Research Paper on "American Correctional System"

Research Paper 10 pages (3176 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Prison Reform

The United States has many reasons to be proud, its prison system is not one of them. America has fewer than 5% of the world's population, but nearly 25% of the world's prisoners (Liptak, 2008.) the U.S. has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. Russia is the only other major industrialized nation that even comes close, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have significantly lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63 (ibid). These American incarcerated help make up an enormous prison population, which has increased from 300,000 to two million in 30 years, a rate that dwarfs those of China and Iran. In fact, the U.S. leads all countries in prisoner production, the result of an entirely unique approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for myriad crimes, for anything from white collar thievery to selling small amounts of marijuana, which would rarely lead to any prison sentences in other world nations. In addition, they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Worse, the American prison system is being compared by some to the new Jim Crow (Alexander, 2010). More African-Americans are either incarcerated or on parole than were actually slaves in 1850. As of 2004, more black men were disenfranchised due to their felon status than in 1870. Skip to next paragraph. Alex Durham (1994) gets right to the point by asking: "Why should we expect the correctional system to be able to accomplish so much when so many other social institutions have failed? When family, school, and churches are unable to inculcate law-abiding behavior, why should we be surprised if the correctional also system fails?" Is Durham correct? Does the U.S. want to change its prison Guinness Book of Records status and, if so, could it actually improve its failing system? Robert Johnson (xxxx), offers several suggestions on how a prison system can be changed for the betterment of the prisoner, victims and society in general. He calls on the goodwill of citizenry to place an emphasis on implementing such programs, yet American history does not bode well for their response.

Before addressing changes to the penal system, it is imperative to determine how the U.S. reached this point in the first place. For a country that was supposedly founded on freedom and liberty, it has taken a number of steps backward along this line. In the 1960s, the prisons were losing populations, and most citizens saw drug addiction as a public health problem, not one for the criminal courts (Schlosser, 1998). The prisons, themselves, were mostly viewed as a brutal and useless means of controlling criminal behavior. The Federal Bureau of Prisons was expecting to shut down large penitentiaries in several states, and the number of California inmates had fallen by over a quarter from 1963 to 1972, despite the state's quickly growing population. The number of New York state prisoners had declined to its lowest since at least 1950.

In January, 1973 Senator Barry Goldwater relied on the much-used fear of crime to entice white middle-class voters. That same month, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller gave a State of the State address demanding all illegal-drug dealers, even juvenile offenders, be punished with a mandatory prison sentence of life without parole and that plea-bargaining should not be allowed. By proposing the strictest drug laws in the country's history, he assumed the lead on a problem that would soon become a major priority on the nation's political agenda. The Rockefeller drug laws, legislated just a few months later by the state government, were not exactly what were earlier proposed: the penalty for possessing four ounces of an illegal drug or selling two ounces was a mandatory prison term of 15 years to life. The enactment also included a provision establishing a mandatory prison sentence for numerous second felony convictions, despite the crime or its circumstances. The governor proudly stated that New York had passsed "the toughest anti-drug program in the country" (Schlosser, 1998). Additional states joined the bandwagon and legislated harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Even Democrat, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, led the push to renew the U.S. compulsory minimums that were incorporated in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The strategy worked: 19 months after his drug laws were on the books Rockefeller became Vice President of the United States.

By the mid-1990s, 1.75 million people were incarcerated in prison or jail throughout the U.S. According to the Oxford History of Prisons (Morris & Rothman, 1998), these prisons now range from high-security double-barred steel cages with high-walled, electronically patrolled surroundings to rooms in unlocked buildings and unfenced fields. They run the gambit from psychological pain from windowless rooms of close-confined and sensory-deprived 23-hour isolation to work camps with no adversity. They include so-called "open prisons," which look just like farms and inmates who spend the entire day working with no supervision in the community, "weekend prisons," "day prisons," "co-educational prisons." Some prisons have tennis courts, while others only have one hour of pacing in an outdoor cage three times a week, some look just like workers' hostels, and others are excessively crowded. Mostly, however, there are prisons in larger cities where violence and brutality are the norm and consist of a deadening routine. Every day it is the same boring schedule, unless a lockdown occurs. Then the prisoners remain in their cells 24 hours a day with one weekly shower.

The price of these prisons is exorbitant. The operating costs for the U.S. state and federal prisons and jails climbed from $49 billion in 1999 to $57 billion in 2001, at the same time as the population rose from 2.6 to 3.6% every year. Between 1984 and 1994, New York state increased its corrections spending by $761 million, at the same time as spending on state colleges and universities fell by $615 million. In 1995, all of the American states combined spent more on prison than colleges. This is a trend that is accelerating (Soering, 2004).

Since 1969, federal court interventions have impacted a wide range of areas of prison operations, such as staffing, medical and mental health care, food, hygiene, sanitation, disciplinary procedures, segregation conditions, fire safety, inmate classification, grievance policies, race, sex and religious discrimination and accommodations, and disability discrimination and accommodations (Schlanger, 2006). In 1995, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was passed with the strong backing of the state attorneys general who wanted better control over the institutions (Wharton, 1996). No longer did the federal court supervision have power over several state correctional systems and further court intervention became increasingly difficult (Schlanger, 2006), which led to greater possibility of negatively impacting prison conditions. Sullivan (2000), for instance, reports that the Tennessee prisons have increasingly deteriorated after they no longer fell under federal court supervision, including the decrease in the correctional staff and increase in the amount of violations of regulations governing mental health, fire and occupational safety, and hazardous materials. In February 2009, federal judges found prison conditions in California so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides and lock of proper care (Thompson, 2009). Katz, Levitt, and Shustorovich (2003) have used the number of deaths as a comparison for prison conditions. The prison mortality rate is computed as prison deaths per 1,000 state prisoners, which due to data limitations, is not adjusted for the prisoners' age, gender, or race.

Given the situation in the prisons, is there any hope to reform of the inmates? The results are mixed on the answer to this complicated question. Tonry does not see this present penal system changing in the foreseeable future. The prison will remain the primary punishment result for serious crimes, since "symbolically appropriate responses are needed" (p. 4). He believes that there are "good reasons to doubt that changes in the severity of punishment have any significant deterrent effects on behavior, no one doubts that having a punishment system, compared with not having one, does have crime-preventive effects." However, Tonry adds, a prison does not have to be a "walled institution where adult criminals in large numbers are held for protracted periods, with economically meaningless or insufficient employment, with vocational or educational training for a few, with rare contacts with the outside world, in cellular conditions varying from the decent to those which a zoo would not tolerate" (Morris 1965, p. 268).

Lin (2000) explains that although sentences continue to get longer and the situation in the prisons get worse, most of the prisoners do eventually return to society. Most recently, crime policies both at the state and federal levels have focused on incarceration with longer sentences, "mandatory minimum sentencing," the reduction of time off for good behavior, and the abolition of parole. These policies are expected to lower the crime rate by keeping possible recidivists off the streets and deter prisoners from reoffending. How much these policies succeed at achieving their goals is greatly debated. Even if they… READ MORE

How to Reference "American Correctional System" Research Paper in a Bibliography

Related Research Papers:

U.S. Correction System Essay

U.S. CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM

U.S correctional system

The society and the public have the expectation that the role of the criminal justice system in any place is to punish and rehabilitate… read more

Essay 3 pages (1014 words) Sources: 3 Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

Role of the Correctional System in Punishing and Rehabilitating Offenders Essay

Correctional system plays a critical role in punishing, rehabilitating, and protecting the population of criminals. The correctional system was adopted in the criminal justice system in attempts to rehabilitate criminals… read more

Essay 3 pages (926 words) Sources: 3 Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

American Correctional Facility Term Paper

Correctional Facility

Appellate Rulings Effects on American Correctional Institutions

There are many historical correctional institutions located across the U.S. Perhaps one of the most well-known is Alcatraz. However there are… read more

Term Paper 2 pages (650 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

American Government and Politics Today Essay

American Government and Politics Today

Charles Beard's argument

Charles Beard argued that the constitution was written by the rich and in their favor to protect their wealth and property. The… read more

Essay 4 pages (1326 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

Selection Hiring Process Within the Criminal Justice System Research Paper

Hiring Process Within the Criminal Justice System

Hiring Process Within the Criminal Justice System

Selection/Hiring process within the Criminal Justice System

Police

Summary of Progress of a Criminal Case through… read more

Research Paper 4 pages (1187 words) Sources: 4 Topic: Law / Legal / Jurisprudence

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>