prison facility (Seiter, 2011). On the other hand, prisons have an ample amount of time to work with, rehabilitate, and reform offenders. Prisons do this with the hope that offenders can eventually be placed back into society and limit their recidivism back to crime. “The first jails were created in England and they were called goal” (Seiter, 2011,…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 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
  • Better Essays

    During the age of enlightenment state prison were formed because scholars felt that there was a more humane way of treating criminals. Prison was not used as a form of punishment before the enlightenment era; it was primary used as a holding place for men,…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    America’s prisons have a major importance in modern society. They are a huge contributing factor to the safety of our country and allow for proper and humane punishment for those who commit crimes. While America’s streets continue to be plagued by crime and dangerous people, prisons help significantly in decreasing the crime rate and removing those people from society in order to create a safer place for people to live. Although there are many pros that come with prisons, a handful of cons come with them as well, which allow for arguments to rise about whether prisons should be allowed in America or not. Prisons are a necessity in modern society that punishes and rehabilitates those who commit crimes with the purpose of protecting…

    • 1962 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Around the world there are many different types of prisons. There are a few reasons why imprisonment is a good of a form of…

    • 900 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crime Vs Incarceration

    • 1792 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The United States of America has more than 2 million people in prison or jail, making it the country with the most inmates. There are almost as many prisoners in the U.S as there is inhabitants in a small or medium sized country. The high number of prisoners is due to regulations brought to the United States that stated that in order to keep the citizens safe, the government had to be “tough on crime.” Whether that meant keeping people in prison for a long period of time or incarcerating more citizens, some points were clear; it was meant to promote punishment and to install fear. Being “tough on crime” and trying to eliminate it could have meant trying different methods that would prevent prisoners from reoffending. Instead, higher authorities…

    • 1792 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prison Reform

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The United States has one of the highest rates of inmates globally. The majority of the inmate’s ages vary from 31- 40 (bop.gov). These are the ages where people are productive and becoming the most effective part of the economy. The inmates are being held in prison and are a part of the violence and the unpredicted behaviors that is happening inside the prisons. Prisons are supposed to be places that change and develop people to the better. Instead it is a place deprived of humanity and consciousness, which leads to recidivism and behavioral violence. Prison reform is needed because it would help increase economic growth, reduce the number of prisons needed, and help allocate taxpayer’s money to education and healthcare. Above all, they are…

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe whether imprisonment works or not depends on each specific case’s victims, offenders, and how the case was handled by the court and prison systems. Imprisonment alone does not work, but combined with other methods like rehab or therapy, it can work. Locking away a prisoner and throwing away the key does not help society. Although it does accomplish one of the goals of punishment, incapacitation, imprisonment does not work. I think that imprisonment is overused, especially in the United States. We have the highest incarceration rate today. Americans represent 5% of the world’s population but we house 25% of the entire world’s inmates.…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics