Women prisons aimed to treat their prisoners rather than to punish them (McCorkel 3). Over time they started to see that women are committing the same crimes men are committing (drug related crime), so they started to crack down on punishment by establishing polices like minimum sentences, expanded use of the death penalty, and the three strike law (McCorkel 6). The prison she visits is called Project Habilitate Women which is a habilitation prison. She claims that these habilitation prisons actually don’t help the women in prison, but instead break them down. They drill into their head that a crime “possesses a self” and “the person is the problem” (McCorkel 86).…
Old Idaho Penitentiary Site, Boise, ID 43°36'10.0"N 116°09'43.0"W Old Idaho Penitentiary Site The Old Idaho Penitentiary Site was built in 1870, and the first prisoners arrived two years later. That was also when it was first opened to Idaho. The prison had one cell at one point, but now it has several cells.…
INDIANA SENTENCING REFORM: TWO YEARS AND STILL NOT WORKING In an article I published this past January (“State Sentencing Reform: Reducing Recidivism OR Costing Indiana Counties More Money?”), I argued that the new sentencing reform bill, which radically changes the way criminal courts sentence offenders, could actually cost local communities more money without doing much to prevent recidivism. Under the new guidelines, offenders sentenced to a year or less in criminal court would not see a state prison. Instead, they would carry out their sentences in the communities in which they were convicted. If offenders had to serve jail time, county lock-ups would serve as their prisons.…
With the clear uses of juxtaposition throughout the article McCarthy and Shiraldi are able to express a clear effect of the reforms of the correctional facilities. They use states, such as Texas, California, and New York to show the changes that have become evident following the reforms. The claims are supported by the fifty-three percent decline in youth incarceration and half of the arrests of minors in New York and events occurred similarly in Texas (McCarthy/Shiraldi p8). Evidence with such drastic changes is impossible to ignore. The comparison between before and after the reforms play a crucial role in convincing the audience of the truth behind the claims of the…
Throughout their sentence, prison inmates endured miserable life before and during the Prison Reform Movement of 1800’s, unlivable conditions, and physical abuse from the guards. “Men rarely become spiritually better by being made subject, through human discipline, to extreme bodily discomforts; these convicts are not made morally better by such treatment as they are subjected to here in the days of bodily weakness and pain” (Lightner 56). Prison Reform Movement from 1870-1930, greatly changed what type of treatment that was acceptable in prisons towards the inmates, much of these changes were due to the effort of Dorothy Dix and her efforts to investigate the prisons. When prisons first formed, people weren’t exactly sure how they should go…
What is the main argument and goal of the writing? The main argument of the book is to analyze and inform the general public about the economic and geographic conditions that enabled the exponential development of prisons in the State of California. For instance, the author carefully formulates her arguments around political and economic premises in order to explain how social concepts such as retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation have each contributed to both the radical expansion of prisons in California and the political influence of California’s Department of Corrections as a whole. A perfect example of this can be found on page 14, where the author individually dissects each concept and explains how they all collectively relate to maintaining social stability through the application of “mix care, indifference, compulsory training, and cruelty to people in…
Up until the 1970s, policies regarding corrections were based on the principle of rehabilitation so that when prisoners were released they could successfully reintegrate into society. To increase the possibility for successful reintegration, prisoners were encouraged to amend their occupational skills and to receive treatment for any psychological issues they faced ranging from addiction and substance abuse to aggression. Since the 1970s, policy makers have shifted to a crime control model that has “cracked down on crime” and focuses on punishment as a form of prevention. This goal has been accomplished by lengthening prison sentences, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and practically eliminating privileges in prisons with the No Frills Prison…
Private prisons lobby for harsh criminal laws to increase profit at the cost of inmates’ wellbeing. In 1998 election cycle, private prisons contributed $540,000 to 361 politicians (Anderson, 2009). Bribes were also used as method to encourage private prisons. In 2009, two Pennsylvania judges received $2.6 million to oppose alternative and lenient sentences for juveniles (Anderson, 2009) Incarceration negatively affects recidivism rates (Anderson, 2009).…
From west to east, north to south, policies on restorative justice are spreading like wildfire. Whitney Bermes for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle writes, Montana is currently going over 15 different bills to help reduce the prison population in the state. Montana has experienced an increase in the prison population and wants to start to reduce that number quickly. Each piece of legislation deals with the many contributors to prison overcrowding. Reduction in sentencing, changing some crimes from being felonies to misdemeanors, and ending giving larger sentences each time the individual commits the same crime.…
As I reflect back on the modules we covered during this semester, two particular topics really grabbed my attention “Wrongful Convictions” and “Justice Reinvestment.” These two particular topics provided me another perspective how America’s adversarial system has some deeply rooted flaws embedded it. In which, these flaws have created loopholes in the legal system to allow the local, state, and federal agencies to manipulate the people’s ‘due process and protection against self-incrimination’ during questioning of investigations by law enforcement agencies. In which, walks a fine line with these loopholes in the adversarial system to violate people’s Constitutional rights in the 21st century.…
According to the Sentencing Project, which is a non-profit organization that promotes reduced reliance on incarceration and increased use of more effective alternatives to deal with crime, states that the United States correctional system of the past thirty years has been characterized by a population increasing the exponentially in response to changes in policy towards mandatory minimum and determinate sentencing (Sentencing). In other words, individuals convicted of a crime today are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration and spend longer terms in prison, than their counterparts in previous decades (Sentencing). In 2002, state and federal prison and local jail populations exceeded 2 million, a trend that has contributed to prison overcrowding and has overwhelmed state governments with the burden of funding this rapidly expanding penal system (Sentencing). These changes in policy have resulted in the reality that prisons today are filled with large numbers of non-violent and drug…
The Goal of Private Prisons: A Scheme for Profit The operations of private prison show that their success is dependent upon housing the maximum number of inmates. In order to fill beds at private facilities the private corporations lobby for stronger drug and immigration laws along with longer sentences to accompany these laws. These new laws result in the United States having five percent of the world population but housing twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. (Liptak, 2008)…
Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all used “tough on crime” approaches in their campaigns, and at a time when crime was on the rise, citizens were attracted to these approaches. This led to increased amounts of police officers, and increased populations in jails that were already overcrowded. In fact, in a Texas prison in 1998, over 1,000 inmates were sleeping on prison floors already holding double the acceptable amount of inmates (Campers 15). The recent issue with prison overcrowding stems almost entirely from the war on drugs and war on crime. Tough on crime approaches, surfacing in the late 20th century, are one of the major causes for prison…
This is under the assumption that the lack of rehabilitation programs is due to the fact that female inmates tend to serve shorter prison sentences. ( Dugger, Ashley) Many government official believe that rehabilitations is not a suitable investment, due to the fact that women are serving short-term. There is also a lack of funding or inadequate training that cause fewer rehabilitative prison programs available to female inmates than those available to males. Even though statically women inmates show higher rates of substance abuse and depression. The fast majority of women inmates are more likely to harm themselves than men inmates.…
Prison reform is a significant issue for many Americans. The prison population is expanding at a phenomenal rate, often beyond the capacity of the existing system to accommodate the expanding ranks of the incarcerated. The focus for many is increasingly on rehabilitation as a means to reduce recidivism and consequently reduce the number of individuals who must be placed in prisons every year. In the early 1990s, the number of people jailed in the United States topped one million (Waldman, 2013). By 2000, that number had doubled, and by 2003 more than 2.2 million people were living in prisons (Associates, 2005).…