The article expounds on some key statistics that suggest that young people are 36 more times to commit suicide in an adult prison than a juvenile facility. It also speaks to the outcome of young people who survive an adult facility. They return to society as damaged and dangerous people and are more likely to commit violent crimes and add to the recidivism rate. This article reinforces my opinion and advocates my stance on children in jails with adults. A quote from the article that puts it in perspective says, “The rush to criminalize children has set the country on a dangerous path.
According to the American Academy of Political & Social Science, “America’s prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce”. “Furthermore, evidence shows that spending time in jail affects future wages of minorities at a greater rate than white ex-cons” (2014). By no means, it should be suggested that because an individual is uneducated they will end up in prison. Although, the evidence does show that the majority of offenders are usually high school dropouts. According to Rumberger (2001), “intervention strategies should be put in place that focuses on providing resources that supports, strengthens, or restructure the families, schools, and communities of potential dropouts.
The United States hands out longer sentences than most other countries do for similar crimes. A first time drug offense in a federal court in the United States would receive five to ten years mandatory sentence. Around the world in other countries of democracy, the same first time offense would receive at most, six months in jail. Judges in the United States are prevented from using their discretion, since these crimes carry a mandatory sentence. Another example would be that the United States gives an average burglary sentence around sixteen months, but Canada gives a sentence of five months, and in England people get about seven months.
correctional system is the most robust in the world—housing nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners within its walls. This system is, however, by no means a perfect system. With a system of this magnitude, there is bound to be problems. The U.S. must get a grasp on these problems and get back to the original function of prisons: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. Only then can we celebrate the successes of our correctional system.
In the U.S we have about 2.5 million adults in jail and a quarter of that population being drug addicts. If we implemented a drug rehabilitation program instead of shipping these people off to prison we could down their cost to incarcerate by half. Incarceration for 25 months which is the average jail sentence which is given to the typical drug offender cost about $64,700 not including the cost after as they will most likely be put on probation. In Brooklyn New York they have a rehab alternative to jail and it costs 32,974 to rehabilitate them rather than toss them in prison with the rapists and murderers. WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS????
Convict criminology is a new research perspective in criminology led by ex-convicts who are now academic faculty. They especially focus on how the problem of crime is defined, the solutions proposed, the correctional policies enacted, and the devastating impacts of those decisions on the men and women confined in prison. Stephen C. Richards and Jeffrey Ian Ross coined the term convict criminology in 2001, and 2 years later published an edited book, Convict Criminology, that included nine chapters by ex-convict professors. This was the first time ex-convict academics appeared in a book together discussing their own criminal convictions, time in prison, and experiences in graduate school and as professors at universities. Next came the New School of Convict Criminology, informally organized as a writing and activist collective.
There are, however, some very important factors that help to influence the numbers. Consider those and a strong case for a much different view unfolds. Since 62% of persons admitted to Federal prison and 31.1% of those admitted to State prison for the first time were sentenced because of drug offenses, let us first take a look at the racial disparity in the war on drugs: The National Institute of Drug Abuse estimated that while 12 percent of drug users are black, they make up nearly 50 percent of all drug possession arrests in the U.S. (The Black and White of Justice, Freedom Magazine, Volume 128) According to the National Drug Strategy Network, although African Americans make up less than one-third of the population in Georgia, the black arrest rate for drugs is five times greater than the white arrest rate. In addition, since 1990, African Americans have accounted for more than 75% of persons incarcerated for drug offenses in Georgia and make up 97.7% of the people in that state who are given life sentences for drug
Adm criminal justice: Tuesday nights | Changing the Lives of Prisoners: A New Agenda | Lawrence Thomas Jablecki | | Hunter Swann | 5/17/2011 | Unit 6 | In this article Lawrence Lablecki talks about the different programs the United States prison systems are using in order to more effective and efficiently change the lives of the inmates. There are inmates that want to change, and inmates that do not. However some inmates do not qualify for these extra-curricular prison programs. Today more than two million people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Six hundred thousand are released every year and within three to five years, fifty to sixty percent return to prison for new crimes they’ve committed.
Kimberly Banks Psyc 302 12/1/2011 Prof. Lytle Mentally Ill in Correctional Institutes The article I did for my review was called The Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Prisoners in the City of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. This article is about the different psychiatric diseases found in the inmates in the prison. A cross-sectional study was done in the prison to find out the most common diseases. They studied inmates in closed and semi-open prison systems. The results showed that there were higher rates of substance related disorders than those who had psychotic and mood disorders.
The Field Of Corrections By: Tony Workman 1 of every 133 Americans is in jail or prison, even though the prison population has dropped in 20 states, that is roughly 2.3 million people behind bars. There is a huge demand right now for corrections officers, and is projected to increase over the next five years. It is a physical and mentally demanding job and needs specialized training, but it is also a very rewarding profession. Correctional officers, also known as detention officers when they work in pretrial detention facilities, are responsible for overseeing individuals who have been arrested and are awaiting trial or who have been convicted of a crime and sentenced to serve time in a jail, reformatory, or penitentiary. The jail population