The Precautions, Steps, and Measures Taken to Control Gangs and Security Threat Groups in Prison Overview Gangs in America have multiplied at such an extreme that even the smallest counties have reported some forms of gang activity in their communities. When members of these gangs are arrested and convicted on felony charges; they are put into our correctional system and disregarded by the public. However, many of these gang members stay together in prison putting themselves, staff, and other inmates at risk of violence. The troubles presented by gang affiliated inmates until recently have not been widely researched. Due to increasing violence and gang activity numerous steps are now being implemented address gain affiliation in our prison system.
Jails and Prison Comparison October 19, 2013 CJA/ 234 Introduction The criminal justice system is a very complex system and if you don’t understand it you won’t know how it operates. Let’s take a walk through the criminal justice system by showing some distinct differences between jails and prison on a state and federal level. I would also like to make some comparisons and explore some influencing factors in growth in regards to jails and prisons. Safety in our society is one of the most leading issues to date without our correctional system victims would still live in fear and the criminal would go unpunished. The correctional system helps both the victim and the criminal to move forward.
State and federal prison authorities had jurisdiction over 1,610,446 prisoners at midyear 2008: 1,409,166 in state jurisdiction and 201,280 in federal jurisdiction. Local jails held 785,556 persons awaiting trial or serving a sentence at midyear 2008. An additional 72,852 persons under jail supervision were serving their sentence in the community. This is a very alarming rate! This is something to think
One factor contributing to the continuous growth of substance abusers in the prison population is drug misuse and addiction. The majority of inmates incarcerated have used illegal drugs on a regular basis (at least once a week for a period of one month) and have been incarcerated for selling or possessing drugs; driving under the influence of alcohol; committed crimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol; committed their crimes to get money for drugs; have a history of substance abuse; or share a combination of these characteristics (CASAColumbia, 1998). Another factor is the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentences. In an attempt to reduce drug abuse and drug dealing, the U.S. has pursued punitive drug control policies to threaten arrest and incarceration. Mandatory minimums at the state and federal levels lead to individuals being sent to prison for possession of relatively small amounts of illegal substances (Taylor, Hallam & Allen, 2009).
They don’t want to become known as the “snitch”. In recent studies, it has been found out that in the United States prisons alone, an estimated 364,000 males and female inmates were sexually assaulted in one year. Any young inmates that are physically small or weak, have a mental illness, are known as the “snitches”, are not in a gang, or convicted of any sexual crimes are at a higher risk of being the victim of sexual assault. Inmate suicide has been going on for years and is a problem that has not decreased. Newly arrested people who have been taken to a local jail
On any given day, about 70,000 are psychotic. These numbers represent a severe crisis for prison systems throughout the country. The report discusses two main reasons why the numbers have risen to a crisis level. First, as a result of the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s, many mental health hospitals were closed, but community mental health systems which were envisioned as taking the place of hospitals did not develop sufficiently. Many mentally ill—particularly the poor—are now without access to help.
However, in this modern world, there are still people under the threat of such sufferings: the vulnerable and marginalised death row inmates. Despite certain benefits, it is unjustifiable for pharmaceutical companies to use them as test subjects without their consent. The death penalty, by its own right, has already been reserved only for the gravest offences. To most people, the loss of one’s life is the greatest loss. The time spent waiting in jail can be counted by months, years or even decade, especially in the USA where an average prisoner stays on death row for 15 years.
Prison System Comparison Donita Estes CJA/204 January 19, 2012 Joseph Dempsey Prison System Comparison Prisons are used to hold adults that have been convicted and sentenced to more than a year. There are several issues in our prison system that have been addressed but not corrected. On both, state and federal levels, our legal systems are faced with problems that affect those that are not incarcerated. The history of our prisons is not far from what we have in our present day. In each state there are different levels and locations in which a prison is ran.
In cases handled by the federal government if you have no information to provide to authorities, you are given harsher sentences, because you didn’t cooperate with the government. How is it possible to provide information when you have none to give? There are a lot of girlfriends, wives, mothers, grandmothers, and sisters who are implicated in indictments due to a family member, spouse, or boyfriend being involved with the selling or preparation of drugs; when in reality they reaped no benefits from the drug activity. This problem has been around since the federal government mandated mandatory minimums over fifteen years ago. The Mandatory Minimum sentencing laws were put into place for major and habitual drug offenders to be behind bars for years, but in essence we have been faced with unintended consequences of mandatory minimum sentences.
This decision has helped the defense of countless poor defendants. Monkeyshines on America. 2001 In some states public defenders come with a price, according to a report in USA TODAY, States increasingly are imposing fees on poor criminal defendants who use public defenders even when they can't pay, causing some to go without attorneys, according to two reviews of the nation's largest state criminal justice systems. A report by New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice found that 13 of the 15 states with the largest prison populations imposed some charge, including application fees, for access to counsel. "In practice, these fees often discourage individuals from exercising their constitutional right to an attorney, leading to wrongful convictions, over-incarceration and significant burdens on the operation of courts," the Brennan report concludes.