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Catalysts for Prison Violence
There are many catalysts that are reported as being typically identified as problems inherent in American prisons. Many feel these problems are the catalysts of any and all violence found in American prisons. Without considering and acting on these problem areas, there can be no realistic hope of lessening the amount of prison violence, or the potential of its occurring. These problems include crowding, antiquated architecture, budgeting, poor facility management, mandatory sentencing, antiquated inmate classification, poor security, inherent inmate friction, absence of proper training, and low pay (Levinson, 2002).
In prison sociology two well-established, but contrasting perspectives are the deprivation model and the importation model. The deprivation model holds that the prison environment and loss of freedom cause deep psychological trauma so that for reasons of psychological self-preservation prisoners create a deviant prison subculture that promotes violence. The importation model emphasizes what prisoners bring into the institution, their histories, personal attributes and social networks, including links to criminal, groups (Homel & Thomson...
How a prison is organized in time and space, how individuals interact with and help shape a dynamic environment, and the role of specific situational factors in precipitating or regulating violence. Factors found to be related to violence in clued pre-existing prisoner characteristics, structural or situational factors, management practices, and outside environmental influences. Poor prison management resulting in dysfunctional forms of control emerges as a major cause of interpersonal violence, and by implication modification of these practices (especially the removal of arbitrary coercive controls) is effective in reducing violence (Homel & Thomson 2005).
Today the United States has over 2 million people in prison, more than any other country in the world. This translates to 715 prisoners for every 100,000 persons. Of these about 50% of the inmates in federal prison are there for crimes related to drugs and around 20% of inmates nationwide in state prisons are there for drug related offenses (Behrens, 2010). Many feel this…
References
Behrens, S. (2010, May 17) How many people are incarcerated for drug related offenses? Open salon. Retrieved March 30, 2012, from http://open.salon.com/blog/stephannie/2010/05/16/how_many_people_are_incarcerated_for_drug_related_offenses
Homel, R. & Thomson, C. (2005). Causes and prevention of violence in prisons. In Sean O'Toole & Simon Eyland (Eds.), Corrections criminology (pp. 101-108). Sydney: Hawkins Press
Levinson, D. (Ed.) (2002). Encyclopedia of crime and punishment, Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Schlosser, E. (1998, December). The prison industrial complex. Atlantic monthly. 51-77. Retrieved March 30, 2012, from http://core.ecu.edu/soci/juskaa/SOCI2110/Prison_Industrial_Complex.htm
Violence Legitimate Force and Illegitimate Violence The people today are living in a new-fangled, unmatched and exceptional age of terrorism. The pioneer of modern sociology, Max Weber, defined state as "a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory" (as qtd. In Whitehead 2007). He puts emphasis on the point that a state can only exist in a meaningful manner if it
Classification in Prison Classification Systems Classification systems aid in the minimization of the upheaval of prison violence, institutional delinquency, and break out situations. During the past several years, professionals in prisons and those that are employed in correctional systems have worked unremittingly in order for them to improvise their recent approaches in the classification of offenders i.e. In accordance with work, supervision, and programming needs. The process of classification takes place in
Prison Overcrowding Arguably the most pressing issue facing the field of corrections today is the problem of prison overcrowding. Overcrowding negatively impacts nearly every aspect of running a corrections facility, and even exacerbates problems when inmates are eventually released (Specter, 2010). Overcrowded prisons increase the likelihood of violence against both inmates and corrections officers, and there is evidence tying overcrowding to higher rates of suicide and homicide (Davies, 2004, & Camp,
Letter from the Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr., and "A Letter from the Clergy" by some leading spiritual clergy in Birmingham, Alabama. Specifically, it will summarize the two letters. Both of these letters provide compelling reasons for what the authors believe in, and they are both very persuasive and convincing in their own way. The clergymen believe that King's actions, in creating a march that led to many
During this penultimate period of violence under Rojas, the violence that wracked Colombia assumed a number of different characteristics that included an economic quality as well as a political one with numerous assassinations taking place. These were literally contract killings there were sponsored by opposition forms. There were also horrendous genocidal acts that were carried out by gangs combined with authentic revolutionary fighting in some regions of the country. The fourth
Other determining factors influencing long-term affects of abuse to a child include: Whether the child's mother is supportive and child can confide in her. Whether the child's experiences success at school Whether the child has nurturing relationships with peers. (Ibid.) Childhood intimacy problems and sexual abuse, interacting with family background, contribute the child's developing self-esteem and sense or "world" mastery being disrupted. These deficits, in turn, increase the probability of a child experiencing