Preview

The Pros And Cons Of Prison Reform

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1430 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Pros And Cons Of Prison Reform
Would you believe me if I told you that prisons were originally built to reform prisoners? With they way the criminal justice system works and how high the rates of mass incarceration are, in today's day and age, I, myself, would not believe that prisons were built with a positive outcome in mind. If someone would have told me that in the eighteen hundreds prison were used as a place to reform individuals, I would have given them a nasty looking face full of disbelief. But now that I have this information, the question is, what changed? Why is this method still not being practiced in today’s society? However, while asking these question, I realize that it is absolutely amazing the way things change and how easily things are tainted. According …show more content…
However, the necessity and effectiveness of punishing inmates can be questioned. For me, to answer the question of the effectiveness and necessity of punishment on people, in general, is difficult. But based on research, the answer is yes and no. I would say no for several reasons mainly because, I do not condone violence, and that is mostly how they punish prisoners. To me the worse punishment for someone serving life on a first-degree murder charge is the absence of forgiveness from the deceased’s family. For most, being in prison is not the hard part, but sitting in there realizing that no matter how hard you repent and apologize, you will never be forgiven, that must hurt more than any physical punishment …show more content…
If someone is so accustomed to violence, then treating that person with violence is not going to help, because at the end of the day, when, and if, this person is released, how do you expect they are going to respond to something that they do not like? I will take ‘with violence’ for three hundred, please. And after that happens, where will they ended up? You guessed right, prison. A place where they are continuously treated with violence, so in actuality, it is a never ending cycle that is difficult to escape (Alexander). Also, what about prisoners who get out and have kids and cannot supported their families, so they steal to support their families, and then get caught, as this was the case with Olivia Hamilton
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Pros And Cons Of California's Overcrowded Prisons
    • 98 Words
    • 1 Page

    Pros And Cons Of California's Overcrowded Prisons

    Assembly Bill 109 is a public safety realignment that will help state prisons overcrowding by shifting low-risk inmates to county jails.Since California prisons are overcrowded, medical and mental health care is lacking and prisoners Eighth Amendment rights are being violated. In the case Brown v Plata, Marciano Plata and other prisoners claimed that California's prisons were in violation of the Eight Amendment, but later it was determined that California's overcrowded prisons was the primary cause. The court ordered the release of enough prisoners so the inmate population would come within 137.5 percent of the prisons' total design capacity.…

    • 98 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Summary: The New Asylum
    • 355 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary: The New Asylum

    Watching the documentary, the New Asylum opened my eyes a lot. I have heard the saying, “prisons are the new asylum” plenty of times, but I did not believe it to be true until watching the documentary. Before watching it I always viewed the prison system as a very harsh and coercive place, but now I see how much it help people with mental illness. If it wasn’t for the prison system some people would not have a place for treatment. I believe if the government had better funding there would be less reoffender. I say this because once they reenter society they are not able to adapt to normal life activities. In the documentary, the prisoners would be returning back to prison within a month. If they had more steps once they are…

    • 355 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of Private Prisons
    • 234 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Pros And Cons Of Private Prisons

    When people think of prisons, they imagine that the occupants inside deserve to be there. That a person is doing their time for a crime committed. When it comes to privately owned prisons, the time doesn’t always fit the crime.…

    • 234 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of Prisons In The United States
    • 212 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Pros And Cons Of Prisons In The United States

    The author made some good key points why the future generations would condemn us for. Our prison system has become way out of hand. Prisons in the United States hold more people with non- violent crimes than any nation. No individual should experience getting sexually abused or even raped in prison. We are sending too many people to prison. This issue is not the prisons themselves more the sentencing. The industrial meat production in this world is horrifying. No animals that are ready to be slaughter should live in such inhuman conditions. Many individuals in a rural setting, get it from what the raise. With the growth in population and demand for meat, individuals have no choice to get their meat from inhuman factories. The way we treat our…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Prison Privatization
    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Prison Privatization

    This paper deals with issues of privatization of prison and the pros and cons of the subject matter. First, what is prison privatization? Prison privatization means the transfer of prison functions from the government sector to the private sector. This can take various forms in the case of prisons. One of the reason why there was a need to allow privatization is the problems of prison overcrowding and high costs may be the "privatization" of prisons. By using the private sector to build or manage prisons, many states believe that they can reduce costs. So far, most state correction agencies have used the private sector only to manage minimum-secure or non-secure "community" correction centers, such…

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration
    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration

    The United States accounts for 5% of the world population but has nearly 22% of world prison population. This means that nearly 2 million people are incarcerated, and 1 in 3 black men will go to prison or jail if this trend continues (Amnesty International). Mass Incarceration has been one of the major debate recently in Politics. The politician has been debating on a method to reduce the prison population, and to do that they need to find the cause of it and the different contribution. In recent year, there has been a cut in funding for many states rehabilitation, education and other programs because the costs to accommodate an inmate is escalating upward. At the same time, laws are put in place that put disadvantaged people within the criminal…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration
    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration

    Mass incarceration reveals the essence of the problems in America’s criminal justice system. It shines light on the presence of inequality as well as the flaws in the policies. Mass incarceration became a huge problem in the US with the onset of the War on Drugs. Since then, the number of prisoners has increased significantly and a great proportion of the prisoners include drug offenders. Beckett and Sasson argue that the inequality here lies in the fact that members in the minority populations are sought after because unlike many private transactions that happens amongst upper class individuals, those that take place between members of the lower class tend to be more visible.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Prison Overcrowding
    • 1824 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Prison Overcrowding

    Current research regarding overcrowding in prisons and jails is relatively limited in its scope. Most research focuses on only prisons and is primarily quantitative research. Quantitative research is incapable of examining personal opinions of inmates who serve time in overcrowded institutions; and ask whether or not inmates accredit their failure to rehabilitate to overcrowding. Qualitative research would help better understand how inmates perceive the issue, and whether or not the statistical issues are reflected in their minds. Quantitative data clearly shows that overcrowding in prisons has negative effects such as lack of resources, poorer living environment, and ultimately higher recidivism…

    • 1824 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of Incarceration
    • 1195 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Pros And Cons Of Incarceration

    Since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world. Although prison populations are increasing in some parts of the world, the natural rate of incarceration for countries comparable to the United States tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 population. The U.S. rate is 500 prisoners per 100,000 residents, or about 1.6 million prisoners in 2010, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Prison is a place used for internment of convicted criminals. Not including the death penalty, a sentence to prison is the harshest punishment inflicted on criminals in the United States. On the federal level, imprisonment or incarceration is managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a federal…

    • 1195 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Mass Incarceration Pros And Cons
    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Mass Incarceration Pros And Cons

    The topic we chose was an important time in history dealing with prisons. We chose MASS INCARCERATION and focused on the legacy of Ronald Reagan and the escalating war on drugs. Today we are going to talk to you about the policies surrounding the war on drugs and how they have affected mass incarceration and policies that devalue the meaning of the 4th amendment.…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Incarceration Pros And Cons
    • 1454 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Incarceration Pros And Cons

    The United States only has 5 percent of the world's population and uses 75 percent of the world's prescription drugs. The United States has the highest prison population out of all the countries and almost half of the prisoners are there because of drug crimes. Due to the ever increasing drug use in the U.S. today, our society would benefit from less punishment and more rehabilitation, some benefits include less spending, lower incarceration rates and lower death rates.…

    • 1454 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Prison Reform Research Paper
    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Prison Reform Research Paper

    I know one fellow who was arrested for participating in a Quaker peace vigil and was jailed in lieu of paying a ten-dollar fine. In a forty-eight- hour period, he was savagely raped and traded back and forth among more than fifty violent prisoners. That was twenty years ago, and since then he has had years of therapy, and yet he has never recovered emotionally. His entire life still centers around the decision of one prison superintendent to place him in a violent cellblock in order to "teach him a lesson." Most nonviolent offenders do in fact learn a lesson: how to be violent. Ironically; we spend an average of $20,000 per year, per inmate, teaching them this. For less than that we could be sending every nonviolent offender to college. None of us, including prison staff, should accept violence as a fact of prison life, and it would be easy not to. We could designate certain facilities as zero-violence areas and allow inmates to live there as long as they don't commit-or even threaten to commit-a single violent act. The great majority of prisoners would sign up for such a place, I…

    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of Overcrowded Prisons
    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Pros And Cons Of Overcrowded Prisons

    The biggest problem in America is overcrowded prisons. But how do we fix that? For several prisons have been lacking space for prisoners. America needs to build more prisons because of conditions, population, and fair treatment.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Punishment: Forms and Functions
    • 1349 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Punishment: Forms and Functions

    Imprisonment is one of the most widely used forms of punishments globally, the ideology of imprisonment globally tends to remain the same. There are several functions of imprisonment and whether it is an effective method of punishment is widely argued by sociologist. To remove the offender from society, as to keep society safe is one function that stands out, by putting the offender in a high security environment you take away their freedom to commit offences towards the public again. However it could be argued that prison is deemed an unsafe environment for the offender itself as an institution, for many it’s an environment where they have to adapt to survive, in which case becoming a breeding more criminals as a result of this or producing victims. Alternative punishment such as house arrest or probation would be more suitable in the face of the offender’s personal safety, whereby they are still paying for the crimes they have committed, with limitations on their freedom, however they are much safer. Statistics show that 50% of offenders that are released from prison are likely to reoffend within 3 years, which is the same rate as those who are given these alternative punishment. With 3% of the American population in prison and a large majority of those likely to reoffend within 3 year of release, they should be looking for alternative approaches to prison that takes into account the safety of the offender. However it could be argued that prison is there to be tough and that the people in there are criminals and should be treated as such.…

    • 1349 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Prison Education Vs Rehabilitation Essay
    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Prison Education Vs Rehabilitation Essay

    Our country is already spending around 80 billion dollars per year on prisoners and yet, somehow, failing to supply a good education program and rehabilitation system. Our prison system is so fixated on punishing inmates that it fails to apply methods that can help lower the crime rate. Rehabilitation techniques differ according to the nature of the criminal and the type of crime committed. However, if applied, both education programs and rehab techniques have a positive effect on prisoners instead of punishment. Some deserve a second chance, and with education, it can be achieved. If the purpose of prison is punishment alone, prisoners are going to build up so much anger and negativity that they will become only more dangerous to our society when they are…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics