Incarceration Alternatives - Report Example

Incarceration Alternatives

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the alternative techniques that the United States may use to punish offenders other than incarceration. This is because of the weaknesses associated with incarceration or imprisonment, for example, negative image and congestion, which consequently increases costs to the government. The paper begins by introducing the topic and then it gives a summary of incarceration in the US. In this summary, it has been identified that the United States has numerous offenders imprisoned mainly because of using drugs. The state also spends at least $28,000 on each prisoner who is incarcerated on an annual basis. Since this is an alarming rate, this paper suggests alternatives to incarceration, for example, probation, community service, fines and restitutions and restorative justice. Each of these methods is discussed separately to enable the reader to understand the technique and the benefits that it offers. For example, restorative justice reconciles the criminal, the offender and the community, thus leading to long term peace. Probation is the last technique that is discussed in the paper, and it is of high significance in the United States because it is the most widely used after incarceration. This method involves monitoring offenders who live among other members of the community, but with limited freedoms. The final section is a conclusion that gives a summary of the essay and that recommends the government to monitor the use of the alternative techniques to ensure that they do not turn out to be less efficient than incarceration in the long term.

Introduction

Since times back it has always been a norm that the greatest percentage of offenders who face a judge and jury and are found guilty of their crime will end up in jail. Incarceration as the jargon may represent is simply the act or state of an individual being confined or imprisoned for different reasons. It was probably an effective alternative to murder during the dictatorial regimes and world war but with the emergence of a democratic society, it is no longer the best of alternatives. The negative image attached to prisons makes the idea of them being correction facilities false. As a matter of fact prisons are now regarded as a place where criminals belong. This belief makes it hard for society to believe in the reform role that prisons are supposed to play for the inmates in the facilities. This explains the stigmatization that people released from prison get from the society after serving their sentence. They will always appear as convicts and even worse for them they will usually appear suspects of crimes committed near their localities (Harris & Miller, 2003). It is such negative attitudes that overtime has necessitated the need for concerned parties to advocate for alternative methods of dealing with offenders other than incarceration. This paper looks to explore incarceration alternatives available to the American society and the rest of the world.

Incarceration in USA

Shocking statistics reveal that USA has the highest incarceration rates in the whole world. This is not something to boast about because USA’s population only represents about 5% of the total world’s population. According to Carson (2015), by the end of the year 2014, the country had about 1,561, 500 prisoners in the state and federal prisons. Although this represents a 1% decrease compared to the figures in 2014, the rate is still high as it represents about 500 prisoners in a population of 100,000 citizens. Researcher have attributed the high numbers to the war on drugs that has resulted to increase in number of inmates on drug related offenses to about 192, 663 in the year 2014. Such policy changes have further increased the population of inmates sentenced to life sentence without possibility of a parole to about 159,520 in the year 2012. The trends that represent constant increase in number of inmates in American prisons have resulted to overcrowding in the prisons and increased costs of maintaining the correction facilities. Overcrowding may present serious health issues related to sanitary conditions and a decreased psychological well-being of the inmates as a result of prolonged periods of isolation (Glaze & Herberman, 2014).

The incarceration alternatives present several advantages to the country as a whole. First they present increased options for sentencing to the courts. Such options will be considered in relation to the crime committed by the suspect. The options will help in dealing with the problem of overcrowding in the prison and the negative effects that come with it. The alternatives prove to be effective strategies of reducing crime rates in the countries. This is because even though there are increased incarceration rates in US, this surprisingly does not reflect to a decrease in crimes in the country. As a matter of fact there are claims that about 40% or more of people released from prison end up going back in a space of about three years from the date of release. Finally the alternatives may in the end saving costs for the government because it takes about $28000 a year to maintain a single prisoner in a federal prison with the amount expected to increase in the case of a state prison (Travis, Western & National Research Council, 2014).

Community service

Scheb and Scheb (2009) claim that community service is one of the popular alternative to incarceration. They define community service as a sentence in which the convicted offender is expected to perform specified tasks for specific number of hours in a day with no pay. The tasks are regarded as service by the offender to their community. The offender is expected to do this under the supervision of an assigned probation officer. The community benefits from the level of services rendered by the offender and miss out on the burden of having to bear costs for the prison upkeep and if the offender takes the whole process seriously, they may over time develop a sense of responsibility. The supervision is not only important to ensure that the offender keeps time and performs the assigned tasks but also to ensure that they are not exploited or forced to work under unsafe working conditions because that would amount to violation of their rights. The alternative is applicable for minor offences and it is advantageous to the offender as they are not separated from their families (Eyland & O’Toole, 2004).

Transformative justice

It is considered as a liberal approach to violence that aims at establishing accountability of an individual’s actions without having to rely on alienation, incarceration or punishments. It seeks to develop plans that address interpersonal, structural and community violence from a political organization perspective with a view of extending beyond the simple and inconclusive criminal and punishment systems. It accuses the criminal and legal institutions of not providing opportunities for healing and repairing the harm to avoid re-occurrence in future (Mitchell & Rentschler, 2016).

Transformative justice is founded on several beliefs. The first belief is that collective liberation and individual justice are of equal importance, they are interlinked and mutually beneficial to each other, which means that none of the two factors can be achieved separately without achieving the other. The second belief is that the state and all the avenues of justice that respond to violence such as the criminal legal system fail in their role to administer collective and individual justice and in some circumstances act as tools of catalyzing the cycles of violence that exist in a society. The final belief is that the factors and enabling environments of violence should be transformed for justice to be achieved at individual levels (Strang & Braithwaite, 2002). Through such foundations, transformative justice aims at achieving the objectives of holding accountable those who commit acts of violence in a society while at the same time providing long-term safety and healing to the victims of the violent acts. It also provides an opportunity for restoration to the victim through providing mechanisms for them to deal with their emotional scars, resentment, and anger. This is founded on the fact that crime does not only violate the laws of a state but also violates the relationship among the victims, the offender, and the community as a whole, which means that justice can only be delivered if a process is put in place to restore, rehabilitate, reconcile, amend and reintegrating the three parties and not merely prosecuting and incarcerating the offender (Ozawa, 2002).

Suspended sentence

This is an alternative method to incarceration for minor offenses such as traffic offenses or for people involved in less serious crimes for the first time. It can either be done by the judge refraining from handing down a sentence or by the judge deciding on a sentence but failing to execute it. Suspended sentence can also take the conditional or unconditional nature. In the conditional nature, the judge will refrain from executing or imposing the sentence provided the offender fulfills the conditions set for the suspense. Such conditions include: rehabilitation of the offender, avoidance of any other criminal activities or registration for counseling. Unconditional suspension on the other hand involves the judge executing a sentence with no conditions imposed. The alternative is particularly common in countries such as Finland, Switzerland, Norway and Slovenia (Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 2007).

The conditional suspended sentence offers the offender a warning that they risk facing a jail time or other sentences if they are found on the wrong side of the law again. It can be regarded as a suitable alternative especially in solving the problem of overcrowding in the prisons because the offender will always count their luck of missing out on the incarceration sentence and will therefore be careful to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the law again (Sevdiren, 2011). The sentence also presents benefits to the offender because they are offered an opportunity to seek professional help rather than being imprisoned without any further help on their part especially if they resulted into crime because of factors beyond their control such as addiction or psychological conditions that led to impaired judgment. It is also worth noting that suspended sentence is limited to those criminal acts that the law has not established a mandatory sentence. It is also not commonly used by most judges as it calls for a lot of administration obligations to ensure that the offender meets the stipulated conditions of suspended sentence. A procedure must be set in place to be followed in case the offender engages in a similar crime after the suspended sentence. Also the procedures help in ensuring that the suspended sentence is brought up before a court if the offender is prosecuted for a totally different offence (UNODC, 2007).

Fines and Restitution

These are monetary compensations that the offender is charged for committing a crime. Fines are monetary payments that the criminal pays to the government for committing a crime. According to Caputo (2004), numerous states have adopted the use of fines instead of imprisoning criminals. The author argues that the United States, Germany, Sweden, China and Singapore include some of the nations that use fines widely. The states earn a substantial amount of income in the form of fines that are paid every year. In the United States, the government earns over $1 billion every year from fines that are submitted to the criminal justice system (De Jong, Cole & Smith, 2014). Fines may be used exclusively or they may be applied together with other forms of punishments such as probation and community service.

Restitutions, just like fines, are monetary charges that are paid by the offender; however, in this case, the criminal pays the funds to the victim instead of the state. De Jong, Cole and Smith (2014) postulate that restitution is reparative in that it seeks to reinstate the victim to the condition that was in existence before the occurrence of the crime. This also seeks to cover medical costs and any other financial losses that a victim of a crime undergoes because of the offense. Restitutions and fines are preferable to incarceration in case of minor crimes more than they are with major crimes (Caputo, 2004). This is because the criminals who commit minor crimes are less of a threat compared to those who have the ability to commit major offenses. These punishments are also more efficient when applied to the poor people in the society more than when used on the rich; because the fines and restitutions represent a substantial amount of incomes of the poor compared to the elite in the society (Cripe, Pearlman & Kosiak, 2013). Therefore, the poor may do anything that does not bring about loss of income and shunning crime is one of these things that they would do to protect their earnings.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is a technique that aims at reconciling all the involved parties in an offense. These parties include the criminal, the victim and the community within which they live. According to Clark (2014), restorative justice has three main tenets that include reparation of harm, restoration of the community and punishing of the offender. These tenets are related to the parties involved because while the community is restored, the offender is corrected and the victim is healed. The relationship between these parties is restored to the state that it was before the crime took place.

There are three main techniques of restoring justice among the above mentioned parties and they include sentencing circles, mediation between the victim and the offender and community group conferencing (Sullivan & Tifft, 2011). Mediation is widely used in Europe and North America, and it involves a meeting between the victim and the criminal in the presence of a professional mediator or family member. In this method, the victim and the offender discuss the effects of the crime and develop a plan of reinstating everyone (Tsui. 2014); the plan takes into consideration the harm that the victim suffered while at the same time it seeks to rehabilitate the offender.

The second method of restorative justice is group conferencing and just like mediation, it involves a meeting between the victim and the criminal; however, in this case, both parties bring supporters to the conference. The two groups sit in opposite directions and they discuss the crime and how it affected them; a facilitator who controls these conferences then helps the two groups to draw a plan of how to reconcile fairly and peacefully (Sullivan & Tifft, 2011). The use of this technique began in New Zealand where it is still used on a large scale. Sentencing circles, on the other hand, involve more parties than the previous two techniques. In this case, the police, judges and all other concerned parties are invited to the meeting that aims at resolving the dispute between the offender and the victim (Clark, 2014). Restorative justice is more efficient than imprisonment because it reconciles all the involved parties, thus leading to long term peace.

Probation

Probation is the most widely used alternative to incarceration in the United States (Clark, 2014). In this technique, an offender is allowed to live in the society, but with restricted freedoms and rules that must be followed strictly by the offender (Evjen, 2014). According to the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy (2016), 5 million offenders in the United States are under probation; out of the total 7 million offenders who are supervised by the state in one way or another. This data indicates that this method is widely used in the States and this makes this technique to be of great significance as an alternative of imprisonment.

According to Emmanuel (2014), probation is efficient when used on offenders who are not violent because they may not be a threat to the community as compared to violent offenders who are better off when imprisoned; because they are a major threat to the community when released. In addition to protecting the public, the restriction of freedoms of the person under probation helps to reduce recidivism among offenders. Recidivism is a situation whereby an offender who had already reformed from committing crimes adopts the behavior once more; meaning that that person had not healed completely. It is common among drug users. Probation helps to reduce recidivism because an offender is manned by probation officers and offenders fear to be imprisoned for life in case they do not shun criminal behavior completely. (Evjen, 2014) argues that it is also less costly to place prisoners on probation than it is to incarcerate them in state and federal prisons.

The freedoms that offenders who are on provision are restricted from enjoying mainly include movement. Offenders are not allowed to move beyond the areas that they are allowed; they may also be required not to go out during certain days and in certain hours of the day. Those who were drug users may be tested for drugs both in blood and urine at regular intervals to ensure that they do not use these substances again. Although these measures are efficient in reducing recidivism, critics of probation argue that it is a very lenient tool as compared to imprisonment and the other alternatives (Emmanuel, 2014).

Conclusion

The USA was known for incarcerating most of its offenders during the world war, and the state continues to punish offenders using this technique although its popularity is declining as new methods of punishment arise every day. Incarceration is also declining because of its major challenge of increasing government spending and bringing about congestion in both federal and state prisons. The new techniques that are emerging and that are more cost effective include probation, community service, suspended sentence, fines and restitutions, restorative justice and transformative justice. These methods reduce traffic in prisons and they are more efficient in terms of correcting the behavior of offenders. This is because imprisoning offenders deprives them of the chance of socializing with others in the community whereas techniques such as restorative justice gives them this opportunity, and it goes further to reconcile the offenders and their victims. Probation is the most widely used of the mentioned techniques in the United States, with a fifth of the offenders who are under the supervision of the state being under probation. Although these techniques are more efficient than incarceration, the state should monitor their use more closely to eliminate weaknesses such as recidivism; and to ensure that the crime rates in the country do not increase due to leniency in some of the methods.