The Pros And Cons Of Recidivism

Through the decades, crime and crime control have been analyzed in an attempt to find the causes of crime and decide how to combat them. The United States showed an increase in their prison population in the 1970s when the country turned towards a more punitive justice system. Referred to as just deserts theory of crime, the aim is to inflict as much pain on the offender through harsh prison sentences, in hopes to cause as much pain as the crime they committed. The worse the crime is, the worse the punishment the criminal will endure. The issue surrounding just deserts theory is the vast amount of offenders who return to prison after being released, also known as the recidivism rate.

People get incarcerated due to many reasons and sometimes they get harsh sentencing due to their crime. The crimes may either be intentional or accidental, but that is no excuse for the bureau of prisons. The prison sentences are sometimes doubled and tripled. These sentences are so harsh sometimes that the prisoners don’t get to see their family members anymore. Sentencing reform should be able to be in prisons not only statewide but globally because it will give prisoners a chance to fix their mistakes.

In other words, if you commit a crime the second time, you serve double and if you commit the 3rd time, you get sentenced minimum 25 yrs. in jail, no matter what crime it is. This was a new law implemented after a man who was recently paroled. He had many criminal records such as drug possession and gun abuse. At the time of release, he was on influence and was a drug addict.

D. (2002). Three strikes and you're in (for life): An analysis of the California three strikes laws as applied to convictions for misdemeanor conduct. Thomas Jefferson Law Review, 24(2), 277-298 This article analyzes California’s Three Strikes and how it applies to petty theft cases, particularly those that have been overturned by the appeal courts, particularly the Ninth Circuit. The article hypothesizes that the legal application of California’s Three Strikes Laws to petty theft cases is an application that the voters never contemplated upon when passing the law.

According to our textbook, the three-strike policy is defined as “when people commit a third felony (a third “strike”), they are sentenced to life in prison” (280). The three-strike policy is only one example of how the legislators have tried to pass several laws which is basically meant to send more individuals to prison for longer sentences. The three-strike policy was passed and was put into effect. Many individuals believe that the three-strike policy is unethical and just plain cruel, while other individuals believe that the three-strike policy is a wonderful idea and that it would work out great.

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. The 1970s-1980s: The War on Drugs and Changes in Sentencing Policy Incarceration rates did rise above 140 persons imprisoned per 100,000 of the population until the mid 1970s.

In March 2008, U.S Congress passed the Second Chance Act. It was passed to reduce the number of people returned to jail after parole release, not because of a crime committed, but because of small violations or other reasons. It was put in place to help the paroles live a better life. It also put in place new services and programs to help paroles get their life in order. Programs like Reentry courts, Educating and Training people for jobs while they are in prison, mentoring programs to adults and teens getting out of jail, drug treatment, alternatives to jail time and other programs to ensure that people who are in the system get a ‘second chance’ in life.

95% of people will be released from prison out of the 600,000+ that are sentenced every year but prison is said to be a revolving door. People get released just to end up back in there. Roughly three-quarters of them will be sentenced to prison again within five years of being released, this leads to the first benefit.

Research strongly indicates that transitional housing reduces the recidivism rates of parolees. Housing for many released inmates is very difficult to obtain for a variety of reasons, including prohibitions against people with drug convictions living in federally subsidized public housing. The state department of corrections has decided to rent a multiple-dwelling unit in a low-income area and to allow 200 inmates to live there six months following their release from prison. People in the neighborhood complain that this parole housing unit will increase crime in an already trouble area, will endanger local children, and will place an undue burden on local police and social service. So now the question is do you open the parole transitional

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.

Worsening the problem, as the increase in the incarceration of individuals continues, the sense of rehabilitation for inmates has been heavily reduced. This is not just by chance, but rather because the capitalistic private prison industry does not view incarcerated individuals as

This is unfair conduct because mandatory sentencing supposed is to unify for the crimes people make and be bias to one criminal to another. Now, before one

Recidivism refers to the repetition of criminal behavior (James, 2011). According to the United States Bureau of Justice 2010 statistics report, three-quarters of released prisoners are constantly rearrested for new crimes and more than half of these go back to prison in a period of two to three years after their release. Ex- inmates account for an approximated 19 percent of all arrests (Phelps, 2013, p.55). Criminals who return to the community are also most of the times worse off after a period of confinement than when they entered. It is attributable to the fact that these inmates learn antisocial and criminal attitudes from other

In the entire United States four of ten offenders return to prison within three years. Half of them because they did the same thing that sent them there in the first place. Personally I know this is a true statement because my mother and father are two of the four who have went back to prison within three years of release. They would get out and go right back to the things they were doing before.

On the contrary, they continue to misbehave as the way that had them chained up. Rehabilitating from crime is similar to recovering from drug abuse, the most effective way to cut off from further engagement is to keep anything related out of reach. Yet, the prison has done the opposite, no prisoner can reform under such circumstance. Prison is supposed to put an end to criminal activities but it turns out to be the extension; crime keeps happening in and out of the prison and criminals stay as