Corrections History and Institutions

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Corrections History and Institutions Cherese Murphy CJA/234 June 14, 2012 Samantha Scales Corrections History and Institutions Since 1790 jails have played a major role in the correctional system (Richard P. Seiter (2011)). Jails in the United States are correctional facilities that hold people before and after adjudication. However, jails are sometimes confused with lockups; lockup only holds offenders for a short period of time, which is normally 48 hours or less. Jail facilities provide: services to rehabilitate offenders, security, food, and health care. Although there are various ways of describing jail facilities, such as: correctional center, detention facility, house of correction, and prison they all have common roles (Richard P. Seiter (2011)). Jails detain many types of offenders, including the following: inmates with short sentences, juveniles waiting to be transferred to juvenile corrections, people mentally ill and waiting to go to mental health facilities, people awaiting arraignment, trial, conviction, or sentencing, people who violate bail bond, parole, probation, inmates who are waiting to be transferred to federal, state, and people detain on behalf of the military, for protective custody, contempt’s, and for court witnesses (Richard P. Seiter (2011)). As of 2008, there were a total of 312 private jails and prisons operating in the United States (Richard P. Seiter (2011)). In 2008 the incarceration rate was extremely high; the local jails had a total of 785,556 inmates (Richard P. Seiter (2011)). The incarceration rate is determined by the number of people per 100,000 U.S. citizens who are incarcerated either in jail or prison. There was a study conducted on inmates incarcerated in Texas jail. The study advises that over half of the jail population consisted of inmates there for drug offenses, in possession of control substance or

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