Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
A major portion of an inmate's helplessness, deprivation, depression and self-loathing etc. arises due to physical and psychological victimization that he or she has to face. Physical victimization includes homicide, assault and rape. These arise due to poor staff supervision and keeping defenseless prisoners with the violent ones. On the other hand, psychological victimization involves verbal manipulation and harsh psychological attacks of personal nature.
The stronger inmates attempt to create their own subcultures that show their dominance, rule and assertion on all prisoners (Heilpern, 1998). To fulfill the maintenance of these subcultures, they resort to rape, riots or even homicide spreading mental illnesses like stress, phobias, enhanced criminal activity, shame, guilt, etc. among the weaker prisoners.
Imprisonment: Eliminating or aggravating crime?
It is not a hidden matter that jails, even after intensive care and security, are not free of brutality, stress and violence among the inmates. The safety of each and every inmate is threatened as well as the prisoner himself is a threat to other's safety. Record of prisons show that constant fear and stress hardly cure the offenders. More than 2.2 million Americans are imprisoned at this time; this population remains dynamic and the number of people released is quite near to the number of people who go back (Gudrais, 2013). The released persons, although apparently lucky, have to face the world from where they were rejected before with an even more smudged past. Unfortunately, more than two thirds of the people released are arrested again. This ratio raises a very significant question on the status of prisons as remedial facilities for offenders of the society (Gudrais, 2013).
Lack of social support and rehabilitative services to the prisoners carry a heavy cost to the offender. Locking up people and being ignorant towards their basic human needs is not humane as well; this strategy does not work anymore. Crime itself is stimulated by poverty, addiction and family violence and providing the same conditions in prison is not a punishment. It is actually a recap and reinforcement of what...
They are in actuality correctional facilities doing a noble job for everyone in the world. Instead, now prisoners go to jail and return even more psychologically disturbed and contorted. Social security institutions have to develop methods and living conditions in jails and prisons that provide a reformatory environment to the prisoner; he should be able to recognize his crime as a 'crime and wrong-doing.' Once out of jail, the formerly incarcerated person should ideally be able to live a productive life without being a public safety threat.
Psychologists and psychiatrists play a significant role as well as people who have had spent some part of their life in prison are now functional citizens. Inspiration of seeing a similar person living a wholesome life can be the very best incentive. Psychologists, on the other hand, are able to understand and manipulate the mental situation and turmoil experienced by the prisoners and recommend programs that will suit best to an inmate for his mental and social remedy. A person in prison has to be helped in dealing with the reality that he is facing in a way that he grows out of it as a better and improved individual at the very least.
References
Cragg, W. (2002). The practice of punishment: Towards a theory of restorative justice. Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2008). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison.
Gendreau, P., Cullen, F.T., & Goggin, C. (1999). The effects of prison sentences on recidivism. Ottawa: Solicitor General Canada.
Gudrais, E. (2013, March). The Prison Problem. Harvard Magazine. <http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/03/the-prison-problem>
Initiated in october 2000 by around 800 detainees, leftwingers and political activists (Carrol, 2001), who were later followed by members of their families as well as human rights militants, the hunger strike changed into a huge protest movement. This was brutally supressed by the police and the miltary in December, when the operation "Back to Life" was launched. This operation was met with resistance from the prisoners and had
Violence in Public Schools The recent violence on school grounds (including elementary, middle school and high school violence) has created a climate of fear in American public schools, and the literature presented in this review relates to that fear and to the difficulty schools face in determining what students might be capable of mass killings on campus. Television coverage of school shootings leave the impression that there is more violence on
Prison Life and Recidivism Generally, recidivism in the justice system context entails the tendency amongst former prisoners or criminals to go back to their criminal lives mainly upon release from prison. In this case, recidivism rates are measured by having a look at the number of former prisoners re-incarcerated within a given time period. It can be noted that in basic terms, high recidivism rates are in most cases associated with
Prisons An analysis of the purposes for prisons in the U.S. justice system. The corrections system in America has historically fluctuated between being dedicated to incapacitation, rehabilitation, and to being punitive in nature. They can serve all three of these functions at the same time. Current trends in criminal justice remain focused on punitive justice that fosters prison environments lacking rehabilitative services, but recent scholarship and public policy have indicated a slight
Prison Industrial Complex as Another Form of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing US sentencing policies are still lean which has led to the federal government to incarcerate so many people. There are too many criminals committing too many crimes, and this explains why we have too many prisoners. Currently, the government's prison is holding 200,000-armed robbers, 150,000 sex offenders and 100 murderers (Davis, 2008). These people are enough to make fill a city.
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