Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous prison reform prison reform In today’s society, we are facing many changes. Our own family, neighbors, and countrymen are afraid of many dangers which influence their lives. Although many people have fear which resonates in their consciousness and unconsciousness, the United States has a comparatively low crime rate. Despite this low crime rate, America incarcerates it’s citizens five times the rate of Canada and seven times that of most European democracies.(Slambrouck, Paul. 24) Our society needs to be changed. We cannot blame the individuals involved in wrongdoing but we can blame our society who raised these criminals. Of course someone who kills another human being needs to be put away in some form; but we need to make changes. We need to help as many maladjusted people as we can. There are some steps which really seem to work. There are many prison inmates who come from broken homes and have low self-esteem. What needs to be done to help these insecure people, who are at war with themselves and society, is to rehabilitate them. The problem is the prison officials do not try to teach the prisoners how to learn from their mistakes.(McGovern, Celeste. 42) What actually happens is that criminals tend to be better thefts, and have the ability to out smart the police. Our politicians need to stress how important vocational, educational, drug-treatment, and religious programs are, in order to improve the attitude and demeanor of these convicted felons. This is the only way to keep ex-con’s from jail.(DeLuca, H.R. 38) Another problem with America’s prison system is overcrowding. There is a huge amount of young conscienceless offenders who are entering today’s prisons. Imagine trying to compact eight gallons of water in a five gallon container and making it all fit. It does not work! It is impossible yet inside our prison walls this is a very common thing to happen. Prison officials make confused, angry, and psychotic individuals horde into a six-by-ten cell. (Pettiinico, George. 31) People who commit crimes are the product of society. They are a tell tale sign which demands reform. We need to show them the true path to take. Denial of freedom is punishment enough, there is no need to make harsher penalties for nonviolent offenders. The only in pact that will come from that is huge costs for tax-payers and an overall more dangerous society. Although I believe there needs to be serious reform in American prisons, there are many different reasons why the system is set up the way it is. When a family is victimized by some form of crime they usually feel very afraid and vulnerable. This happens because criminals intrude into peoples personal lives. Therefor the victim wants everything the police can possibly do to put the deviant behind bars. Many people feel that the problem is solved when criminals get sent to jail. On the outside it looks like the system works and this will, in time, ease the pain the victims felt. People gain their sense of security back and fools them to thinking everything in the world is good again. Another reason politicians push for longer sentencing, harsher penalties, and building new prisons is because it helps law-abiding citizens keep jobs. The government spends millions of dollars a year on the construction of new prisons, which means a steady flow of jobs to major contracting companies. Hundreds of workers are able to put food on their children’s tables because of this. In fact, since 1980, our nation’s prison population has quadrupled. There has been more federal prisons built in the last 16 years than were constructed in the rest of our century.(Colson, Charles. 166) Also, taxes are a big issue across our nation. In our society, the desire to keep crime off the street is evident and is shown especially through the high tax rate in most states which is put away for correction facilities. This demand for new prisons was not driven by and acceleration in the nation’s crime rate, which has been stable overall and declining for certain types of crime since the 1970’s. (DeLuca, H.R. 43) The prison-space crisis was created by the simple fact that we are incarcerating more nonviolent offenders for longer sentences. In 1994, 92 percent of federal prisoners were incarcerated for committing nonviolent crimes, costing taxpayers more then $23,000 per year per inmate. (McGovern, Celeste. 44) What needs to be done is we need to have the nonviolent offenders involved in programs to help them understand why what they did was wrong. They need to learn how to learn from their mistakes and bad choices. It seems that they need to have a chance to correct themselves. The only way this can be achieved is by putting them into programs to correct and rehabilitate these ill people. Despite the costs of housing inmates, the government says that is what the people want. Who said the government is always right? What will happen is an overrun prison community which has no programs such as vocational training, drug treatment, and religious teaching. This will only lead to ruin and chaos.(DeLuca, H.R. 46) Sometimes people in our society make bad decisions. They make these irrational mistakes and have a clouded perspective of what will manifest from those actions. People like this need to know the ramifications to their actions. Every action has a equal or greater reaction. As a society we need to teach people that crime is not the only way to escape from their troubles. It possibly could seem as a loss of responsibility but it is not . We need prisoners to learn how to better themselves which will in fact better society as a whole. The only way to try to rehabilitate criminals is to allow them to take certain programs which will help the individual stay sane, learn a trade, and meet god. Having prisoners set goals in their time of imprisonment will surly make the prison society have a much safer atmosphere.(Colson, Charles. 90) In Mckean prison several measures have been adopted to try and reform the corrections process. These measures have made Mckean one of the most successful and safest medium security prison in the country. “Mckean prison has a growing number of violent offenders admitted and the cost per year for these felons in only approximately $15,370. That is below the average for prisons of its type, and far below the overall federal average $21,350. It is two-thirds of what many state prisons cost.”(Dilulio, John 22) With all this Mckeans incident record since 1989 reads like a clean slate: no escapes, no homicides, no sexual assaults, and no suicides.(Dilulio, John 24) According to Princeton University Criminologist, John Dilulio, “Mckean is probably the best managed prison in the country.” The reason why this facility gained such a renowned name is the cause of all it’s programs and “Beliefs About the Treatment of Inmates” which you can thank Dennis Luther for. Nation-wide, the increase in prison violence over the last few years has coincided with big cuts in educational and vocational programs. Numerous studies have shown a correspondence between educational programs and reduced recidivism rates. There is no question that college-level programs at Roosevelt University, in Chicago, Boston University; and Ball State, in Indiana, have had remarkable success with inmates. A tremendous amount of college graduated prisoners have gone on to do work in social services. They ended up helping people before they turn out they way they did. We need to offer education to prisoners randomly, retain and identical control group that did not receive education, and monitor the progress of the two groups after parole.(Hubbell, Webb. 79) This is the only way to distinguish how education and other programs help correct ex-convicts. Therefor we can advance to better rehabilitation programs for our corrections facilities. Inmates though out the country have stated, providing a long-term goal helps them stay sane and makes them less prone to violence. It also makes the prison easier and less expensive to manage. “You create Spartan conditions, you’re gonna get gladiators.”(Hubbell,Webb. 82) In a capitalist society, when most people think of crime, they do not think of the acts themselves so much as they do an imaginary "criminal class" that commits them. It's always these few "delinquents" that commit violent crimes and that have to be brought under control, so the story goes. The criminal in capitalism is defined not so much by their specific unlawful acts, but by the lifestyle s/he leads: gangsta, hoodlum, dope fiend, dealer, thug, whore. The criminal exists before the crime is even committed; a criminal's prison record is merely a badge that recognizes him or her for doing what is expected. This is one reason why rich white people rarely go to jail: the rich and the white are not defined as "criminals" in this society, therefore when they break the law it's easier to have sympathy for them for "making a mistake" and to give them a lesser punishment, or no punishment at all. Prisons are not just the storehouses of this criminal class--they produce criminality by concentrating otherwise decent people into a cramped, crowded, and oppressive environment. In prison, an individual is subject to isolation, confinement in a control unit, violence, torture, gang activity, guard brutality, organized white supremacy, a life of boredom and useless toil. When and if a prisoner is released, he is often condemned to a life of poverty and run-ins with the law. Prisoners have a difficult time getting a job because they are required to notify all potential employers of their felon status on job applications. College scholarship funds for former prisoners have been slashed or eliminated. By sticking people in prison, the prison system condemns them to poverty and stigmatizes them as lifetime members of the criminal class. The criminal class is the scapegoat for America's social ills and the justification for spending millions of dollars on building more prisons, hiring more police officers, and for drafting tough new "anti-crime" laws. But by trying to make life tough for criminals, we make life tough for ourselves, because the laws that get passed to control the criminal class apply to everyone. If you, the "good citizen," somehow run up against the law, well, you must be a delinquent, a member of the notorious criminal class. Better shape up, obey the laws and avoid any trouble so you won't be one of those, criminals! By distinguishing "criminals" from the rest of society--not for people's actions but for who they are--prisons and the "fight against crime" are used to attack target populations and garner obedience from the general population.(Colson, Charles. 15-30) This is what led writer Michael Foucault to write, "Let us conceive of places of punishment as a Garden of the Laws that families would visit on Sundays."(Pettinico, George. 32) Prisons are places where criminals are punished, but they are also "gardens" that remind citizens of what could happen to them if they were to become a "criminal." In this way, prisons help craft a more obedient population outside the walls, outside the garden. Prisons put the cop inside your head. Prisons control your life even if you've never been inside one. Knowing all humans make mistakes, the only thing which comes from mistakes is the chance to learn from them. Some individuals make very serious mistakes and should be rehabilitated in some way. They should not always be thrown behind bars. We can not just forget about them because eventually they will be walking among us once again. If we do leave them in jail and forget about them we are showing how ignorant our mentality actually is. What will happen is, that when these prisoners are released, a lot of them will be much more worst and angry then before they originally went to jail.(White, Andrew. 16) Inside our prison’s walls many atrocities take place. “Terry Fitzsimmons spent nearly a decade in prisons from 1980’s and early 90’s. At first he was incarcerated for petty thievery, but after he killed a fellow inmate in a brawl his sentence was extended and he was placed in secure segregation.”(White, Andrew. !7) Things similar to this are very common occurrences in our prison system. There are many things which we can blame for this. One reason that could explain violence between inmates is, a tremendous problem with overcrowding in most prisons. This hoarding of prisoners intensifies their behavior. “From reports of other innt that involves neither cruelty nor pain but is perceived as an insult. As we continue to dehumanize prisoners we leave them with no will to behave like citizens. The more the government piles on insults like chain gangs and stunbelt, the less chance there is for a restorative process of confession, penance, and forgiveness. Our punishment and control methods need to be seriously checked. “As sentencing laws get tougher and punishment proposals get more vicious, there is a tendency toward a great wave of dehumanization of inmates.”(Hubbell, Webb. 77) This is a sign of a society increasingly out for vengeance rather then justice. “With over one million people behind bars, the United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, after Russia.”(SlamBrouck, Paul. 25) Some experts regard the growing amount of prison violence as a “logical outcome of prisons which on average, are twenty percent over capacity.” This is a cry to get non-violent offenders out of jail and placed unto house arrest or group homes were the offenders only lose they right of freedom. Inmates still need the ability to hold their families together. “Prison cost continues to rise with the implementation of the 1994 crime bill, which pressures states to adopt harder sentencing guidelines, and includes a “three strike” mandatory life sentence provision for three-time violent offenders.”(Dilulio, John. 23) These measures will swell the prison walls which are already bursting with non-violent offenders. According to James Q. Wilson, of the University of California at Los Angeles, in the next decade, one million boys ranging from fourteen-to-seventeen will be in our population. “At least six percent of those will commit violent crimes. That means 30,000 more young killers, rapists, and thieves. Some of them will be what John Dilulio calls "super-predators" - a new variety of young criminal who had no adult in their life and no apparent capacity for remorse.”(Dilulio, John. 24) With today's long sentences and high rates of incarceration, many of these younger criminals will be spending their lives in prison, at taxpayer expense. "There's a tornado coming," Dilulio said. "We can't stop it; we have to prepare for it." Intelligent prison policy is necessary now more than ever before. “Our politicians have been unwilling to change their policy of getting tough on crime by getting tough on prisoners. The 1994 crime bill authorized $7.9 billion for prison construction, and House Republicans have added another $2.3 billion to that.”(Dilulio, John. 24) Some of the new prisons are necessary, but they will be counterproductive if they are run on the no-frills principle, with no vocational programs, no drug treatment, no education. There needs to be something done. As John Dilulio said “we need to prepare for it,” hopefully our prisons systems do not continue in the path its heading. Our society influences so many different aspects of our lives. The media tends to make people feel afraid because all they show is bad news. This cause our unconsciousness to allow fear come into our lives, even though there really is not anything to be fearful for. Crime is a problem. This will never change. Harsher sentencing and police brutality will never help the removal of crime off our streets. Something needs to happen in our prison system because it is terribly wrong. We are digging a hole for our ourselves and letting our neighbors and country men rot away until the are unleashed back into the community. Overcrowded prisons will create very aggressive atmospheres for people who still have a chance to continue in life as a normal person. This atmosphere will cause that person to be very angry and scornful which could in pact future families and communities. If America would wake up and actually try and correct our falling brothers our society would have the ability to make our streets a safe place again. What needs to to be done is our facilities should emulate Mckean prison. Mckean’s inmates are denied freedom but they have the ability to teach themselves trades, get drug treatment, and meet god. If we treat convicts like humans they will respond as humans. We cannot dehumanize them anymore and expect our communities to benefit from it. It does not work. There is no need to build more prisons, they need to decrease the rate of throwing non-violent offenders in prison. These offenders could do community service and be under house arrest where they still have the ability to hold their families together, so the vicious cycle does not continue. All I can stress is our system needs reform soon. We can only prepare for it, society’s ills has already created these predators. Therefor, we need to push for new plans and theories on how we can shape tomorrow’s flowers before they bloom. Bibliography: n/a Word Count: 2869
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