State And Federal Prison System

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State and Federal Prison System Claudia Bailey CJS/230 November 14, 2011 Dr. Kay Carter State and Federal Prison System Federal and state prisons are important to the corrections and criminal justice systems; however they are not exactly the same. Security levels at the state and federal prisons are different to reflect the types of criminals that are housed. The rate of population growth is also different at federal and state prisons. Each prison system has its’ own way of operating and exploring the differences will aide in understanding each one. Deep Meadow Correctional Center is a state prison in Virginia; the average daily population is 840 prisoners ("Virginia.gov", 1997). According to Boyd and Jenny (2002) “Newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that growth in the state prison population is continuing to slow – for the U.S. as a whole, state prison populations grew by only 0.4 percent between June 30, 2000 and June 30, 2001”. So despite the fact that prison population is growing at a slow rate, prisons are still over-crowded. U.S corrections professionals can solve the problem of exponential growth in state prison systems by refocusing on rehabilitation of some criminals. Programs could be offered to help an inmate began changing their lives and I do not necessarily mean and educational degree program. If the prison offered a program that reduced time based off of completion of in-house prison programs, this would help reduce the population over time. There are four major security levels in both the state and federal prisons. The first level is low and it includes facilities such as work farms, boot camps, and forestry camps. The second level of security is the minimum security level and this category is for inmates who have committed a less severe crime and the corrections system feels the inmate can be trusted

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