Life In Jails

Finding the three eight year old boys murders was clearly the main goal of the West Memphis Police department. “About 8 P.M. on May 5, 1993, the West Memphis police department received a call... Christopher Byers, was missing… Within the next ninety minutes, police responded to two more calls from worried parents.” (Linder). The police department had no luck finding the boys that first night, but after many hours of searching they found them the next morning in the Robin Hood Hills Forest. “Steve (Stevie) Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore, all second-graders, had been hogtied with their own shoelaces, sexually mutilated, beaten, and left for dead.” (Egan & Colby). The whole town was then in a huge uproar of rage and grief, for there were rumors that the boys were used in a satanic cult ritual. Naturally everyone in the town wanted to point fingers at someone, throw somebody in jail, and make them pay for what had happened. Those people just so happened to be the West Memphis Three, it was evident that these boys were invested in the heavy metal culture just upon the way they

Have you ever or anyone you care and love for ever been wrongfully convicted of a crime? The reasonable person would only find it natural to fight tooth and nail to prove their innocence, they would make sure that the state has their I's dotted and their t's crossed. Well imagine how 17 year old Ronnie Bridgeman, 20 year old Wiley Bridgeman and 19 year old Ricky Jackson felt when they were sentenced to death in 1975 after business man Harry Franks was beaten and then shot outside of a neighborhood convinces store.

James Gilligan relays an enlightening message in his article, Beyond the Prison Paradigm: From Provoking Violence to Preventing It by Creating “Anti-Prisons”, about the history and sole purpose of jails. Gilligan dates his research about jails all the way back from the first civilization known to man, Sumerian, to the jails we see and know so well today. At the beginning of time jails literally meant “house of darkness” which when compared to any of today’s jails is very similar to our maximum security facilities with solitary confinement. Jails were first used as a place to house those citizens, who chose not follow the social norms of society, and used a very

Prison is not meant to be a comfortable place. Prison, historically, is meant to be a punishment for crimes committed against society. Once an individual is convicted and sentenced, they are then taken into custody of the state or federal government. The term custody refers to an individual taken to a detention facility. This term also refers to the concept that the government is now responsible for the wellbeing of the inmate. The individual is being punished, but the government must take reasonable steps to protect those in their custody until they are released back into society. It is vitally important for the safety of these individuals that administrators become aware of the factors that may put certain inmates at a higher

To point out, many people believed that Damien Echols was guilty because he dressed and acted differently than everyone else. He was a target for prejudice. As Tom Waits said “The worst things you can be in the justice system are being poor and different, and these boys were both.” Echols considered himself as a Wiccan which was not normal at the time, he also read books that were said to be satanic. All of the boys were of poor families. But unlike rich people, they cannot pay their way out of prison. It was mentioned that the boys were called “white trash”. Echols said that they would be thrown in jail and forgotten because they were no one important.

The growth of incarceration in the United States Prison grew over the last four decades. The trend is historically unprecedented and is unique to the world. The majority of those incarcerated come from disadvantaged populations and comprises of main minorities below the age of forty. The communities have the number of people engaging in crime, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, physical and mental illness and lack of employment. The African Americans and Hispanics form the largest prison population compared to the non-Hispanic whites. The high incarceration has the huge impact on the American society since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s. The changed political environment led to policy changes. All levels of the government altered

Teenager who commit horrific crimes should be given life sentences without parole. Whether a crime was committed by a ‘child’ or an adult, families are still affected and lives are still lost.

With each year that passes, news stories of crime come and go and continue to thrill the media, but one constant is where the offenders will go if or after they have been convicted: prison. As the years go on, it seems that the prison and criminal justice system are capturing more and more lives and increasing the capacity of ever overcrowding prisons. In Michigan, the rise is especially prevalent due to the presence of the Cooper Street Correctional Facility, which currently houses minimum security male inmates, and the infamous Prison of Southern Michigan, which was once the largest walled prison in the world. “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers” signs are an ever present reminder of the community impacted in more than one way.

The average incarceration of prisoners per year is 2,418,352, however more than half of those prisoners are not provided the proper care needed for their survival. (Cooper, Sabol, West 1) Several inmates are put in unjust situations and living conditions through prison systems that majorly effect their everyday lives. Many of these issues pose threats to the prisoners but are preventable through change in the system. Prison systems around the world are flawed and need to be reworked. Inmates are constantly surrounded by an unhealthy environment full of sexual assault, lack of good health, and unfair treatment based upon disability.

On September 11, 2001 19 Al-Queda members attacked New York and Washington D.C. by hijacking four passenger airliners. Two of the airplanes American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines 175 were crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Centers in New York City. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon which collapsed the western side of the Pentagon. United Flight 93 was supposed to crash into United States Capital, but did not do so instead crashed into a field in Shanksville Pennsylvania. Due to the events that took place on 9/11 George W. Bush signed the USA

Is keeping inmates by the hundreds in prison cafeterias instead of cells becoming the norm? This is what a documentary, Life In Prison: The Cost of Punishment, asks. It explores the lives of incarcerated peoples in three California state prisons, portraying the dire consequences of prison overcrowding. As of 2013, the total prison population in the United States was 2,217,000. This is nearly five times the total of 1980, 503,586. The United States has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, and more than the next two countries combined (China and Russia). Its rate of incarceration is 698 per each 100,000. The issue of overcrowding in jails and prisons has become a growing problem nationally since the early 2000’s. It relates to the policy areas of Corrections and the Criminal Justice system, two very complex subjects. The criminal justice system has two distinct parts: federal and state, which only exacerbates the difficulty of addressing prison overcrowding. Here we will look at and try to understand the causes and effects of the overcrowding issue, as well as analyze what possible solutions are already out there. We will show that prison overcrowding is caused by ‘tough on crime’ policies as well as a shift in corrections models, combining many solutions, will allow this issue to be controlled.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet just occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

Teens should not be able to receive a sentence to life imprisonment without chance of parole. “In many states, 13 and 14-year-olds are subjected to the harshest possible prison sentence despite widespread acknowledgement by experts, parents, teachers, doctors, and courts that children tend to be incapable of making mature choices, that they are vulnerable to negative influences and peer pressure, and that they are powerless to protect themselves from dysfunctional and dangerous home environments” (Cohen). Most teens are not fully matured until they are adults, so they will sometimes commit crimes that they wouldn’t commit later in their life. If they are sentenced to a life without parole when they are a teen, they will never get a chance to

Beverly, this was an interesting article. I wish everyone could read this story, have a very deep thought about it and make necessary adjustment if need be. This is how crime rate in our society today keep on increasing, many people that are in the jail today do not prepare to be in jail in their life, the environmental situation that surround them could not allow them to deliver themselves from it. Let us be realistic, living in that particular environment can never bring out any success in life. Living in community where people could not any good and reliable job, no good school, the teacher in that community does what they like, what can we expect from the life of the youths in that community than crimes, there is no doubt about it. I

Ramallah - SP - President of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Institute, Isa Qaraqe said that 470 prisoners in Israeli prisons sentenced to life imprisonment, while 42 others sentenced for 20 years and 16 others 25 years.