The Pros And Cons Of Prison Incarceration

Edwin Gutierrez Engl 1302 Professor C. Robinson 10/11/2017 Essay 1 Is what we believe only an illusion? Universally, we covet our ideologies with an intent to serve us beneficially, yet they live in a realm intangible by man. The American incarceration system is unique as it proposes peace, safety, justice and security, yet it's not executed in a good way. Today, America incarcerates a vast fraction of its population, and African Americans are seemingly the target for this strategist epidemic. African Americans are arrested at more than five times the rate of whites.

Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because

Mass incarceration has been an issue in the United States since the start of the War on Drugs, because of the political agenda attached to the “tough on crime” regimen thousands of people have suffered as a consequence. The solution to this is one that can only be possibly solved by approaching through several angles. The ten steps presented by Michael Tonry, are an innovative and have merit to some extent. However, mass incarceration results from more than unjust sentencing laws, which is his main focus. If ever we are to resolve the issue, society and the criminal justice system must come together to completely reevaluate what we consider to be “tough on crime” and redefine the purpose of prisons, strictly punishment or rehabilitation. The focus has to shift from harsh sentencing, stigma, racial discrimination to a basic form of rehabilitation and reduction of the prison system in general. The criminal justice system has to do what they are actually meant to do and focus on rehabilitation measures, and when possible completely stop interaction with the prison system all together.

At the beginning of the semester our Professor gave a speech on her personal accomplishment and to start she asked us how many of us knew someone who either was or had been incarcerated. Most of us in the class raised our hands in the affirmative, including myself. This may not seem like much in a classroom with roughly 25 students, but it does have some merit. The United States of America accounts for “5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population” (DuVernay, 13th). Within the last year California legislators have introduced Senate Bill 10 or the Bail: pretrial release bill, which seeks to eliminate pretrial detention and bail requirements for accused individuals who meet public safety criteria ("SB-10 Bail: pretrial release", 2017-2018). I argue that SB 10 doesn’t go far enough and should include that low level non-violent first offenders be offered alternative methods to incarceration. A policy such as SB 10 would allow California to serve as a model, reducing the effects of mass incarceration, creating a fairer system and eliminating coerced plea deals.

Currently, a large percentage of those that are incarcerated suffer from some sort of mental illness. These inmates often fall through the cracks of preexisting mental health systems. According to a guide released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (1993):

Our prison systems are outrageous. Dealing with false sentencing, death penalty, rules and regulations, inmates, well-being, and how their being treated in these prisons. Yes, they are criminals, but they are not supposed to be beat and uncared for in these places, they are supposed to be there serving time for the crimes they have committed.

Given the number of incarcerated inmates who suffer from some form of mental illness, there are growing concerns and questions in the medical field about treatment of the mentally ill in the prison system. When a person with a mental illness commits a crime or break the law, they are immediately taken to jail or sent off to prison instead of being evaluated and placed in a hospital or other mental health facility. “I have always wondered if the number of mentally ill inmates increased since deinstitutionalization” Since prison main focus is on the crimes inmates are incarcerated; the actual treatment needed for the mentally ill is secondary. Mentally ill prisoners on the surface may appear to be just difficult inmates depending on the

Mental illnesses are extremely pricy and dangerous. The staff has to be extra cautions with mentally disabled prisoners because they are more dangerous. The prison system does not have enough money to be able to maintain high-risk prisoners. “The average cost of keeping an older inmate incarcerated is about $69,000 a year”(Regan) it’s an outrageous amount of money. A Tennessee State prison gave Dr. Regan, Alderson, and Dr. William Regan gave data on older inmates who had mental illnesses. The study focused on the population and their mental disorder and the crime committed. 671 prisoners where tested in the study and 109 people where diagnosed with a mental illness: Out of the 109 people with a mental disorder only 13% where women and 87% where men. The most common crime for both genders with a mental disorder was murder. Women who committed murder suffered from depression illness. Men who committed crime in their older age committed sex crimes and where diagnosed with dementia. Our prisons are not equipped to be able to handle mentally disable prisoners. Mentally disorder people need to be in a mental house that can help them. It is not right to incarcerate someone who is sick.

According to a 2006 Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that over half of the inmates in both prisons and in jails had a problem concerning their mental health (James & Glaze, 2006). The estimates in this report were separated by federal prisons, which contained 45 percent of inmates suffering from mental illness, 56 percent in state prisons, and

The situation with the " Inmates defeat Harvard debate team" definitely surprised me in a way that one would not come to think of immediately. My first thought came at the how surprised everyone was that the inmates had conquered the debate. In realization I know that many inmates are actually very smart in intellectual aspects even though in other aspects they may have made major or minor decisions. However I did imagine the Ivy league schools to be seen as an "untouchable" school when it came to competitions. With that being said, I believe it doesn't matter where you came from, its the personal drive and motivation that defines the outcome. Lastly, I should be surprised at the income, the prisons usually don't pay ultimate importance into

As a whole, literature on the topic of mental illness in our country and specifically in our criminal justice system had a reoccurring theme. There are millions of individuals who suffer from mental illness but are improperly being handled through the criminal justice system. These individuals are deemed criminal just by their acts and their mental health state is not overly examine. Jails and prisons are being overcrowded. State prisons and jails are overpopulated anywhere from 15 to 32% (Spending Money in All the Wrong Places: Jails & Prisons).

In society, there will always be people that take and steal and kill to get what they feel they deserve. People that behave in such a way need to be separated from the citizens of society that are trustworthy, caring, and helpful in order to prevent the malicious citizens from taking advantage of their productive counterparts. There is no argument that individuals that break the law need to be punished so they know it is wrong. There are many types of punishment, but the one that contains the most people and best protects society from rampant crime is prison. While it is typically agreed upon that prisons are useful and even necessary, but what is typically argued is who should oversee the prisons. There are two main beliefs, the first is that the governments should control the prisons to insure prisoners are treated in the appropriate manor, public prisons. The second viewpoint is that prisons should be run by private companies, private prison, which will help cut costs, because storing inmates is quite expensive. Although each side has valid arguments, neither is really ideal. Private prisons are not regulated enough and public prisons are too expensive, so the ideal prison is a combination of the two. Private prisons are the base that the ideal system must be molded from and it must be molded by creating several laws. The government must create these laws ensuring the prisons do not purposely return inmates to society with the intentions that they will commit more crime,

lawmakers institute laws that would help capture their perception of what a criminal is, thus the implementation of laws that allow for increased incarceration. “The dramatic rise in African American incarceration rates in the more recent 1980s and 1990s has similarities with the rise in incarceration experienced by freed slaves. In both cases, the majority of crimes for which blacks were suddenly imprisoned, in disproportionately high numbers, were nonviolent petty crimes only recently made “serious” by changes in law (Hallet).”

Prisons take up a large percentage of taxpayer’s money. Essentially how it works is, hardworking people work full time to pay the housing costs for people that have committed crimes and are now serving time in jail. Should hardworking citizens have to pay for the mistakes of other people? Governments should start paying more attention to penitentiaries if they want to reduce the crime rate. Prisons are one way that money can be saved through executing smarter methods. It costs approximately $108,000 a year to house a male in Canada (Ruddell 2017,332), and even more for women. This is a lot of money from the hard working taxpayers. Some people believe that prisons are costing us too much money and that other alternatives exist to save money and time. Prisons are effective in what they do but for some smaller petty crimes are prisons really necessary? Although, prisons cannot be entirely erased the government can look into ways of cutting down the prison population. If the government were to change the mandatory minimum sentences on certain lower level crimes then this would eliminate a huge amount of people in incarceration. Mandatory minimum sentencing should exist for serious crimes but smaller crimes should be revisited because it’s simply unnecessary. It has been seen with California’s three strike law how much damage mandatory sentencing can do. People thought mandatory sentencing would make people more aware of the damage crime could do to their life but instead found

In no doubt can we agree on that the society we live in contain many people who commit crimes, crimes so bad that the only option left is to send these people away to prison. However, we cannot send every person to prison. Instead, felons should be imprisoned for committing serious, violent, and persistent crimes. According to the NAACP, currently 1 in every 37 adults in the United States (2.7%) are in jail or in correctional supervision. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, majority of the people incarcerated are aged from 20 to the age of 39. 9.9% of prisoners are aged 20-24, 16.6% are aged 25-29, 17.7% are aged 30-34, and 14.9% are aged 35-39. Many of these prisoners are male and only a few make up of female prisoners. Almost 92.9% of the prison populations were male and 7.1% were female prisoners. As per ethnicity, according to the Prison Policy, about 509 per 100,000 people that are white are imprisoned. About 2,716 per 100,000 people that are black are imprisoned. Lastly, about 1,106 per 100,000 people that are Hispanic are imprisoned. America sends large numbers of people, who have little to no level of education and make very small amount of money, to prison and leaves the skilled and educated walking freely. According to Prison Policy, about 57% of the people who make less the $23,000 are sent to jail, where as about 57% of the people who make more than $38,000 are not sent to jail. In contrast, only 22% of the people who make more than $38,000 are sent to