Prison Reform Research Paper

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.

Professionalism as Bartollas and Siegel define it “refers to a set of character strengths and personal values directed at providing the highest quality service to others in the workplace, both colleagues and clients” (2013). In the field of corrections, professionalism affects not only those working in the facility or those imprisoned within its walls, but the families of inmates and officers /correctional staff, the local community, and the relationships within the law enforcement community as well. As discussed in the text, there are several areas in which professionalism in the field of corrections must address to effectively maintain if’s facilities. While there have been significant gains in recent years, there are still areas which continue

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 America, 2.3 million people are in prison. American has the highest prison population in the world. This is due to “tough on crime laws” that have been enforced since the 1960’s. Although these laws do help keep crime off the street, they have done more harm than good for our country. Mass incarceration is a major issues in America, it leads to poverty, broken families, money wasted, and many other problems.

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.

What are your thoughts about the prison system? Today 's prisons are so bad that prisons in the United States hold 5 percent of the US population. Many people get sent to jail cause of the 3 law strike because a lot of minorities are caught with drugs. Plus the government is wasting 75 billion dollars on these facilities instead of using the money in a better way like making programs for the prisoners that need help with mental health or other stuff.

Views of Incarceration Within the United Stated Government, there is a system that determines if a wrong has occurred. This is known as a crime. The system consists of lawmakers, judges, law enforcers, criminals, etc. Within all of this, there is a punishment for any person who breaks a rule or law set forth by the lawmakers in the US Government. This punishment is a place of cells and other criminals, it is called the jail, prison, the big house, etc.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. By Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Pp. 368.

Is prison effective as rehabilitation for wrong-doers in the US? Shawshank’s Redemption, an all-time best movie produced in 1994 starred and led by actors Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. A story about two imprisoned men’s experience with the corrupted prison institution through their way of self-redemption. There is a line, which was well read by Morgan Freeman, I am particularly fond of. Here I quote ‘These walls are funny.

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.

Out of the countless systems that America has, the criminal justice system has the most complication. Many judges, lawyers, and even prisoners have views on how to improve the criminal justice system but, to be able to pin point the problems of the criminal justice system you must discern what the causes are. Most would say that the problem with the prison system is the overcrowding. A few says the sentencing causes chaos in the criminal justice system. I believe that one or the main problem with the criminal justice system is the sentencing.

2.3 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S. justice system. All of them, regardless of their offense, have been put behind bars to serve some amount of time. Trapped in small rooms with sharp corners and dull paint, they watch a lone flickering light in their cell as a meager source of entertainment. Thousands behind black rusted bars and enclosed bland courtyards, blithering about, only occasionally forced to do self-supporting such as laundry and cooking. The typical orange jumpsuits contrast with the muted walls and unvaried routine.

For everything in life there is a consequence. Growing up we learn how those consequences can vary. These consequences can start very small, starting as a child we learn not to touch the stove or else we might get burned, or to respect our parents otherwise we would get a timeout where we would have to think about our actions that got us the punishment. Whatever punishment it was, they all had one thing in common. And that thing is the fact that we learned from our mistakes.

Incarceration has long been part of our corrections facilities in maintaining and holding criminals confined to themselves and harmless to the outside world. That’s not the exactly the way it is anymore, now they are creating treatment programs to rehabilitate people into better normal class citizens in prison because of the effects it has on prisoners in and outside the walls along with people they are associated with. For instance one article stated how in Germany they created state of the art treatment programs to help treat the criminals with their addictions. It was said to have great results in the treatments, but the program was very costly, so it was shut down. While another program in New York is trying to help the incarcerated fathers, by letting them portray the father