Ladies and gentlemen, future police officers and officeresses,
I’m DJ McLovin and I’m here today to talk a bit about a subject familiar to all of you, a topic you’ll probably be presented to for the rest of your lives: How to punish criminal offenders, or rather, how to prevent repeat, as well as new, offenders. Now, you may be wondering: “McLovin, what makes you more qualified to talk about and more knowledgeable in this subject than us, people of the law”, and that is an understandable thought. I’m a man of human rights, a member of Amnesty International, who has gathered just a bit of extraordinary knowledge through several years’ worth of research which should be applicable and relevant to your education. Now, without further ado, let’s get started, shall we?
One of the big questions [in today’s society] is how a person should be punished, that being something as simple as the length of a sentence, but also something a bit more complicated such as the meaning of said sentence; what shall it accomplish? Since the late ‘70s, the US has led the politic “get tough on crime”, having focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, even though its actual usefulness is rather questionable. Do any of you know just how many people are incarcerated in the US? 0,71% of the entire population, including children, which roughly translates to 2.290.000 people , more than any other country in the world, both in sheer numbers but also percentage-wise. That number keeps rising for a
Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.
We long for solutions, we long for peace, we long for change. But how? For decades, we notice the rate of incarceration increase heavily, as time passes. However, solutions to decrease those rates have been minimum. Adam Gopnik provides very detailed arguments on why the incarceration rates are so high in the United States, the comparison between jail time and crime committed, and also focuses on the importance of working together for smaller solutions to later “fix” problems like incarceration and our criminal justice system.
Currie discusses that “ An incarceration rate that is many times higher than that of comparable countries is a signal that something is very wrong. Ether the country is punishing offenders with a severity far in excess of what is considered normal in otherwise similar societies” (currie
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. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.
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.
Since 1970, our prison population has risen by some 700% - an increase far outpacing rates of population growth and crime1”. The reason America has so many incarcerated people is not because Americans commit more crimes or the police are just better at finding criminals,
Constructive speech Today My partner and I will be talking about if solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. I am the opposition on this subject so we think that it is not a cruel and unusual punishment. The definition of solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment where an inmate is concealed from all human contact except the guard that takes care of you, but you have some time to walk around in a bigger room then your cell for exercise.
Have you ever wondered how many people actually get arrested in a year? According to the U.S Department of Justice, a staggering estimate of over 14 million people were arrested in 2005. Of those 14 million people that were arrested, about 1.53 million of them were sentenced to a jail term. That same year a study was done on 404,638 newly released prisoners in 30 states. The study showed that within three years, about 67.8 percent of released prisoners were rearrested and within five years about three-quarters of them were arrested.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
The only form of discipline for crimes in America is incarceration. Incarceration has become the easy way of profit and discipline for the world
Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.
[ Imagine this scenario: you are complying with the police that are screaming at you, guns pointed at you, screaming “please don 't shoot” and trying your best to do what the police are asking. Daniel Shaver was an unarmed man fatally shot for no good reason. He was complying with the police officers orders and was begging for his life, screaming “please don’t shoot,” before he was fatally shot 5 times. Unfortunately, this is just one example of police brutality, an instance when police use unnecessary force when either they are unarmed or are complying with orders. Today I want to tell you of the injustice of police brutality, the people it affects, and how just asking the right questions could make sure that police are punished for their crimes.
Anecdote Suddenly one Friday night, Javier started seeing a bunch of gangsters arriving to the party in which they were at too. They were entering one after another, and began fighting randomly as they walked in. One of the gangsters that had arrived was holding up a gun to Javier and Javier’s cousin panicked that he would be killed. So, Javier’s older cousin runs to the back of his car and takes out a gun and passes it to his friend, he grabbed it and killed the ruthless guy that was going to kill Javier.
Why death penalty must end ‘’An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,’’ said Mahatma Gandhi. The execution of someone who has possibly done a crime is an inhuman act. Death penalty is hypocritical and flawed. If killing is wrong, why do we kill when a criminal has done the crime of killing someone? In this essay, I will write why death penalty should end by writing about the violation of human rights, execution of innocent people, the fact that it does not deter crime and money.
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.