Argumentative Essay On Time Sentence Reforming

Jails are over crowded and the rearrest rate is at a staggering 76.6 percent. Our system is retributive, not restorative or reformative. The bottom line is punishing behavior isn't changing people. So how do we positively influence them? In Scandinavian countries they have discovered there is a direct correlation between education and crime. They have put their efforts into; building more schools and not more prisons, into creating opportunity and not more punishment. The rearrest rate in Norway is at 20 percent. In order to have a lasting change on the current crime rate we need to look beyond the behavior and into the individual.

After a trial is done and the sentence is revealed, the criminal of the case at hand will be sent to prison. At prison, the convict has a high chance of becoming a victim themselves. They often will find themselves victimized by the other inmates. Whether or not criminals deserve to become victims while in the penitentiary is up to debate. There is a belief that prisoners are put in jail for a reason and they deserve to be harmed by other criminals while locked up.

Something will always need to be fixed in society because society is a reflection of us, and we are not perfect. Recently, there’s been many issues that have caught the attention of people living all across the world. Things such as police brutality, sexual assault in the workplace, and immigration law, just to name a few, but there’s also been an underlying issue that people are becoming more informed about, and that I believe matters - prison reform. Prison reform matters because in many instances, prisoners are treated inhumanely when they are locked up, and aren’t treated as humans when they have served their time. I believe we can bring about change in the prison system by changing the way we punish people who do commit crimes and focusing more on actual rehabilitation.

In this day and age, There are five times as many people in jail as there were in the 1970s. Almost 5 percent of the population of the United States will go to prison at in point of their life. Conservatives believe that imprisonment reduces crime in two ways: it removes criminals from the public so they can not commit more crimes, and it also discourages people who would commit a crime as they consider the consequences. Unfortunately, neither of these outcomes have come to be true. In fact, mass incarceration and “tough on crime” laws have been extremely ineffective that instead of reducing crime, it increases it. There are several different ways to effectively reduce crime other than these two strategies, such as reforming certain policies

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

Over the past 40 years U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, with the United States’ prison population increasing from 320,000 inmates in 1980 to nearly 2.3 million inmates in 2013. The growth in prison population is in part due to society’s shift toward tough on crime policies including determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, and mandatory minimums. These tough on crime policies resulted in more individuals committing less serious crimes being sentenced to serve time and longer prison sentences.

Being convicted of a crime that you had nothing to do with must be the most frustrating feeling in the world. Although I had already started a previous research paper, my interest and attention was caught when I viewed an in class video by the name of The Farm: Angola, USA. There were two individuals named George Crawford and Vincent Simmons whose case caught my attention. George Crawford and Vincent Simmons case sounded a little sketchy in my opinion, and the thought of them being wrongfully convicted came to my mind. Although my paper is not about them, their stories inspired me to research about wrongful convictions and exonerations. There are still people who have been convicted 30 years and more, and are still in prison because of how

According to a statistic by the U.S. Department of Justice and their collaborators, the number of prisoners in the U.S. has grown by over 700 percent since the 1970s. This extreme increase in incarcerations means that people disregard the law and constantly commit crimes. But these crimes are not all equal. Crimes range everywhere from murder to simple drug use. Law enforcement punishes almost all of them equally. This can be seen as unjustified and something should be done about it, but that does not stop the crimes from happening. The only way to do that is to deal with the people behind the crimes, either by doing more to support them or remove the cause altogether.

For example in the story in source two it stated "while incarceration renders many unable to find gainful employment upon release, consigning them to underground economics where disputes are resolved by violence. This shows that when people get out of jail, they are unable to get a job so they go back to jail. The government should do a sentencing reform to help people get jobs who have been in jail. This will decrease the jail population. Another example that is stated in the text in source two is "we should heed the call of black lives matter and other voices for change that connect criminal law reform to broader social and fiscal policy reforms to reforms that would reduce violence by revitalizing our communities, providing employment to disaffected youth, funding drug treatment and quality health care, investing in education and shelter fit for human beings, and ending our shameful practices of mass incarceration". This shows how the government should start funding these programs to help lower the jail population. This is why the government should have a sentencing

The article, “The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984” (2015), written by Eric Girault, persuades the audience that the enactment of the law did not reduce crime in societies, but was misappropriated, which caused a negative impact on families and their communities. Girault describes this by sharing his personal anecdote on receiving a harsh prison sentence for a non-violent crime as a first time offender. He uses trustworthy resources in order to substantiate his claim. Girault’s intended audience for this piece of writing is the general public, specifically those that lack knowledge of the law and its due process.

The problem does not seem to be slowing down either. Congress continually passes new criminal offenses. The same conduct passes through the floor on a regular basis, but comes out with more guidelines on the previous laws. From 2000 to 2007. Congress enacted 452 new criminal offenses. That’s a new offense every week. There is no way that all of those offenses enacted, did not umbrella another. Congress probably means well, at least I like to think that. At what point do they realize that they are making countless vague or broad law?

A flourishing down town with fine dinning and shops. You are few people shy of the population of Dallas and Austin. Life is great, businesses are growing, Families are happy and there is little to none of poverty. Now imagine, all that gone, within a day. You look out the window or up from the porch you are sitting on and see a dark greenish sky. The once cool summer breeze is now still air. You look up out of curiosity and see approaching clouds of debris. Then while so very humid large hail fails but no rain. Then you hear them, you hear them loud and panic comes over you, you do not have long to react. Tornado warning horns are blaring, what do you do?

Harold Wilson, the Labour Politician who became Prime Minister in 1964, passed the Criminal Justice Act of 1967, which introduced reform in three sections: the prison system and sentencing practises of courts, juvenile offenders and the law on murder. A suspended sentence was introduced which aimed at reducing mandatory prison sentences. Magistrates were encouraged to not give prison sentences to people who had only committed minor offences. This resulted in fewer people going to prison for crimes punishable by a fine or community service. Sydney Silverman managed to abolish the death penalty in 1965 which was seen as huge progress. The Criminal Justice Act of 1972 introduced fully the rehabilitation method of community service which reduced the number of people going to prison. Community service gave offenders a chance to turn their negative impact on the community to a positive one. Wilson made huge changes to the Criminal Justice System and the changes he made were positive.

There is a worldwide trend in the use of penal imprisonment for serious offenses as capital punishment has been renounced by an increasing number of countries. Harsh punishments include capital punishment, life imprisonment and long-term incarceration. These forms of punishments are usually used against serious crimes that are seen as unethical, such as murder, assault and robbery. Many people believe that harsher punishments are more effective as they deter would-be criminals and ensure justice is served. Opposition towards harsh punishments have argued that harsher punishments does not necessarily increase effectiveness because they do not have a deterrent effect, do not decrease recidivism rates and do not provide rehabilitation. In addition,

Prison is a very harsh and bad place that no one should want to be in. Little freedom can make a person really aggravated. Nobody wants to be away from their family with little contact allowed. Little space and little privacy can only go for so long. Personally I think prison doesn't reform people because there are many repeat offenders, some people act worse when they get there, and also some people just don't like help and never want to change.