It is hard to think about anything worse than being convicted of a crime and spending a number of years in prison, but what most people do not know is that there actually is, and it is much worse. But what can that be? It is what goes on inside of the American prison. Hypothetically, prisons should be a place where breakers of the law go, spend their sentence, and come out as better people, but that is the complete opposite of the cruel reality. You have people who committed petty crimes come out with enhanced skills ready to commit worse crimes and the ones who committed serious crimes come out just as worse, or even more dangerous than before. What is much worse is that the American people do not see a problem in locking these individuals
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Just imagine already having to bear the fact that you are in prison and now you have to share the small cell you were assigned to with multiple other inmates, with barely any space to yourself. A few of the times the reason for overcrowding in prisons is as plain as not having enough room in prison for prisoners, but that happens to be the case a few of the times. There are other very serious reasons, such as "harsher penalties for criminal activities, changes to laws that make new actions illegal, high recidivism rates and needed improvements to the penal system" (9). Becoming hostile seems like a likely effect of overcrowding and with time that hostility turns into violence towards the other inmates. The fact that overcrowding has negative effects on the inmates and the personnel who work in these facilities is obvious and needless to say, but they are very serious so it is important that we address them. Such negative effects are double-celling, prisoner misconduct, the psychological consequences of overcrowding, the effect of overcrowding on jail population dynamics, and, of course, inmate violence (9). To show you just how serious the problem of overcrowding is in the United States, we have “the world’s highest incarceration rate, with close to 2.3 million people locked away in some 1,800 prisons and 1,300 jails” (8). California alone, “which houses the …show more content…
Another widely known fact is that an individual can only join one of the gangs which fit his ethnicity and background. Six of the biggest gangs, in which most inmates belong to, in California 's prisons are, "Nuestra Familia, the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Northern Structure, or the Nazi Lowriders," the last two mentioned are branches of Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood, respectively (10). Gang violence is so extreme that prison guards at the B Yard of Pelican Bay State Prison, which is about “four miles from the Pacific Ocean in one direction and 20 miles from the Oregon border in the other,” have to release the inmates of different gangs in “special order,” to avoid any problems (10). During their yard time, different gangs take on different posts, where the rest of their gang can come. After they have about five men, they send two of their men to “scout” the yard and try and get any kind of information relating to attacks and who is selling what (10). Christopher Acosta is a corrections officer who worked for 15 years as a prison guard and now runs public relations for Pelican Bay, warns us about how sneaky and organized these inmates are by stating that, “There’s like 30 knives out there right now….Hidden up their rectums” (10). Trying to figure out how prison gangs work is very
Just imagine already having to bear the fact that you are in prison and now you have to share the small cell you were assigned to with multiple other inmates, with barely any space to yourself. A few of the times the reason for overcrowding in prisons is as plain as not having enough room in prison for prisoners, but that happens to be the case a few of the times. There are other very serious reasons, such as "harsher penalties for criminal activities, changes to laws that make new actions illegal, high recidivism rates and needed improvements to the penal system" (9). Becoming hostile seems like a likely effect of overcrowding and with time that hostility turns into violence towards the other inmates. The fact that overcrowding has negative effects on the inmates and the personnel who work in these facilities is obvious and needless to say, but they are very serious so it is important that we address them. Such negative effects are double-celling, prisoner misconduct, the psychological consequences of overcrowding, the effect of overcrowding on jail population dynamics, and, of course, inmate violence (9). To show you just how serious the problem of overcrowding is in the United States, we have “the world’s highest incarceration rate, with close to 2.3 million people locked away in some 1,800 prisons and 1,300 jails” (8). California alone, “which houses the …show more content…
Another widely known fact is that an individual can only join one of the gangs which fit his ethnicity and background. Six of the biggest gangs, in which most inmates belong to, in California 's prisons are, "Nuestra Familia, the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Northern Structure, or the Nazi Lowriders," the last two mentioned are branches of Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood, respectively (10). Gang violence is so extreme that prison guards at the B Yard of Pelican Bay State Prison, which is about “four miles from the Pacific Ocean in one direction and 20 miles from the Oregon border in the other,” have to release the inmates of different gangs in “special order,” to avoid any problems (10). During their yard time, different gangs take on different posts, where the rest of their gang can come. After they have about five men, they send two of their men to “scout” the yard and try and get any kind of information relating to attacks and who is selling what (10). Christopher Acosta is a corrections officer who worked for 15 years as a prison guard and now runs public relations for Pelican Bay, warns us about how sneaky and organized these inmates are by stating that, “There’s like 30 knives out there right now….Hidden up their rectums” (10). Trying to figure out how prison gangs work is very