Over the last 40 years, we have spent trillions of dollars on the failed and ineffective War on Drugs (Aclu). Drug use has not declined and drug markets are become more resilient to the mass incarceration of drug offenders. There is always another drug dealer standing by, ready to replace the one who has been sent to prison. Along with the War on Drugs, the changes in sentencing policies contributed to higher levels of incarceration at both the state and federal levels. Mandatory minimum sentences were established as the response to complaints from politicians and the public that offenders weren’t serving long enough terms for their convictions.
It is no secret that the the US relies heavily on our prison systems to hold citizens that are not currently properly following rules set forth by the US government. The US current has twenty five percent of the worlds prisoner population despite only having five percent of the world's total population (Incarceration Nation). This clearly displays a problem within our prison system as our prison rates are most comparable to North Korea (Incarceration Nation). The US prison system is in desperate need for reforms to better rehabilitate prisoners and be more ethically responsible; the US could do this by better re-establishing government run mental hospitals, rehabilitating inmates, and getting rid of solitary confinement. One major reason
Firstly, even if the prison did want to pay prisoners minimum wage it would be nearly impossible, and with catastrophic results. America is already so far into debt and we pay taxes in order to pay prisoners to stay in a cell, have food and fresh water. These cost an immense amount of money; “We now incarcerate more than 2.2 million people.” This is a quote from the Angola prison Warden, Burl Cain. So if there are just 2.2 million people in just one state then, imagine how many people are in prisons in the 50 states. So if you do the math, with the very high country debt and most of the prisons using taxes to pay for a decent experience as far as sheltering for prisoners goes, the taxes would raise at a very high and unstable rate in order to maintain America as a whole.
In America’s society, there are an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes committed every year. Adults are not the only individuals that are committing violent crimes. Juveniles are estimated to be involved in twenty-five percent of all violent crimes. Along with these crimes comes the decision on whether these juveniles should be tried as minors or adults, which has created an immense controversy around the United States. Certain juveniles are tried as adults because they must be held accountable for their actions, it brings justice to their victims, and because those individuals have a moral sense.
The article states that according to the Washington Post “African-American drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites. They are more than twice as likely to be searched by the police. And they are nearly twice as likely to not be told a reason for the traffic stop” (Cohen). Dwayne Betts is a sort of exception to this because he knows that what he did was wrong and totally unjustified but we can see this theme throughout the book. All the inmates talk about hating the police and how some of them are innocent and while that is probably not the case for all, it is likely the case for some.
Incarceration-many struggle personally, but all are affected, even if indirectly. The US prison system brings a sense of grief, lament, and even cynicism. Recidivism, “the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend” (Wikipedia), concentrates the pressing issues of incarceration. When felons are released back into society, their chances of recidivism are over fifty percent (Bureau of Justice Stats). jthreatens society and justice.
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 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regardingregaurding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number amount of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were commited. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500% even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.
Support services to facilitate the transition from prison to the freeworld environments to which prisoners were returned were undermined at precisely the moment they needed to be enhanced. Increased sentence length and a greatly expanded scope of incarceration resulted in prisoners experiencing the psychological strains of imprisonment for longer periods of time, many persons being caught in the web of incarceration who ordinarily would not have been (e.g., drug offenders), and the social costs of incarceration becoming increasingly concentrated in minority communities (because of differential enforcement and sentencing
The re-imprisonment rates in South Africa are exceeding high due to various socio-economic and psychological factors as well as the lack on effective programs in place to aid in rehabilitating prisoners into society once they have completed their sentence in order to prevent their re-imprisonment for the same or different crime. This paper will serve to outline the reasons for these high rates and how Industrial-Organizational psychologists (I/O psychologists) can get involved to lower them and hopefully eradicate them completely in the near future using their psychologically based techniques and expertise. For the sake of this paper we will be focusing on the particular area of expertise that involves ergonomics (the scientific field that
This corruption is evidenced by many of these charges being drug related, despite both races using drugs at similar rates, in tandem with the fact that private prisons spend millions of dollars every year lobbying for harsher drug laws. Not only is the net effect of this unjust, it helps to create stereotypes against African Americans. With private prison counts more than doubling since the start of the 21st century, Americans must stand up to the injustice of current private prisons before the problems of persecution and oppression they create become