Rock And A Hard Place Analysis

Between a Rock and a Hard Place seems quite an appropriate title for this HBO documentary whose executive producer and star is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Young men with serious criminal charges and significant prison sentences are provided a second chance by participating in the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department’s Boot Camp Program in place of serving their entire prison sentence. Dwayne Johnson greets 38 cadets starting the program, lectures them on their opportunity and asserts that he wants the world to see the importance of the program. Lastly, he cautions them bluntly, not to “… f**k this up.” For most people it would appear that participating in this 16 week program would be easier compared to the alternative of

Studies suggest that there is a divide between the government and public response to juvenile incarceration. Bullis & Yovas (2005) state that support is given to correctional facilities to house juvenile offenders as a form of punishment (as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 17). Individuals who support this perspective are often more likely to support the construction of more prisons and stern penalties on crime based upon the presumptions that youthful offenders are aware of the consequences of their actions (Drakeford, 2002 as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 17). On the other hand, opponents of this perspective believe that incarceration creates an opportunity to rehabilitate the offenders (Huffine, 2006 as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 18). This perspective supports the purpose of juvenile detention centers as “preparatory in nature – that is, offering services focused on the development of skills needed to return successfully to mainstream

Juvenile delinquency is a relatively new phenomenon. For this reason, society’s reactions and solutions to the problem of delinquency are also modern developments. The United States developed the first youth court in 1899 and is now home to many new and formerly untested methods of juvenile rehabilitation and correction. One of many unique programs within the Juvenile Justice system, boot camps are institutions designed to keep delinquent juveniles out of traditional incarceration facilities and still provide a structured method of punishment and rehabilitation. Boot camps developed in the early 1990s and quickly proliferated throughout the nation. Specifically, they are “…short-term residential programs modeled after

The book NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover is an profound book to read it gave me a great glimpse of how the prison life really is and how you can put yourself in comparing how Hollywood movies or TV shows displays them. Conover discuss about the history of Sing Sing prison since 1826. It was an authentic and straight forward of how the prison life is especially for those who want to pursue as a correctional officers. It gave two perspectives one from the guards and the other by the inmates. It shows a psychological effects of violence between the guards and inmates within the cell walls also it gave the transformation life in training and life with inmates. What surprise me in the book it only took the recruiters seven weeks training camp during those week they had to “write the use of force, from penal law to “standard of inmates behavior”… there would be tests every Friday, on which we had to score 70 percent or better. We’d have two hours of physical performance test in out last week. We’d learn how to use batons and how to fight hand to hand in a course called Defensive Tactics. We’d have to qualify on a shooting range. Finally, we’d be exposed to tear gas and learn how to fire gas guns (p.23).” The training camp was very similar to a military boot camp. After the seven weeks of training they all went straight to prison work during prison they had to deal with the hardship, stress and chaos surrounding the job of officers and what they go through during

The primary subject of this video is keeping control of the facility with the use of zero tolerance policies for the inmates of Tent City. It focuses on a new inmate named Ryan Merlina, who was “convicted of forgery, burglary, and most recently, possession of methamphetamine” (Films Media Group, 2007). Merlina, who has a long history of drug use and has been in and out of the juvenile system for a considerable amount of his teen years, at age nineteen came to Tent City, an adult facility (Films Media Group, 2007). In addition to the videos depiction of the circumstances faced by staff and inmates, it chronicles Merlinas’ personal struggles with his journey through incarceration at Tent City. On an Internet video, Films Media Group (2007) states that, the court offered Merlina a reduced sentence in exchange for him pleading guilty. “If he behaves himself, he'll serve just six months at Tent City. But if he messes up, he'll get 12 years in state prison” (Films Media Group, 2007). At Tent City, the inmates are not allowed to have certain things such as sugar, tobacco, drugs, and weapons. The prison system employs the Special Response Team

‘Scared Straight’ programs were first implemented in the U.S. in the 1970’s. However, they became nationally popular in the aftermath of the 1978 Arnold Shapiro documentary Scared Straight!, in which a group of delinquents are berated by a group of convicts known as “lifers” for three hours. At the end of the film, the appropriately terrified teenagers state that they have decided that they do not want to go to jail (Lowry, 1999). Scared Straight programs allow juveniles who are criminal offenders or deemed at-risk for becoming such to have contact with adult prisoners. The process varies across the country according to the prison, and can include jail tours, one-on-one conversations with prisoners, or even being integrated into the facility and living life as a prisoner for a day. As their name would suggest, these programs’ purpose is to discourage juveniles from committing further criminal activity; the expected outcome is that a child who is exposed to the undesirable conditions of prison life will be deterred from future delinquency due to shock and fear. Unfortunately, this is not rarely the case. Scared Straight programs are unproductive at best and counterproductive at worst, and allowing them to continue is a strain on the community as a whole.

Rehabilitation is facilitated by the offering of courses, to help the offender address his/her behaviour which society has labelled as “wrong” or inappropriate (Peterson, 1989; Shaffer, 1993). Therefore, a con of the strategy may be that the offenders are unable to access courses that could assist them in rehabilitation. Another purpose of the detention centre for young people may be through the use of a military structure to try and impress on them that they have done wrong (Munice, Hughes & McLaughlin 2002).

This paper evaluates the history of correctional boot camps, the eligibility of whom is accepted into the program, the graduation statics, and crime recidivism after completion of the program.

After touring both the Pendleton maximum security prison, and the Pendleton juvenile correctional facility I can say that while they both house inmates, the way they treat their inmates is totally different compared to one another. In Pendleton maximum facility, the staff would treat their inmates like any other criminal and hold them until it was time for them to be released, while in the Pendleton juvenile facility the staff called the inmates “students” while holding them until they believe the students are ready to behave when they are released. In this paper I want to explain how both facilities handles their inmates differently, the facilities themselves and their layouts, the rehabilitative programs available at both facilities, and how the security levels and the number of inmates assigned to the facilities effect how the treatment is implemented at each facility.

America sends more of its citizens to prison than any other country in the world. The United States, though only five percent of the world’s population, incarcerate 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. America is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of the incarcerated. About 6,937,600 offenders were under the supervision of adult correctional systems at year end 2012. Around two-thirds of the prison population which is released annually (637,400) will recidivate within the first three years of release (Glaze, 2013). The prisoner re-entry programs that are currently in place are clearly ineffective and insufficient. A reallocation of the budget is the first step towards fixing our re-entry programs. Once the budget is under control, the government needs to have a complete overhaul of system. There are many prisoner re-entry programs that have shown promise which means there is already a blueprint to success available.

Throughout recent decades in the United States, and other Western countries, the prison population has dramatically and exponentially risen from approximately 357,292 inmates in 1970 to 2,306,200 in the year 2014. This has been coined as the era of mass incarceration, with the United States becoming the largest prison nation in the world. Within these present statistics, one in seventeen white men, compared one in three black men will go to prison, illustrating the obvious inequality and racialized justice that is embedded throughout U.S. societal, political and legislative spheres. In the mid 1990’s the government, with the help of popular demand, enacted the ‘get tough’ prison ideology in which the “No Frills Prison Act” was passed (Johnson 1997). The idea behind this movement of a harsher prison environment, with the regulation and/or exclusion of certain amenities and recreational programming, further criminalized prison inmates while continuing to punish them once they were in prison. In present day, there have been many attempts to increase recreational opportunities and programs within prisons, including but not limited to sports, work, rehabilitation programs, educational programs and much more. Many researchers and criminal rights advocates have attempted to increase the awareness of the effectiveness from different types of recreational programs, with many resulting in positive outcomes. Through the combination of personal

Aron Ralston, the author of Between a Rock and a Hard Place creates a very notable portrait of himself just within the first few pages of the novel. Ralston presents himself to be tenacious, bold, and a relatively experienced outdoorsman. Ralston describes a faulty trial of climbing, “I’m committed to my course; there’s no going back” (Ralston 20). This quote shows how determined Ralston is to his mission, the hiking trip. It becomes clear that Ralston values nature as he is so committed to this trip. Ralston ponders, “Some other marvelous force is in control, and has been all along” (Ralston 247). Ralston believes in some greater being that controls life. This says a lot about his character as he can believe in something he cannot feel, hear or see. The wilderness is not new to Ralston, as he’s been mountain climbing, hiking, skiing, as well participating in many other outdoor activities for years before his near death experience. Ralston exclaims, “Saying farewell is also a bold and powerful beginning” (Ralston 342). When Ralston was reaching the end in the fight for his life, he began

It has been about six years since I last saw my cousin, who will remain anonymous, and unfortunately, the last time I saw him, it was through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, talking over a telephone, in the county jail where he was being held during sentencing. I regret to say that this was not the first time I had seen him “behind bars”. As a matter of fact, I cannot even remember the last time I saw him when he was not wearing an orange jumpsuit. I know that when I was young, I always got picked on in school and he was the only person who stood up for me. He protected me and loved me the way only your favorite

There is a program that is sponsored by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department located in San Bernardino, California called the Juvenile Intervention Program or JIP for short. The program was designed in 2001 by the encouragement of the community leaders of San Bernardino with the emphasis to show troubled teens the reality of incarceration. Juveniles have misconceptions about what life in jail is truly like (Department, 2018).What gained my interest was that the Sheriff’s department would introduce the juveniles to the damaging effects of high-speed police pursuits, gang violence, and drive-by shootings. The juveniles would witness the after-effects of each of these events and the consequences of the delinquencies.

The producers of Hard Knocks have clearly been reading The Sports Haven’s reviews of the series. How else would you explain this week’s episode, which focused on the personal lives of the players and their families as they adjust to life in Los Angeles?