Ever since the populations of prisons have gradually increased over 2 million inmates, many prisons are becoming overcrowded. This leads to inmates being forced to room with 3 other inmates in a very small cell. Also, many prisons don’t have enough beds for all of the prisoners that continue to pile into their facility. Most prison systems don’t try to get more beds for their prisoners; they feel as if the prisoners deserve to sleep on the floor. I believe that most people would consider this as torture.
These eye-popping numbers came about for many reasons: mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, illegal drugs, gangs, immorality in all its modern forms, the war on drugs, the decline of marriage and families, high rates of recidivism, incarceration of the mentally ill, the decline of capital punishment, problems with the criminal justice system and all the forces pushing tough crime policies. Difficult economic times focus attention on the increasing costs of keeping all these people - 93% of them men - behind bars. Each prisoner costs about $32,000 per year, and the average prisoner does little to offset the cost of confinement. The social costs may be even higher. Breadwinners are lost, families destroyed, more kids grow up without fathers or mothers, welfare costs increase, the entire sex ratio is thrown out of balance and prisoners face grim prospects when released.
It is approximately a million dollars for health service. As for that, Sade declared “American prisons are in deep trouble: they are overpopulated, understaffed, and underfunded.” If the prisons ran out of the money, they could not come up with the money and no opportunities. In that circumstance, prisons would have to say no to the
One of the main reasons Colorado refuses to pass the law is due to the cost of jail and lifetime surveillance - money of course outweighing the safety of children - enough said. Also, the reduced prison sentences are worth every cent because every year a violent sex offender or pedophile is in prison is a year protecting children from them. An understandable pitfall of Jessica’s Law is that it makes it nearly impossible to find homes for registered sex offenders due to the clause that states they cannot live within 2,000 feet of a school zone, park or where children gather. I concede that this makes it difficult and could be counterproductive since many become homeless and unable to keep under a close watch. This is a valid concern and can be dealt with state by state, the government spend astronomical amounts of tax payer dollars on nugatory programs.
The author of the article goes on to say that people in the US are sentenced to do time for crimes that would not produce such a sentence in other countries. According to another article in the New York Times (2008), states spend close to ten percent of their budget on corrections (Liptak &, 2008). In 2007 alone, states spend close to $45 million tax dollars. Not only is simply housing an inmate costly, but healthcare also provides a financial burden. In 1998, the states paid a little over seven dollars a day per inmate for healthcare (Kinsella, 2004).
“Our world is one of terrible contradictions. Plenty of food, but one billion people go hungry. Lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others. Huge advances in medicine while mothers die every day in childbirth, and children die every day from drinking dirty water. Billions spent on weapons to kill people instead of keeping them safe.” (Ban Ki-Moon) The human rights issue addressed in this quote is one that the whole world is facing and has been facing for millennia.
In this case Byron Halsey is sentenced to life in prison for two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated manslaughter, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of child abuse, and possession of a weapon. This case is a perfect example of the ordinary injustice that is shown in the novel because it demonstrates the different factors of “corruption” that were involved in sentencing an innocent man to life in prison. To solve ordinary injustices in the justice system we need to eliminate corrupt officials, prosecutors, and juries; but more importantly there has to be a change in society as a whole. In 1985, Byron Halsey was living in a Plainfield, New Jersey, rooming house with Margaret Urquhart and her two children, a seven-year-old girl and an eight- year-old boy. He was helping to support the family and raising the children as his own.
In these sessions the inmates are kept in chains and separated by jail cells in an open room, as opposed to a patient friendly atmosphere the psychiatric hospitals are able to provide. If the inmates in these prisons begin to display any disciplinary problems, they more often than not sent to segregation in a secluded part of the facility. Such alienation can be very detrimental in the continued treatment of their mental disorders. It is often the case where the mentally ill patients become so violent and a continued history of misconduct, to the point where the prison can no longer handle them; they will be transferred to the prison’s psychiatric hospital extension. It is in these facilities where the inmates are treated much more as patients rather than prisoners as was the case in the prisons.
Placing them in adult prison subjects them to violence and exploitation, and deprives them of the chance to start their new lives. Author Howell C.James, reveals in his book Juvenile Justice and Youth Violence that ‘An OOJJDP study (Flaherty, 1980) found the suicide rate among jailed juveniles to be seven times as high as the rate among juveniles held in detention centers. Experience had shown that juveniles did not receive basic services (counseling, medical, recreational) in facilities constructed and operated for adults’ (Howell 36). Minors in an adult prison are having their most creative years destroyed and they are certainly not learning how to be good citizens by being abused by inmates three times their age. Putting juvenile offenders in with adults increases their chances offending again when they are
When someone has been in prison for so long and they are not properly rehabilitated, they go back to prison because it is how they know life to be, like it is there home. the combination of repeat offenders and new offenders leave the prisons overcrowded and dangerous. Prison is suppose to be a form of punishment and rehabilitation, not a way of life that is welcome. These inmates are seeing it as a way of life because it is so overcrowded, they are not taught any