Prisons in the United States - Essay Example

Prison Inmates Prisons in the United s suffer from serious problems associated with over-crowding,poor sanitation, violence, drugs and sexual assault. It has been argued by many over many years that imprisonment is expensive and ineffective, yet it continues to be a major feature of penal policy in the justice system. Arguments against imprisonment include the idea that prison is not being used as a last resort to deter criminal behavior, housing prisoners is expensive, imprisonment doesn’t deter crime and it is cruel and inhumane. Despite statistics that confirm these contentions, imprisonment has experienced a growing attraction as a political response to crime. An increased prison population and its inherent human and financial costs have little effect on the attitudes of some. Despite the obvious and extensive failures of our penitentiary system, more people are being sent to prison for more reasons primarily as a result of tougher sentencing laws specifically involving the ‘war on drugs.’ Over the past quarter century, the U.S. has added to its prison population and therefore to its social problems. The U.S. incarcerates more of its population than any other industrialized country. Currently, more than two million prisoners are jailed in local, state or federal facilities. Not only the number of prisoners is increasing, the ratio of prisoner to population is widening as well. About a decade ago, for every 100,000 citizens, 703 were in prison. That number exceeds 715 today. When categorized according to ethnicity, a wide disparity of justice is apparent. “At midyear 2003 there were 4,834 black male prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States in prison or jail, compared to 1,778 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 681 white male inmates per 100,000 white males” (“Prison Statistics” 2006). Those incarcerated for drug charges constitute more than 60 percent of inmates in Federal prisons and 15 percent of the growth in total prison populations. Violent offenders including those charged with murder, rape, assault and robbery constitute the remaining approximate 40 percent (“Prison Statistics” 2006). Anyone who has seen a prison movie likely has witnessed the stereotypical ‘shower scene’ where gang members viciously attack a lone inmate. They put a knife tightly against the victim’s throat and threaten to kill him if he puts up a fight. The lone inmate is then repeatedly raped by the gang and afterwards is too frightened to notify prison officials fearing retribution. This Hollywood recreation is not unlike the actual events taking place inside prison walls. Being brutally raped in prison is not simply a physical violation; it is an emotionally scarring event. According to the Human Rights Watch, this and other forms of gang-related violence occur regularly in prisons across the country. “Gang assaults are not uncommon, and victims may be left beaten, bloody and, in the most extreme cases, dead” (“No Escape”). However, violent and blatant rapes are but one type of sexual abuse many prisoners must endure. The most prevalent form of rape does not occur by means of violence nor have many of the victims been overtly threatened. Nevertheless, they engage in sex acts unwillingly because they do not believe they have a choice. Prison is an intimidating place. Prisoners, especially those new to the system can be easily coerced into doing things such as allowing themselves to be raped or committing violent acts against others out of fear. This type of prison rape is easier to conceal than violent attacks and much easier for prison staff and the general public to ignore. “For some prisoners, the atmosphere of fear and intimidation is so overwhelming that they acquiesce in their sexual exploitation without putting up any obvious resistance” (“No Escape”). The intimidation begins early and forcefully. According to the account of a first-time offender arriving in prison, “as soon as I walked on the wing, the catcalls started.” According to another prisoner, “Most of prison is a mind game. People get taken advantage of when they’re green and don’t know what to expect” (“No Escape”). Fellow inmates are frightening enough but another group, the guards, has absolute power over prisoners and some have been known to abuse this power by abusing inmates. Guards use brutal techniques such as cell extractions in response to relatively minor rules violations. This procedure is well known because of its expose on television shows but, as in all aspects of prisons, the general public is unaware of the full extent of this tactic. It, as well as other real-life prison realities, is purposely kept hidden from outside view. During an extraction, “a team of six to eight guards in combat gear-with face visors and riot shields often shoots and wounds the prisoner with a pellet gun and then with a taser stun-gun before opening the cell door. Once the door is open, the guards rush inside, beat the prisoner, and fully restrain him with chains. Once restrained, the inmate is often beaten again, and then left hog-tied for hours in the corridor or a cell” (Weinstein & Cummins, 1996). Guards also frequently verbally harass inmates. Though not physical, this is another type of abuse. Some guards frequently insult and threaten prisoners as well as denying effortless requests. Racial epithets are commonly directed toward the largely minority prisoner population. “Faced with constant harassment, sensory deprivation, and isolation, some prisoners become enraged and aggressive. Others retreat into themselves, choose to sleep most of the day, refuse exercise, stop writing to family and friends, and turn on their lights only to get food or medication. Some enter a private world of madness, scream incessantly in their cells, and even cover themselves with their own feces” (Weinstein & Cummins, 1996). Women inmates are especially susceptible to sexual abuse by male and female guards. Prison is described by its detractors as inhumane, a brutalizing and damaging experience. The prevalent imprisonment trend invokes a high human cost to those who caused no harm to another individual or property. The war on drugs is policy based on morals, not on public health, and is taking a grave toll on the economics and civil liberties of our society. “The U.S. government is spending an enormous amount of money to wage this war – a figure that has exploded in the last two decades. In 1981, the federal drug control budget stood at $1.5 billion. By 1991, it was $11 billion. Today, it is $17 billion” (Sane, 1999). “In general, states that decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s reported savings in police and judicial resources” (Harrison, Backenheimer & Inciardi, 1995). Crime is on the rise overcrowding the prison system while inner cities are becoming unlivable decreasing chances for the economic revival in those areas, all as a consequence of a misguided war on drugs to prevent the misuse of drugs. These governmental drug programs have had very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims have had their lives ruined. “The harm which is being done by these programs is far greater than any conceivable good” (Friedman, 1991). “Most users of illegal drugs are not addicts, are employed, do not commit property crimes, and indeed are more likely to have crimes committed against them. Criminals gravitate toward the profits of dealing in drugs more often than drug use itself causes crime” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). Law enforcement has proved not to be an effective deterrence in drug use and have made the drug war less effective. The evidence shows that stricter enforcement laws have led to the use of even more potent and more dangerous drugs. Higher drug arrest rates have caused prison overcrowding and early releases of violent prisoners putting them back on the street which causes more problems and amplifies costs for the public both in personal terms and in judicial expenses. Drug dealers have resorted to juvenile street dealers, who face less severe sentences. “The escalation of enforcement increases property crime, violent crime, and corruption and does not reduce drug abuse and may increase it” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). Taxpayers, through high crime rates caused by the war on drugs and high tax rates used to support the war on drugs, continue to fund this fruitless endeavor. Drug dealers, who are willing to kill each other for profits obtained from such a lucrative market and junkies, who cannot envision a life without the drug and are willing to rob and kill for money to support their habit, would not feel compelled to resort to these measures if drugs were legal and cheap. “During prohibition liquor store owners murdered each other to protect their turf just as drug dealers do today. Today, liquor store owners are generally peaceful. Eliminating the enormous profits involved in black-market businesses eliminates the motive for violent crime, and therefore the violent crime itself” (Cundiff, 1994). There are substantial variations in public attitudes with better educated people expressing less punitive measures than those in blue-collar occupations. Public attitudes are occupied by idealistic contradictions but generally support effective prevention. However, fear produces a perceived need for punitive punishment. People tend to attach importance to a simple approach in which criminals are punished. The subject of crime and its subsequent punishments evoke strong emotional feelings. Some argue that prisons cost society less than crime itself so building more prisons is the way to prevent crime. The more criminals that are locked up, the reasoning goes, the less crime will be committed. Others are incensed, confused and frustrated that there is not a better way of dealing with offenders than to lock them away to be forgotten. When the idea was first introduced, much of the public found the idea of non-custodial sentences hard to grasp and a soft option to prison. The high economical cost of prison, the rising prison population and humanitarian concerns regarding prison does not generally lead people away from the idea of prison usage altogether, though. The larger concern of public security prompts people to demand that the government do what is necessary to provide that safety. Statistical arguments about the effectiveness of non-custodial sentences had much less influence than the values and underlying principles of those values such as restitution and social reintegration of offenders. People accept that some types of offenders require different, possibly non-custodial punishment requiring community service, curfews and tagging. Research has shown that prison population level and time served per prisoner both would have to rise sharply to have a significant effect on crime rates. It is an expensive proposition to lock them up and throw away the key. There are obvious associations between ideological beliefs and attitudes toward punishment. “Studies have shown that highly religious people and those with a strong belief in a just world, the belief that good things will happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people, held the most punitive attitudes to offenders” (Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, 2004, p. 27). Not surprisingly, conservative beliefs, measured by agreement with statements endorsing traditional social values, are linked with harsher punitive crime prevention measures and liberal political views with more lenient attitudes (Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, 2004, p. 27). Those who argue for prison reform often generate information regarding the costs of incarceration. They do this with the assumption that the public will be suitably shocked to find out what it costs thinking that they will change their views about the current prison system ideology. Some insist that the lesson may be that prisoners should be kept in more inexpensive conditions while still others believe that prison is a bargain compared to the costs of repeatedly arresting and processing. Society has made astonishing industrial and technical developments over the past century, but it has only made modest progress in regard to its answer to crime. “We have changed only the details like lengths of sentence or the amount of fines that offenders must pay but few people are questioning whether there might be a more effective manner of responding to crime” (Santos, 2001). A strong argument for increased prison sentences during the ‘tough on crime’ trend that began in the 1980’s and continues today is the positive consequences of deterrence. However, the significant increase in the prison population since this time has not correlated with a similar reduction of criminal violence. “The tripling in the number of violent offenders in prison during the 1980’s resulted in only an estimated additional nine percent decrease in violent crimes above the decrease that would have occurred had imprisonment not grown” (Cohen & Canela-Cacho, 1994). Sentencing revisions have put many more violent offenders behind bars but its actual effects cause an uncertainty of how already inadequate prison funding should be properly utilized. The evidence showing whether an increase of prisoners is cost effective in regards to a reduction of felonies are varied. Studies have shown that “prison may be cost beneficial for violent crimes, but it also shows that it is unrealistic to expect huge reductions in violent crime with large increases in imprisonment” (Cohen & Canela-Cacho, 1994). The evidence showing whether an increase of prisoners is cost effective in regards to a reduction of crime is mixed. Research demonstrates that “prison may be cost beneficial for violent crimes, but it also shows that it is unrealistic to expect huge reductions in violent crime with large increases in imprisonment” (Cohen & Canela-Cacho, 1994). The leadership in a society sets its sights on the delinquent class by turning the prison system into a political advantage. “Victims of crime are most frequently from the lower classes, and strikes against property or authority are individualized and usually relatively minor; this ensures that crime is not too much of a political liability” (Foucault, 1977). The prison system creates a well defined criminal class and by maintaining a controllable criminal class, politicians are able to justify strong police and supervision forces which can also be used for wider political purposes. Since people know that a prison term brings a stigma that remains with an individual for life, they tend to avoid taking risks with the law and ostracize those who do. The prison does not control the criminal so much as it controls the working class by creating the criminal, which is the unspoken rationale for its persistence. “Clearly, no politician will discuss this policy with constituents because it amounts to a deliberate strategy. The implication is prison is maintained because of its failures and not in spite of them” (Foucault, 1977). The conditions in most prisons are generally deplorable. They contain unsanitary living conditions and, when combined with the absence of adequate health and medical care, mean that prison inmates and workers are highly susceptible to life-threatening diseases like AIDS, hepatitis, TB and food poisoning. No one can argue that locking away a formerly non-violent person into a tiny cell within walls is counterproductive. These and other problems associated with imprisonment can only discourage and frustrate inmates which many times lead to expressions of anger, depression and added violent tendencies. Prisons are built with the express purpose of protecting the community. However, incarcerating people has shown to have a negligible effect on the crime rate. About two-thirds of all inmates released from prisons are rearrested within three years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002). Violent criminals must be released earlier than their mandated sentence to clear the way for nonviolent lawbreakers, and most of these people, if they survive the prison experience, are worse off when they get out, as is society. Non-violent offenders should not be sent to prison. They can be sufficiently punished by doing tasks that serve the community and can still work, support their family and pay taxes instead of being a burden to taxpayers. The imprisoning rate can be reduced by transferring many nonviolent inmates to community corrections programs where the criminal can be electronically monitored under house arrest, and be extensively supervised. This method has been shown to be effective in controlling the movements of the offender. Once the non-violent criminals are segregated to societal functions and prison populations are reduced to a manageable size, correctional officers should change from their current roles of babysitting inmates to concentrate on the rehabilitation of prisoners. In combination, this approach would accomplish both the intended goals of the prison system to keep society and inmates as safe as possible. There is a problem with the U.S. penal system; it serves to punish and not to rehabilitate. Offenders are so stigmatized, demoralized, and de-skilled in prison that after release they tend to re-offend, to be re-convicted and transformed into career criminals. Most prisoners therefore leave prison no better equipped to fit into society than when they entered it. Some leave a good deal worse off. At its worst, prison simply provides a reinforcement of delinquent attitudes and skills, and contact with potential accomplices. America is the world leader in many aspects including the number of people it imprisons (per capita) and is ridiculed worldwide for its less than sensible methods by which it attempts to protect its citizens. Prisons should concentrate on rehabilitation because many inmates will eventually be released. Punishment, aside from a need for societal vengeance, is meant as a deterrent for those who have committed a crime as well as for those who have not. Since people who commit crimes do so believing they probably won’t get caught, this type of reasoning is based upon a false premise. Those who have committed crimes such as identity theft, prostitution, gambling and drug use are thrown into an excessively cruel circumstance where violence and sexual assault run rampant which acts an opposite effect of rehabilitation. These people, as well as society, would be better served if they were assigned community service of varying degrees in an effort to repay the victim or the community for their transgressions. One method hurts, the other helps – seems like a simple and effective solution but one that is rarely considered. The prison system operates on limited funding. The addition of prison time, while effective for keeping habitual criminals off the street, serves to further overcrowd prisons. This situation creates a ‘revolving door’ effect which releases violent criminals early and adds to an environment that is hardly conducive to rehabilitation. A strong argument for increased prison sentences are the positive consequences of deterrence. However, the significant increase in the prison population has not correlated with a similar reduction of violent crime. Confining people who previously were not a physical threat to society into a violent prison environment is, at least, counterproductive for that inmate and does nothing to protect society. Works Cited “A Sane Drug Policy.” The Progressive. V. 63, I. 10, (October, 1999): 8. November 8, 2007 Bureau of Justice Statistics. “Two-Thirds of Former State Prisoners Rearrested for Serious New Crimes.” U.S. Department of Justice. (June 2, 2002). November 8, 2007 Cohen, Jacqueline & Canela-Cacho, Jose A. “Incarceration and Violent Crime: 1965–1988.” Understanding and Preventing Violence: Volume 4, Consequences and Control. Albert J. Reiss, Jr. and Jeffrey A. Roth (Eds.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994. Cundiff, Kirby. “Crime and the Drug War.” Claustropobia. (August, 1994). November 8, 2007 < http://w3.ag.uiuc.edu:8001/Liberty/Tales/CrimeAndDrugWar.Html> Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. “Rethinking Crime and Punishment: The Report.” (2004). November 8, 2007 Friedman, Milton. “Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom.” CalState East Bay College of Business and Economics. (November 1, 1991). November 8, 2007 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977. Harrison, Lana; Backenheimer, Michael & Inciardi, James. “Cannibis Use in the United States: Implications for Policy.” Cannabisbeleid in Duitsland, Frankrijk en de Verenigde Staten. Peter Cohen & Arjan Sas (Eds.) Amsterdam, Centrum voor Drugsonderzoek, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1995: 254-258. November 8, 2007 “No Escape.” Human Rights Watch. New York, (2006). November 8, 2007. “Prison Statistics.” Bureau of Justice Statistics. (May 2006). U.S. Department of Justice. November 8, 2007 Rasmussen, David & Benson, Bruce. “The Economic Anatomy of a Drug War: Criminal Justice in the Commons.” The Independent Review. V. 1, N. 2, (Fall, 1994). November 8, 2007 Santos, Michael. “A Complexity of the Social Contract.” Prisoner Life. (January 27, 2001). November 8, 2007 < http://www.prisonerlife.com/s_writings6.cfm> Weinstein, Corey and Cummins, Eric. “The Crime of Punishment.” Pelican Bay: Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison South End Press, 1996. November 8, 2007 Read More