Prison Inmates Jail or Imprisonment

Prison Inmates

Jail or imprisonment is the most common way of penalizing a person if he/she had committed a crime. Prisoners serve a certain number of day, months or years inside the prison, depending on the intensity of the crimes that they had committed. Prisoners are therefore believed to be paying their "dues" to the country by spending a not-so-comfortable life inside the prison cells. But there are some issues that are continuously arising regarding the miserable life of the most prisoners. Included in these issues is the continuously rising number of rape cases, inside the prison cells and prison over crowding, to name a few.

These problems cause turmoil in the society. Many are now asking whether the lives of the prison inmates can be used as a reflection of the society as a whole. What is the impact of these issues to today's society? More over, what has been the role of the correction officers to address the issues? Do people still believe in the efficacy and credibility of the justice system? And more on a personal approach, do these prisoners have to be punished more times than what the supposed to be verdict said?

TB is a major cause of death in prisons, mainly as a result of overcrowding, poor physical conditions, and lack of adequate treatment..." (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2001)

During the past decade, court-ordered diversion and treatment procedures have proliferated in response to the problems of court congestion and prison overcrowding..." (Maxwell, 2000).

The statements above came just from two of the many published journals showing that there has been an imminent problem on prison overcrowding over the past years. This prison overcrowding could be attributed to a number of factors, including failure to find and use effective alternatives to prison, under-funding of prison building programs, bureaucratic inefficiencies in moving prisoners between facilities, and loss of existing capacity due to age and deterioration (Prison Overcrowding, 2005).

There are various effects that prison overcrowding can give to the society. First are its effects on the inmates itself. Because of overcrowded jails, there are fewer opportunities for rehabilitative work due to a lack of supervision. in-jailed people ended up to be confined to their cells for much longer time, causing greater tensions between prisoners and/or with prison staff (Prison Overcrowding, 2005). In addition, a Prison Service research showed incidence of prisoners' suicide has also increased. In fact 10 of the 20 establishments with the highest incidence of suicide are also in the top 20 for turnover of population (Prison Overcrowding, 2005).

The judicial system is also affected by this problem on prison overcrowding.

A the sentences of the courts are often severe, but in practice most of these sentences are not carried out: lenient rules, adopted to control prison overcrowding, mean that many prison sentences are converted to fines, and those who are sent to prison are usually released early..." (Maxwell, 2000)

The statement above shows how judges or police officials now deal prison-overcrowding problems. They tend to give lenient rules... frequency of criminal fines or bails have increased just to adding more people to be in-jailed. So what will happen if this practice continues? A lot of criminals and law evaders will feel it easier to commit a crime because they can easily get away with it. Just giving some amount of dollars will enable them to free from imprisonment anyway. The end result of this in crime rate increase, and again majority of the populace will then be affected.

Other negative effects are (Canadian Criminal Justice Association):

Prison overcrowding impairs the release planning and reintegration efforts of offenders and contributes to recidivism.

Overcrowded prisons soak up vast quantities of resources (human and financial) to "warehouse" inmates, with negative rather than positive impacts.

Prison overcrowding diverts resources from treatment and programs for those who might benefit from them.

Prison overcrowding contributes to programming backlogs that, in turn, delay the timely release of offenders.

Prison overcrowding cripples the ability of the system to deliver programs and treatment in a timely and appropriate manner.

Overcrowding in prison leads to double-bunking which is inhumane and infringes upon the basic human dignity of staff, inmates, and volunteers

Meanwhile, data concerning rape with the prison inmates is also appalling. In the United States alone, sexual attacks in prison are considered rape when penetration occurs. It is estimated that inmates are approached with unwanted sexual advances over 80,000 times per day (Anderson, 2001). Other more shocking statistics are (Anderson, 2001):

There is an estimated 300,000++ instances of prison rape a year.

Among this, 196,000 are estimated to happen to men in prison while 123,000 are estimated to happen to men in county jail.

40,000 are estimated to be committed against boys in either adult prisons or while in juvenile facilities or lock ups.

5000 women are estimated to be raped in prison.

The above statistics were all estimated because it is a common knowledge that most rape, particularly that which happened inside the prison cells, are not reported. The same study (made by Anderson) also revealed that the common attributes of the rape victims are (Anderson, 2001):

Those who are young.

Those who happen to come from a middle-class background.

The whites.

Those who are not street-smart or have no gang affiliations.

Those who are physically of small stature.

From the information above, it can be assumed that the common denominator for all those is that of being a "weakling." Those "criminals" could easily force youngsters, rich people, small-built individuals and looking so naive people to do and/or accept anything that they would want them to do hence, the rape.

Meanwhile, a certain newspaper revealed other sordid details of rapes cases that has occurred in prisons. These are (Harper, 2005):

Much of the sex that takes place in prison happens along gender lines.

Depending on a person's role in the sex act, participants are identified in prison culture as men or women.

Most of the sex was highly coercive and considered as a blatant rape.

According to prison culture, anyone who had been "sexually penetrated in a power-defined interaction," was considered a woman, and it was then their job to provide men with sex.

'marriage' begins with the act of rape (penetration), and the 'wife' is then the constant target of humiliation.

Some warders take part in 'trade', because, as bad as it may sound, there is no clear policy regarding sexual assault. The situation was aggravated by warder involvement. Warders take part in the "trade" of prisoners for coercive sex and rape.