Better Prison Systems and Protection for Inmates That Cooperate - Research Paper Example

?On Better Prison Systems and Protection for Inmates that Coooperate Introduction It cannot be argued that every society must have a set of laws. These laws are important in guiding the behavior of that society’s citizens, so that they will be able to coexist in an orderly and harmonious fashion. Given how important order and harmony are in the survival of any community, it stands to reason that the state should look after and discipline its citizens as necessary, up to and including chastising and punishing them as necessary for any unwanted and/or undesirable behavior (such as crimes) in order to recondition them. This usually means imprisonment. The United States is obviously no exemption to this. In fact, as a report by the United States Bureau of Justice (2011) attests, 2009 alone had a whopping 7.2 million people either on probation, in jail, or out on parole by the year’s end. Such a number is definitely a staggering one, and a cause for concern, though it should be noted that the US really does have a vast population residing there. The policies of each individual state may also play a part in this. Some of America’s 50 states have stricter laws than others, a prime example being the draconian Rockefeller drug laws enforced in New York, which, for example, mandate long prison terms of an average of 10 years for a certain amount of drugs found on one’s person. The existence of these laws only serves to drive home the point that laws are crucial to a country’s continued survival and development. The need for a country to watch over its citizens as necessary should be self-explanatory, and it cannot be denied that erring citizens need to be punished. But at the same time, the nature of prison as a rehabilitative measure should also be considered; after all, it would be hard to rehabilitate someone if that person is routinely subjected to the culture of violence and barbarism that pervades within prisons. For instance, some inmates receive beatings, whether from fellow inmates or from guards, or worse, end up on the receiving end of prison rape. This phenomenon could possibility contribute to the likelihood of the inmate seeking somehow to restore his honor by subjugating others – and, consequently, ending up back in prison, which in the long run will be an unnecessary expenditure on the part of the state. Taking this into account, it should be abundantly clear that the United States prison system is in need of reform. Prisons are meant as a tool for rehabilitation, not oppression and subjugation on the part of the state. Beatings in particular are not a good way of getting an inmate to change for the better, nor can it be fair by any stretch of the imagination that a good majority of today’s inmates belong to the minority in terms of ethnicity. By enacting the necessary reforms, the US Government could save a lot of money each year. Epic Failure: The American Criminal Justice System Mauer (2006) has noted how the United States has become the land of mass incarceration, citing a case in which someone who had no prior criminal record ended up receiving 55 years in prison over three separate drug charges. The article also quotes Judge Paul Cassell, one of America’s leading conservative jurists, who decries such mandatory sentencing laws as not only unjust and cruel, but also irrational. That racial minorities such as African-Americans and Latinos comprise the bulk of the prison population does little to help the situation, and in fact exacerbates it even more by all but guaranteeing that at least a third of these minorities’ respective populations are likely to go to prison some time in their lives. The massive incarceration rate in the United States is further attributed to radical policy shifts throughout the years, brought on by a ‘get tough, zero tolerance’ approach to crime. Said approach involves the optimization of laws toward sending more people to prison, and for longer periods of time, in the process resulting in a prison construction and corrections budget amounting to $60 million. Judicial discretion is restricted; in other words, while judges may have more compassionate sentences in mind for a particular offender, the all-too-harsh mandatory sentencing laws set in place prevent them from letting true justice and compassion carry the day. The state of New York in particular is an egregious offender, owing to the existence of such laws as the Rockefeller Drug Laws (Drug Policy Alliance Network, 2011) and the Second Felony Offender Law (Real Reform New York, 2011). The former mandates 15-25 years for mere possession of drugs – the same punishment meted out for murder – while the latter requires that harsher penalties are given to those who commit the same crime the second time around. This means that drug dealers can get jailed for up to 25 years, assuming that it is their first time – and for an even longer prison term otherwise. Coupled with the fact that most drug dealers happen to be poor and/or part of an ethnical minority, the combination of these two laws is highly unpleasant, to say the least. The racial inequality in America’s criminal justice system is undeniable, and furthermore, serves as undeniable proof of the flaws and shortcomings inherent in the systems. Thernstrom and Thernstrom (2011) report how African-Americans and Hispanics account for a whopping 77% of death row inmates, while Ayers and Waldfogel (n.d.) go on to note that African-Americans tend to be forced to pay more money than other criminals when it comes to posting bail. Pettit and Western (2004) have noted how America’s prison population is especially large; thanks to unjust legislation, a sizable chunk of this population is made up of racial minorities. Such stilted statistics tend to have detrimental consequences to the community at large. For instance, Coker (2003) reports how such an upsurge in the penal population has had especially pronounced consequences among those families and communities who happen to be ill-suited to such a development. Children are forced to grow up with the absence of one or both parents, and in most cases, mothers are made to raise their kids on their own. Bobo and Thompson (2006) have already attested to how African-Americans tend to experience the most adverse consequences resulting from such scenarios. The preceding paragraphs should help explain just how flawed America’s justice system is, and could also serve as an explanation as to the consistently high crime rates in spite of the equally astronomical incarceration rates. That the existing laws send people to jail for the smallest things, and tend to victimize a select group of people in particular, is already bad enough on its own; worse still, the typical American penitentiary system and the abuses taking place there can hardly be called a conducive environment for rehabilitation and reform. The fact of the matter is that while it is important to address the extremely unjust and discriminative laws and policies that put people in jail for disproportionately long periods of time, it is just as important to examine the environments which they are placed in and exposed to. Gibbons and Katzenbach (2006) say it best in noting that what happens within jails in prisons does not necessarily stay there. That is, a prisoner’s experiences while doing time in the slammer will stay with him for life, and are things he will always remember even long after being set free. The last part is to be expected, and is in fact the outcome of 95% of all cases. While there are those prisoners whose crimes of course merit life sentencing or capital punishment, the rest of them will eventually return and reintegrate into society. And from a practical standpoint, considering how the American government already devotes at least $60 billion dollars on corrections, they may as well ensure that the correctional system is operating properly. The article goes on to reiterate and stress the fact that prisons and other such correctional facilities are, in fact, an integral part of the justice system. Criminals and offenders are placed in such facilities in order not only for them to repay their debt to society, but also rehabilitate them in such a way that they will be able to make restitution for their crimes. Taking away their freedom and liberty for a variable period of time as punishment for an offense is part of this; however, violence such as prison rape, beatings and other such grim realities are not. A prisoner is just as likely to experience abuse at the hands of an officer as he is at those of a fellow inmate, and the first case is arguably worse as these officers are supposed to be responsible for ensuring the welfare of the felons placed under their care. But the truth is that regardless of who an inmate’s tormentors are in a given situation, the violence such as he is being forced into is hardly conducive to the goal of rehabilitation. Particularly sad is that such abuse tends to go unpunished. Indeed, as reported by Harding (2004) in the UK-based publication, The Guardian, the prison guards themselves get in on the act, secure in the assumption that their superiors will either turn a blind eye, or worse, openly condone their abuse of inmates. The most egregious case of this happening can be seen in the now-infamous instances of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, in which even then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield was implicated (VandeHei and Ricks, 2004). There were undeniably a lot of things that happened in the aforementioned detention facility, but all instances involved supposedly fine and upstanding United States troops subjecting Iraqi prisoners of war to unparalleled humiliation and degradation comparable to what the Jews were put through in the Nazi concentration camps. As noted on the official website of Human Rights Watch (2004), the occurrences at Abu Ghraib are sadly the norm in the American prison system. Not only do prison staff members feel emboldened and audacious enough to subject inmates to malicious and sadistic abuse, their higher-ups apparently even encourage such behavior, even laughing in the faces of inmates who request protection from abuse at the hands of prison staff and fellow inmates. Especially tragic is that those working at prisons are often described as being otherwise decent professionals, but that it is the unrestricted and unfettered atmosphere pervading in prisons that allows such abuse to occur. Nor does it help that the higher-ups fail to emphasize the fact that prisoner abuse is a non-tolerable offense. After receiving such abuse, one can at least understand why these prisoners still have lingering issues even after they get out of jail. Nor should it be surprising that some of these prisoners walk out with a major, major chip on their shoulders, and so take it out on innocent bystanders – a sad occurrence, though not entirely surprising. Until America fixes up its penitentiary system, things like this are bound to happen over and over again. Conclusion, Counterarguments and Rebuttals Doubtlessly, there will be those who scoff at the idea of prison reforms. For one thing, as mentioned above, the federal government already spends a whopping $60 million on its correctional system alone; surely any further reforms would be overkill. That prisoners end up enduring abuse in jail, they say, is surely something they deserve – after all, they did commit crimes against society. One might think that, if anything, the high conviction rates are proof of the justice system’s effectiveness and efficiency. However, such reasoning fails on so many levels. First of all, it is precisely because the government spends that much on corrections that reforms are in order. As also stated above, a good chunk of the criminals being convicted yearly have most likely already gone to jail before, whether or not on similar charges. Recidivism is clear proof that the government is doing something wrong, and is, quite clearly, avoidable. Similarly, those who argue that inmates deserve to be abused also lack proper perspective. The mere fact that these inmates are in jail at all already shows that they are being punished, and is justice at work; adding abuse to the equation would be tantamount to crossing the line separating justice from vengeance. One can hardly expect these prisoners to see the error of their ways if all they experience is unnecessary, unwarranted and unjust violence at the hands of (in their eyes) the government. This becomes even clearer when the laws that put them in prison in the first place themselves constitute a violation of justice – that majority of all convicted felons belong to minority races is clearly a statistical anomaly, and blatant proof of the racial discrimination inherent in these laws. Thus, no matter how one looks at the situation, the need to reform America’s criminal justice system is painfully obvious, to say nothing of the penitentiaries whose climate of abuse and violence makes the stated goal of rehabilitating offenders to society ring hollow. Unjust laws need to be overhauled, and the violence and abuse all too common in prison has got to stop. Otherwise, America could well become the most triumphant example of what can best be described as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. References Ayers, I. and Waldfogel, J. (n.d.) A market test for race discrimination in bail setting. Stanford Law Review, 46, 987. Bobo, L. D. and Thompson, V. (2006). Unfair by design: The war on drugs, race, and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Social Research, 73, 445-472. Coker, D. (2003). Foreword: Addressing the real world of racial Injustice in the criminal justice system. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. 93, 827-879. Gibbons, J. J. and Katzenbach, N. B. (2006) Confronting confinement: A report of the Commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons. Vera Institute of Justice: Commission on Safety and Abuse. Harding, L. (2004). Focus shifts to jail abuse of women. London: The Guardian. Retrieved on April 30, 2011 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/12/iraq.usa. Mauer, M. (2006). America has become incarceration Nation. AlterNet.org. Retrieved on April 30, 2011 from http://www.alternet.org/rights/45647/ Pettit, B. and Western, B. (2004). Mass imprisonment and the life course: Race and class inequality in U.S. incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69, 151-169. Prisoner abuse: How different are US prisons? (2004). Human Rights Watch. Retrieved April 30, 2011 from http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2004/05/13/prisoner-abuse-how-different-are-us-prisons Rockefeller Drug Laws: Q & A (2011). Drug Policy Alliance Network. Retrieved April 30, 2011 from http://www.drugpolicy.org/statebystate/newyork/rockefellerd/ Thernstrom, S. and Thernstrom, A. (2011) America in black and white: One nation indivisible. Simon & Schuster. Total correctional population (2011). Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Retrieved April 30, 2011 from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11 VandeHei, J. and Ricks, T. E. (2004). Lott joins Republican critics of Rumsfeld. Washington Post. Retrieved April 30, 2011 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4794-2004Dec16.html. What are the Rockefeller Drug Laws? (2011) Real Reform New York. Retrieved April 30, 2011 from http://www.realreformny.org/about.html Read More