REHABILITATION VERSES INCARCERATION Rehabilitation should be viewed as more key than incarceration itself. People who are convicted of crimes should be allowed to heal and better themselves. Many of those people have serious addictions and issues that need to be addressed. In jail however, those issues will only worsen or fester. When the prisoner is released, they may be very angry about the lack of attention they recieved, and become a repeat offender.
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. Thus, crimes were committed, and inmate population increased. These inmates are more likely than any other type of inmate to have behavioral issues. As of 2005 there were 1,255,700 mentally ill inmates recorded within our state and federal prisons (Seiter, 2011). * According to Seiter (2011), in 2004 drug dependence or abuse criteria in the State prison was met by 40.3% of inmates and in Federal prison systems was met by 48.6%.
First and foremost, people with mental disorders are not meant to be in prison. Prison life by itself already adds a level of anxiety and depression to every inmate. Once you add any type of mental illness, you are creating a bomb just waiting to explode. Correctional Officers are not trained to handle people with mental illness. They do not understand that people with mental disorders have special needs which prisons cannot provide.
There has been no consistent evidence that crowding is associated with mortality, morbidity which is defined as clinic utilization), recidivism, violence, or other pathological behaviors (Gaes 1994). In addressing any problem area, one first must define the terms or operational definitions. The United States Supreme Court on November 30, 2010, heard oral argument in Schwarzenegger v. Plata about whether a federal court in California properly ordered the release of 40,000 prisoners to relieve the severe overcrowding in the state's prisons that has led to inadequate medical and mental health care for prisoners (Equal Justice Initiative, 2010). America’s prisons now hold more than 2.3 million people, and many of the facilities are overcrowded, with serious implications for both health and safety. Since the mid-1970s, the prison population in the nation’s largest state has risen by more than 750%, from about 20,000 to more than 160,000 (Equal Justice Initiative, 2010).
It is scary that many countries have smaller population in their country than the United States have in their prisons. “Prisons are stretched beyond capacity, creating dangerous and unconstitutional conditions which often result in costly lawsuits. In 2006, 40 out of 50 states were at 90 percent capacity or more, with 23 of those states operating at over 100 percent capacity" (Pruning 1). If crack dealers were released Americans wouldn’t spend as much tax money per year to prisons. Less prison employees would be needed, less water, and less electricity would be need if the hundreds of thousands crack dealers were
They are not able to be housed with general population in fear that they will be retaliated against by other prisoners. The inmates in this unit may consist of sex offenders, ex-police officers, child abusers, and even rejected gang members. For these reasons they are put into their own unit for their “protection” from harm that fellow inmates may want to inflict on
When you have a warden like Luther, willing to help inmates regardless of their criminal record or status, it gives hope that the prison can be called a correctional facility. If the system would have more people who are willing to help the inmates by providing them with available resources that will guide them to succeed, there should not be so many violations in the correctional institutions. On the other hand, when Warden Meko took over, he did not supply any resources or
They are also separated by crime severity, and special housing for inmates with mental illness, or violent offenders. What are the three basic arguments established in the 1800s that supported the separation of juvenile prisoners from adult prisoners? > Juveniles should be separated from criminal adults because penitentiaries were too hard on the youth. > Some feared juveniles being imprisoned with older criminals, would learn bad behavior and other teachings from them. This could have caused embitterment by the experience of confinement.
Mental Illness in Correctional Facilities: In 2012, there were an estimate 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in prisons and jails across the United States. There are 2.4 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories. The mental health inmates take up a pretty big statistic out of the 2.4 million incarcerated prisoners. Researching this issue has led all the way back to colonial America and the history from then until present day, also has led to the legal background for treating mentally ill inmates, and
This problem exists because there are not enough programs to help inmates be reformed and the little programs that are available they are implemented only after the inmate is released and not in the prison itself. This problem has been around since prisons were created and is a growing problem today. This problem needs to be addressed before it gets way out of control. There was a study offered by the Pew