I personally believe that American prisons can be quite harsh when it comes down to how the prisoners are treated. A lot of factors come in to play when you look at the conditions of our prison systems. Such factors are population, cleanliness, the rules of the prison, and most importantly the severity of the punishments. The first thing I am going to discuss is the population. Ever since the populations of prisons have gradually increased over 2 million inmates, many prisons are becoming overcrowded.
Over the last 15 years the our nations prison population has more than doubled. Many things contribute to this rapid increase of convicted felons. This leads to many different thing our country must deal with. Overcrowded prisons, more money to pay by tax payers, criminals with no skills to help them in the real world of life, are just a couple issues that must be dealt with. All of these things affect everyone in our nation.
These high levels of incarceration have in turn made sending people to prison profitable. Mass incarceration is not only a huge problem within itself but it has additional negative effect on productivity both economic and societal, and parental availability to their children. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) reports that from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people” (“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”, n.d.). According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “The United States imprisons more people—both per capita and in absolute terms—than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran” (“Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration”, 2011). When a nation begins to incarcerate that many of its citizens people begin to question what exactly is causing this trend?
The Comparison Between Prison and Slavery by John Dewar Gleissner The fairly new term, "mass incarceration," means that the U.S. has 2.2 million prisoners, more than any country in the world. A greater percentage of the U.S. population is in prison than in any other nation. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and almost 25% of the world's prisoners. The entire U.S. correctional population, including those on probation, on parole and awaiting trial, is about 7.3 million Americans. These eye-popping numbers came about for many reasons: mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, illegal drugs, gangs, immorality in all its modern forms, the war on drugs, the decline of marriage and families, high rates of recidivism, incarceration of the mentally ill, the decline of capital punishment, problems with the criminal justice system and all the forces pushing tough crime policies.
In some of these inmates crime and deviance is all they know. The strain they have put or have been put in for most is hard to come out of. Some inmates have been there more than 20 years and have no hope of ever getting out. The gang activity is so great at this facility that the inmates have managed to control the gangs still on the streets from prison. Can or will this stop is the question criminologist have to find the answers
The "three strikes" laws have filled up the nation's jails with people guilty of relatively minor offenses, causing overcrowding and frustration. In addition, the vigilante mood that overtook the country on 9/11 has led
Introduction The problem with respect to overcrowding has tremendously affected the different states in the United States of America. Indeed, there are a number of issues that commonly arise as a result of prison overcrowding. These issues include the worsening of conditions in the prisons such as the decline of basic and sanitation services rendered to the inmates, the spread of diseases, increased stress levels amongst the members of the staff and the inmates as well and finally, the increased risk of violence and riots occurring within the different correctional institutions. The most important issue, however, pertains to the fact that prison overcrowding violates the right of the inmates against unreasonable punishment. It is in this respect that a number of solutions have been proposed to address the problem.
A contributing factor could be that there are growing numbers of terrorists, gangs, and other violent prisoners the government is now housing. ADMAX, a supermax prison the federal government has provided, holds many of the greatest threats to the American ways. People like Zacarias Moussaoui, Al Qaeda terrorist; Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Terry Nichols, accomplice in Oklahoma City bombing; and Richard Reid, Islamic shoe bomber are all housed in this institution. Another growing cause of prison population is poverty. During the last two decades, there has been a gap in America between the lifestyles of those who grew up poor and those who didn’t.
The Wisconsin Prison System is currently so overcrowded that many offenders often do not have a long enough sentence to overcome the waiting list for needed programing. With inmates getting released and more often than not committing a new crime or violation of the supervision and returning to prison overcrowding is continuing to be a problem. As of May 2011 Wisconsin had a recidivism rate of 46-percent rate which was a little above the national average at that time. Luckily recidivism rates have decreased and prospects are looking better for inmates to receive the treatment they need. I have done additional research and just stumbled upon a very interesting article titled, "Stopping the Revolving Door: Reform of Community Corrections in Wisconsin" by Kate Lind.
Prison Gangs Prison gangs are the most feared and destructive element of prison society. Engaging in murder, robbery, rape and drug dealing on a frequent basis, prison gangs pose a danger to the entire prison population. The ability to run a correctional facility safely and properly is seriously diminished with the presence of gang affiliated members. Gang affiliated inmates make up just 3% of the overall prison population but account for almost half of all prison violence (Griffin, 2006). To date it is estimated that there are about 100,000 gang members located in the American corrections system with membership having risen greatly in the last 30 years.