Opposing Prison Sentences

　　Punishment is a necessary evil, it is required to deter criminals from committing crimes and to serve as an example to other potential criminals

It removes their freedom to move about in society for some specified period of time. Criminals may realise what they have done wrong and will be deterred from committing further crimes as they fear the consequences of being sent to prison once again. Other potential offenders may get put off from committing crimes as they fear the consequences of being caught and don’t want to spend time in prison. Also businesses will be protected from being victims of property crime as the offender is in prison and with this being publicised other offenders may stop committing crimes. In 201 1,219,000 defendants were found guilty in magistrates' courts and out of that number 119,800 were sentenced to prison from property crime.

There are also cons of mandatory sentencing. One con is that mandatory sentencing can be unfair. Mandatory minimum sentences have no choice but award the same minimum punishment to everyone who commits the same crime regardless of the individual’s situation or circumstances. For example a criminal with a very lengthy criminal record and a first time offender will both get the same amount of time. Another con is that mandatory sentencing can lead to overcrowding in prisons. With mandatory minimum sentencing people will go to jail even if it is their first offense. As a result of this people who should have possibly got lighter sentences or maybe sentencing that did not involve jail time, like probation, will end up in jail and this causes overcrowding. Overcrowding can then cause even more problems to the prisoner’s health, safety, and security. An increased prison population leads to more expenses and these

The main idea of a prison is to help rehabilitate offenders and to stop them from relapsing back into a world of crime, but instead prisoners are constantly returning time and time again. We must find a way to incarcerate those who need to be behind bars, and deal with other criminals in a different manner. I believe we should reduce the use of prisons, and rethink our punishment for certain crimes.

It is believed that punishment works to protect people from their criminals as it used to be seen as a fear in people’s mind to avoid inappropriate behaviour against other people, harming other people in certain ways and breaking the laws set by society or government. Punishment is a common view of human beings and they choose to behave appropriately towards their duty to follow rules set out by government laws to avoid fines or sentences. Sentencing is categorised n various degrees depending on the type and severity of crime committed, and imprisonment is considered as most common way to protect communities from its offenders and deterrent to re-offending all over the world. As Murray (1997) claims that punishment reduces crime

Nationally, every 7 minutes, another person enters prison. And every 14 minutes, someone returns to the streets, beaten down and, more often than not, having suffered a great amount of violence during his or her incarceration. Professionals will tell you that incarceration really does very little to stop crime, but we go on spending billions of dollars in order to lock up more and more people. We have become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world. (National Criminal Justice Commission)

Often now, it is believed that a prison sentence is not always the most effective way of

These types’ of sentences are considered a more severe punishment as they require the offenders to loose their liberty of freedom as they serve jail or prison time. The desired outcome of these sentences are that the offender will spend the duration of the sentence participation in correctional programs with the anticipation that upon release they have become law abiding citizens who can be a functioning member of society. The loss of liberty due to imprisonment impacts offenders and proves to them that unlawful actions have severe consequences. However, this is not always the case as there are many repeat offenders. In these cases, incarceration is benefits society by thwarting repeat offenders from committing additional crimes while serving ether a determinate and indeterminate

Currently as a nation we use severity as our biggest form of deterrence; our threat of imprisonment has grown dramatically over time. In 1985 the average release time for a conviction of robbery was 32 months and in 2002 it jumped to a minimum of 53 months (Incarceration and Crime). We focus heavily on severity and longer incarceration rates; the idea is that a 10% increase in incarceration would lead to a 1.6%-5.5% decrease in crime (Lieka 2006) but this is not true. Prison rates have increased tenfold since 1970 and yet the crime rates have not dropped near those percents.The leading argument against increase in incarceration uses other states as examples of how ineffective it is; for example Florida heavily focuses on imprisonment to reduce crime with no effect (Incarceration and Crime). This idea would be great and a good mode of deterrence if those who go to prison actually learn their lessons and mend their future ways. Also if the unwanted effects of prison were at least tolerable this might deter crime but sadly even after experiment and evidence it is not a well functioning theory. The cost of funding our mass incarceration does balance out the decrease in overall crime. Besides when we have a nation who is majority hard on crimes compared to other crimes we end up severely punishing people who probably would respond better to rehabilitation than jail.

Traditionally, there have been four justifications for punishment: deterrence, confinement, rehabilitation and retribution. While these methods can be flawed at some point in history they served as primary reasons for the justification of punishment. Recently, there has been an epistemic shift in thinking about punishment where now it is focused on retribution and incarceration. The emphasis on this method has lead to an increase in incarceration and the rise of a prison system. While we acknowledge that there will always be a need for society to punish criminals in order to protect the rights of individuals, however a prison/prison system is not the correct way to handle such problems. Currently the prison system is being used an economic tool for private companies to exploit cheap labor from inmates. Known as the prison-industrial complex private enterprises are now able to build more prisons to “benefit” society and themselves as the prison population grows. Since the 1980’s the growth in prison

Another issue related to the subject involves whether or not capital punishment actually deters criminals from committing crimes. Most people think that the death penalties primary function is to deter others in the future from committing similar crimes. There is evidence that at times capital punishment does deter. However, there are those or cite evidence or opinion that the capital punishment does not achieve its desired effect. The majority of this paper will focus on whether capital punishment actually deters crime.

First off, restorative justice doesn’t punish people, and a criminal needs punishment. If somebody knows that they won’t get in trouble for doing something wrong, they will just continue to do it. Prison time has been proven to work effectively. The Observer states that tougher prison sentences reduce crime, according to research by a study from academics at Birmingham University.

When watching TV, or a movie, or reading a book, in the end for the criminal it is always death or prison. Jail keeps the bad guys locked up and out of sight and solves the problem. But, in the real world, is the effect quite the same? Robbers, killers, rapists and other types of people that affect society in an extremely negative way should be dealt with but is prison the best way? Can prison solve the causes of these problems? Poverty, addictions, mental health problems, little or no education, childhood neglection or abuse. These are all causes of people committing crimes. For these people crime may be a way to get what they never could or be a way of survival. Prison may give society a feeling of security and safety but in the end is that

One of the significant benefits of longer prison sentences is long. This means criminals will be isolated from societies longer and police can concentrate on other crucial basis in communities, it is also better for others who live in the same societies to relax because crime rates will decrease and people will be

Prison system is one of the most important compositions in law system. It’s been a long time since society has tacitly approved that criminals should be put in jail as a punishment. However, more and more drastic debates over whether to punish criminals or to rehabilitate them emerge in society. The public has gradually changed stereotypes about criminal punishment and came up with the idea of prison abolition, which can be defined as utilizing more humane and efficient systems to replace the conventional prison system. Three points are included in this essay to support prison abolition, which are that unfair trail caused by racism and poverty has already damaged the justice of prison system, that prison