In this situation, social structure is the most logical explanation for the behavior of the inmates and the remaining criminal behavior. It is believed many of the individuals had hard struggles before entering the prison, hence the need to rely on gang interactions. The Pelican Bay State Prison was an environment to prove yourself to other gang members and represent the gang. You had to acquire strength, determination, and overall a violent nature. Many fights broke out in that prison, and most prisoners left with more strength and potential to continue in gang violence upon release from the prison.
Not possessing the required amount has led to legal issues. Overcrowded prisons have also caused stress among offenders and staff. Research was conducted back in 2006 that proved that increase prison populations had a negative mental effect on inmates (Prison Overcrowding is a Growing Concern in the U.S, n.d.). This causes stressful situations between officers and offenders, which often leads to inappropriate reactions between both increasing the risk of violence jeopardizing the safety of staff. The staff’s safety is jeopardized because of being out numbered in the offender to officer ratio.
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.
The characteristics of the program will be given, as well as how the program has affected the special needs offender population in that prison. * * The Special Needs Prisoner within Corrections * The special needs offender is one whose circumstance, behaviors, or condition requires treatment or management outside the approach of normal supervision. Within this scope include the mentally ill, elderly, disabled, and substance abusers among many other categories. * * Special Needs Effect on Jail and Prison Systems * The mentally ill inmate increase may be due to the creation of anti-psychotic drugs. After the creation of these drugs and the closure of psychiatric wards, people stopped taking their drugs, and the effects of their illnesses, treatment was not received, and their behaviors deteriorated.
Correctional facilities at their peak Prisons are establishments in which people who have committed a sort of crime are physically confined and, in the majority of the cases, deprived of personal freedom. Originally, as quoted from a TIME's article in 1982, prisons were described as monkish salvation establishments, later reformed periodically to reformatories, then correctional centers and rehabilitation facilities, where monkish behavior was required from the prisoners. This of course meant for the prisoners, regardless of their opinion, to be forcefully adapted to a peace and quiet environment which with a given amount of time, they would learn to express. Yet, crimes have become harsh as time goes by and some considered as immensely immoral and out of
Correctional Systems Compared United States vs Sweden Law enforcement varies from country to country as do debates about its effectiveness. This paper compares the Swedish and American penal systems with regard to prison management, types of criminals, prison designs and levels of security. It argues that based on the rates of recidivism, Sweden' s system is superior to that of the U.S. Discussion It is probably fair to say that the American penal system has switched from the idea of rehabilitation to that of punishment. The "three strikes" laws have filled up the nation's jails with people guilty of relatively minor offenses, causing overcrowding and frustration.
Even leaving abuse of power aside, the principal discomfort of prison is crowding, an issue serious enough to now cause reforms in prisoners’ sentencing, and interventions in court (Bonta, et al. 350). Limited space, including noise level and the duration of exposure has been known to cause stress, anxiety, and
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
Illinois, in particular, is suffering from overcrowded prisons quite severely. Nearly every prison in the state is overcrowded. In order to solve this increasingly serious problem, many steps must be taken to begin prison reform and to begin living in a country in which the way we punish our criminals makes more sense and is more effective than how it is today. Everyone seems to know someone that is in prison these days, whether the person has committed a serious, violent crime, or just got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, they still end up in some sort of prison facility. In fact the U.S.’s rate of incarceration is 455 people per every 100,000 people (Smolowe, 1994).
One of which being overcrowding. The number of offenders being sent to prison is on the rise and can affect the system drastically. With overcrowding, the job of keeping an eye on every inmate at all times becomes harder, the threat of gang activity grows, violence rises, and all of these can have a big impact on the overall management. Some changes to prison environments that could improve institutional management could be reducing the number of inmates for starters. Having fewer inmates confined to such a small space could lower the tension and possibly lessen the threat of violence that is prevalent in prisons today.