prison reform
In today's society, we are facing many changes. Our own family, neighbors, and countrymen are afraid of many dangers which influence their lives. Although many people have fear which resonates in their consciousness and unconsciousness, the United States has a comparatively low crime rate. Despite this low crime rate, America incarcerates it's citizens five times the rate of Canada and seven times that of most European democracies.(Slambrouck, Paul. 24) Our society needs to be changed. We cannot blame the individuals involved in wrongdoing but we can blame our society who raised these criminals. Of course someone who kills another human being needs to be put away in some form; but we need to make changes. We need to help as many maladjusted people as we can. There are some steps which really seem to work. There are many prison inmates who come from broken homes and have low self-esteem. What needs to be done to help these insecure people, who are at war with themselves and society, is to rehabilitate them. The problem is the prison officials do not try to teach the prisoners how to learn from their mistakes.(McGovern, Celeste. 42) What actually happens is that criminals tend to be better thefts, and have the ability to out sm
Knowing all humans make mistakes, the only thing which comes from mistakes is the chance to learn from them. Some individuals make very serious mistakes and should be rehabilitated in some way. They should not always be thrown behind bars. We can not just forget about them because eventually they will be walking among us once again. If we do leave them in jail and forget about them we are showing how ignorant our mentality actually is. What will happen is, that when these prisoners are released, a lot of them will be much more worst and angry then before they originally went to jail.(White, Andrew. 16) Inside our prison's walls many atrocities take place. "Terry Fitzsimmons spent nearly a decade in prisons from 1980's and early 90's. At first he was incarcerated for petty thievery, but after he killed a fellow inmate in a brawl his sentence was extended and he was placed in secure segregation."(White, Andrew. !7) Things similar to this are very common occurrences in our prison system. There are many things which we can blame for this. One reason that could explain violence between inmates is, a tremendous problem with overcrowding in most prisons. This hoarding of prisoners intensifies their behavior. "From reports of other innt that involves neither cruelty nor pain but is perceived as an insult. As we continue to dehumanize prisoners we leave them with no will to behave like citizens. The more the government piles on insults like chain gangs and stunbelt, the less chance there is for a restorative process of confession, penance, and forgiveness. Our punishment and control methods need to be seriously checked. "As sentencing laws get tougher and punishment proposals get more vicious, there is a tendency toward a great wave of dehumanization of inmates."(Hubbell, Webb. 77) This is a sign of a society increasingly out for vengeance rather then justice. "With over one million people behind bars, the United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, after Russia."(SlamBrouck, Paul. 25) Some experts regard the growing amount of prison violence as a "logical outcome of prisons which on average, are twenty percent over capacity." This is a cry to get non-violent offenders out of jail and placed unto house arrest or group homes were the offenders only lose they right of freedom. Inmates still need the ability to hold their families together. "Prison cost continues to rise with the implementation of the 1994 crime bill, which pressures states to adopt harder sentencing guidelines, and includes a "three strike" mandatory life sentence provision for three-time violent offenders."(Dilulio, John. 23) These measures will swell the prison walls which are already bursting with non-violent offenders. According to James Q. Wilson, of the University of California at Los Angeles, in the next decade, one million boys ranging from fourteen-to-seventeen will be in our population. "At least six percent of those will commit violent crimes. That means 30,000 more young killers, rapists, and thieves. Some of them will be what John Dilulio calls "super-predators" - a new variety of young criminal who had no adult in their life and no apparent capacity for remorse."(Dilulio, John. 24) With today's long sentences and high rates of incarceration, many of these younger criminals will be spending their lives in prison, at taxpayer expense. "There's a tornado coming," Dilulio said. "We can't stop it; we have to prepare for it." Intelligent prison policy is necessary now more than ever before. "Our politicians have been unwilling to change their policy of getting tough on crime by getting tough on prisoners. The 1994 crime bill authorized $7.9 billion for prison construction, and House Republicans have added another $2.3 billion to that."(Dilulio, John. 24) Some of the new prisons are necessary, but they will be counterproductive if they are run on the no-frills principle, with no vocational programs, no drug treatm
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2890
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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