Alternative To Incarceration

Traditionally, intermediate sanctions are designed for offenders who require a correctional opinion that is more punitive and restrictive than routine probation but less severe than imprisonment. Intermediate sanctions are used for a variety of offenders. Persons accused crimes and released into the community, persons convicted of misdemeanors and felonies directly sentenced to an intermediate sanction, and jail inmates. Unlike probation and parole, it is difficult to accurately determine the number of offenders involved in intermediate sanctions or even the number of intermediate sanctions that exist in different areas.

Those who find themselves sentenced to time in a penitentiary, jail, or prison are at risk of either being broken or strengthened by the time they spend behind bars. There is a great debate of whether or not the prison system in the United States is positive or negative. The following will briefly highlight the positives, negatives, and possible alternatives for our nation's prison system.

In America, the private prison industry was made for necessary profit based off of the management of prisons by large, private companies. In David Shapiro’s insightful report “Banking on Bondage”, he discusses the logistics of the United States prison system, saying “In America, our criminal justice system should keep us safe, operate fairly, and be cost-effective”. Today, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran. Alongside the issues of private prisons, the increasingly apparent problem of mass incarceration has stripped record numbers of American citizens of their freedom, has a minimal effect on public

Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals.

Within the judicial and criminal justice systems, restorative justice is seen as a forward moving process in regards to the way in which the sentencing of offenders is handled (Britto & Reimund, 2013). Restorative justice works to focus on the needs of both the victim and the offender but incorporates the community as well as those who support both the victim and offender (Britto & Reimund, 2013). The approach of restorative justice in not simply a means by which society responds to and reduces crime but instead, provides an equivalently valuable social response to crime (Dancig-Rosenberg and Galt, 2013). Furthermore, the restorative approach places emphasis on the personal and relational harms which were caused by the crime while creating space for dialogue concerning the actual damage, whether directly or

The current system that incarcerates people over and over is unsustainable and does not lower the crime rate nor encourage prisoner reformation. When non-violent, first time offenders are incarcerated alongside violent repeat offenders, their chance of recidivating can be drastically altered by their experience in prison. Alternative sentencing for non-violent drug offenders could alleviate this problem, but many current laws hinder many possible solutions. Recently lawmakers have made attempts to lower the recidivism rates in America, for example the Second Chance Act helps aid prisoners returning into society after incarceration. The act allows states to appropriate money to communities to help provide services such as education, drug treatment programs, mental health programs, job corps services, and others to aid in offenders returning to society after incarceration (Conyers, 2013). The Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison Program is another attempt to provide better treatment for people who are convicted. The study showed that drug offenders who underwent a treatment program outside of prison had a 26 percent less rate of re-arrest after two years than a control group that was sent to prison (Justice Policy Institute, 2010). Rehabilitative programs like the Second Chance Act and the Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison Program has shown to growth and positive

In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.”

The issue of prison overcrowding has been an increasing in America. There are about 2.2 million Americans in jail or prison. The number of people in prison have gotten so large that about one in every 100 adults are behind bars. The increase in inmate population in the United States is a concern to me because some of these people have committed non-violent crimes or have drug related crimes. These people should be placed in rehabilitation centers or be counseled about drug distributing. Also when it comes to the public, the money used for funding jails and prisons could be used to help college students pay for school. Governments grants only cover so much of a student’s tuition and money spent on prisons could be replaced with funding students.

The fundamental basis of the reentry collaboration is that each constituent of the criminal justice system (e.g., law enforcement, the courts, institutional and community corrections) plays a role not only in immediate offender processing and control (e.g., arrest, conviction, incarceration, release), but also in longstanding offender change (e.g., employment, family, mental health, substance abuse, criminality). Since 1999, the Office of Justice Programs has been instrumental in the development of a series of system-wide reentry initiatives, including the Reentry Partnership Initiatives (RPI) (NCJRS, 2002).

It is clear that we have not embraced the theory of rehabilitation because we still use prisons to “warehouse” offenders. The concern with “warehousing” is that the offender will more than likely end up back in prison. We have learned that recidivism is a major concern facing society today because offenders have little chance of employment, no funds or housing, and often time’s very little support from family or friends. I stand behind rehabilitation for offenders because I feel like it is the only way to truly stop crime. In

A shift is happening in America. The pendulum is swinging from the ideals of get tough and mass incarceration. The swing has both positive and negative affects on the prison system. On the plus side, prison populations are decreasing. By shifting away from incarcerating any who break the law, there are fewer drug dealers and fewer violent offenders in the system. The other side of this trend is that many who make these choices are likely to become repeat offenders.Individuals also may escalate their negative behaviors to more violent or disturbing crimes. The punishment may not do enough to deter these actions in the future. Opinions on the best way to handle criminals are as vast as the varying crimes committed. Some say that these individuals

In America currently there are about 2.3 million people that are incarcerated. The U.S. accounts

The United States is faced with a major issue of mass incarceration and prison overpopulation. With the largest prison population in the world and the second highest incarceration rate per-capita (1 in 100 citizens is behind bars), the United States’ corrections system needs to be reformed now, through both policy and administrative changes. While I am certain you are familiar with these statistics, I would like to emphasize that using incarceration as the primary response to social problems as is happening today in the United States not only impacts those individuals incarcerated and their families, but also costs tax payers billions of dollars.

What is prison? Most people would simply say that it is a place in which law breakers are housed. Some would say it is the place in which people are contained whom have killed someone, robbed someone, sold drugs to someone, or rape/molested someone. I, myself see as place in which was built to house individuals who have been found guilty of committing a crime, but I also can see that it seems to house a certain race group more than any other racial group in American society. And, the group that I speak of is that of African American (i.e. Blacks) decent. Why is this? Many have found that racism and the prison industrial complex are the beacons that have caused this fracture to coexist.

Batley (2005) stated that restorative justice is about restoring, healing and re- integrating victims, offenders, as well as the society and also preventing further harm. In this assignment, I will be discussing approaches to restorative justice and illustrating their advantages and disadvantages to offending. I will also provide the applications of these five approaches of restorative justice which are retributive approach, utilitarian deterrence approach, rehabilitation approach, restitution approach and restorative approach in the given case study. I will then explain my preferred approach to justice through identifying a personal belief or value that underpins my choice.