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Hard Time: The Four Goals Of American Prisons

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Goals of American Prisons The American Prisons have extremely important tasks and purposes. The goals of American prisons are retribution, deterrence, incarcerate, and rehabilitation. The “Hard Time” documentary explores how prisoners live, how they are treated, and what they do to survive behind the bars. “Hard Time” is a great visualization of American Prisons system. Furthermore, the documentary included important aspects that affect the overall prions goals, such as stigma and recidivism. However, are all four goals met in American prisons? Retribution meaning being punished for crimes against society's norms and values. Depriving criminals of their freedom is society way of making them pay for their deviance behavior. All the prisoners in the documentary are being punished for their deviance acts. Nonetheless, some have it worse than others. Retribution is revenge in a sense. Retribution is representation of the phenomenon”an eye for an eye”. Moreover, …show more content…

The prison ultimate goal is to prevent any future crime. The prisons provide warnings and example to people thinking about committing crimes, and that the possibility of ending up in a prison deter deviance acts. The prison attempts to deter deviance crimes by eliminating all form of freedoms prisoners had in the free world. For example, prisoners have to wait for store day to buy products with the money sent by family or friends. Unlike the free world where a person is able to go to store anytime. Nonetheless, over 50 percent of prisoners return to prison.
Incarcerate is to isolate criminals to make society safer. The prison task is to ensure that criminals are not cable of harming innocent individuals or interfering with society. In the documentary this goal is met to the fullest. For instance, when prisoners behave badly they are sent to H-house which in essence is a prison in a prison. The prisoners refer to it as the hole because of the extreme

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