Overcrowding in prisons is linked to several different causes, but the overall ignition of the overcrowding links specifically to the “War on Drugs” that began in the 1970’s (“What Causes Overcrowding,” 2011). Overcrowding in prisons has some very negative
Incarceration of the Mentally Ill and Mentally Retarded Offender is a Growing Problem for Prisons. The population of mentally ill and mentally retarded offenders is growing dramatically. Prisons are dealing with more mentally ill and retarded inmates because of deinstitutionalization of mental health facilities and increased incarceration at prison units. There are three options available for handling prison health services: (1) mental health agencies accepting responsibility for providing services; (2) correctional agencies accepting responsibility for providing treatment; or (3) contracting mental health services to independent providers. Federal funds are available to mentally ill offenders paroled to community residential facilities.
Without such activities being available to inmates, their daily routine returns into a monogamous state resulting in boredom. Loomis, a former inmate at Alcatraz Prison, describes the effect of such a lifestyle on inmate behavior: “Life gets so monotonous you feel like bucking the rules to break the monotony,” (Oliver, 66). In addition to idleness repetition, overcrowding also increased the difficulty of imposing discipline, resulting in greater availability of drugs, flourishing gangs, and an increased threat in brutality between prisoners (The Oxford History of the Prison, 237). One of the most fundamental resources of correctional institutions, the correctional officers, are also being vastly outnumbered. The new focus of corrections and society as being “tough on crime” affects the lives in which inmates, officers, and the community must now live by.
Criminal Justice Overview Paper Overcrowded prisons have become a serious issue in the criminal justice system. Get tough legislations, new penal codes, high recidivism rates, and the war on drugs are partly to blame for the overcrowding in American prisons. This paper will explain how overcrowding prisons have affected the criminal justice system. It will also list changes made to the system in response to the issue, and explain why the changes were or were not sufficient in eliminating the issue. The Affect The criminal justice system has been affected greatly by overcrowded prisons in many ways.
These jails in 1166 were horrible places to be detained. The gaols were filthy ,served poor food, had little medical care, and they were extremely violent. The conditions of these gaols came to the attention of John Howard, the sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1773. John Howard felt directed to change the unsatisfactory conditions of the jails. John Howard drafted the Penitentiary Act of 1779 with the assistance of the English House of Commons.
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.
Topic: Overcrowding in prison General Purpose: To Persuade/Visual Aid Specific Purpose: The overcrowding of prisoner has been a issue since the early 1700 century, and as of March 1, 2012 United State currently has the world’s largest prison population of 2.2 million people incarcerated. Stated by the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy for reform. Introduction: But before I start, I want to make it clear this is not a position offering sympathy to the criminals locked-up. Our judicial-system convicts people that need to be and deserve to be taken away from the general population and imprisoned .However, overcrowding is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing the American prison system. Prison became the biggest profit making industry in this country.
The central debate over mental illness is not about its existence, but rather over how to define it (Christian Perring, 2010). Issues of mental illness intersect with important questions about responsibility and what consequences a mentally ill person should be tried with. There becomes a fine line when deciding whether to place a mentally ill person who has committed a crime into a prison or a psychiatric ward. With the tens of thousands of mentally ill that are positioned in prisons, physicians are torn by the difficulty of the segregation unit. The mentally ill may be incapable at times to psychologically make appropriate decisions for themselves but keeping a mentally ill prisoner in confinement over consecutive amounts of time violates
During the same time period in Honduras, the number of women increased from 27.9% to 30.3%. From 1991 to 1998 in Panama, the percentage of women as heads of a household increased from 26.0% to 30.6%. In 1997, women headed 30.2% of the houses in El Salvador. In that same year in Nicaragua, the percentage was 36.6%. In 1999 in Guatemala, women ran 24.3% of the households.
36 states have higher incarceration rates than Cuba, the country with the world's second highest prison rate. Looked at in terms of actual inmate numbers, this means that the number of people behind bars in most US states is on par with the prison populations of entire nations, like Venezuela and Egypt. https://news.vice.com/article/the-mass-incarceration-problem-in-america Funding of American prisons is another big problem. Since population of the prisons in our country extremely grows, the government began to spend more money on prison system. Imprisonment of America's 2.3 million prisoners, costing $24,000 per inmate per year, and $5.1 billion in new prison construction, consumes $60.3 billion in budget expenditures, and it continues to grow.