Incarceration in the United States of America - Term Paper Example

INCARCERATION IN UNITED S OF AMERICA School Incarceration ideally is perceived as a social control and deterrent of crimes by rehabilitating jailed persons imprisoned either due to commission of criminal and unlawful civil acts. But empirical evidences points that incarceration has conversely resulted to doubling of crime rates and consequentially increased the number of persons put behind bar. This essay will therefore describe statistical updates of mass incarceration in America, explicate causes of this phenomenon, its effects to community, significance of race and gender in criminal justice system, and describe the confinement’s condition and treatment as a replica of American society. State of Incarceration in America There is increasing number of persons in the penal colony of United States which is surprisingly seven times higher compared to Western Europe and most of whom came from vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the communities (Western & Loury, 2011). Research pointed that about 1/3 of black American youths who dropped schools are behind bars and bared that those born from 1965, about 20% thereof are imprisoned. Sociologists said that this imprisonment rate pattern is dubbed “mass incarceration”, a phenomenon of imprisonment that is incomparably high and has strong impact to society, economy and to social justice especially on matters focused on state’s crime control and jailed person’s rehabilitation (Austin, Bruce, Carroll, McCall, Richards, 2000). Rose and Clear (2009) and Austin et. al (2000) reported that US topped among countries wordwide on incarceration. Rose et. al. (2009) bared there is a ratio of 1:100 adult American that is imprisoned although the ratio of figure varies in every state e.g. 1:55 is jailed in Louisiana and 1:226 in Maine. At such rate, Rose et. al. (2009) pointed that there are 25% of world’s incarcerated population albeit figures are far from representative portion of the country. Rose et. al (2009) further stated that for Afro American, the ratio of imprisoned persons is 1:15 black person and 1:36 Hispanic American or about 300% than the white American. Experts further observed that even if the population of jailed Hispanic and black Americans are combined, the white retain dominance in percentile presence of prisoners who made up 34.72% (Austin, et. al., 2000). The Hispanics composed 18.26% while the black got the largest ethnicity with 43.91% of incarcerated population of persons. As such, there are 2.13 million incarcerated American people (Education Online, 2011) which comprised 10% of country’s population. But despite supposed rehabilitation and reformation program within penology, there is converse outcome from this process as there are about 51.8% of imprisoned and freed persons became recidivists and come back into prison cells after a period of three or five years (Rose, et al, (2009). Implication of Recidivism: Economics and Culture Recidivists are those who have committed crimes and been penalized by court repetitively. If about half of the population of incarcerated persons in America returns to prison, this means that the penology failed to holistically reform the person. Such meant that the state will be spending more to rehabilitate and reform the psyche and emotion of person in order to make them upright and lawful when he/she’d return home or when he/she will be mainstreamed back to the society. Note that the state spent an estimated amount of $23,876 to care for an inmate’s welfare. This expense is sufficient for a child’s education of $7,000/ child and for healthcare or support for community needing social services (Austin, et. al., 2000). It was also bared that American government spent $44 billion for incarcerated persons based on 2007 data (Austin, et. al., 2000). . Education Database Online (2011) recently cited America as model of incarceration with state’s inability to neither cease resurgence of crimes and recidivism in the last five years. Thus, Abramsky (2008) was right to draw about how the cycle of penal services failed to reform and rehabilitate prisoners at the cost of the government coffers and peoples tax. Abramsky (2008), who once led dramatic exposure of the issues in U.S. penitentiaries, posed the thought that jails have abandoned it’s legally and mandatory goals due to some political reasons. Prison is supposed to be an avenue for punitive measures to inculcate on prisoners to be lawful and to be good citizens. Instead, being prisoner put them in a stigmatizing situation that encouraged them to do vengeance. The social consequences considered appropriate for unacceptable behavior also vary widely between, and even within, different societies. Punishments for criminal acts include fines for damages, humiliation to imprisonment or exile. Others use beatings or mutilation to execution. But whatever is the form of punishment, its intent is to prevent or deter the individual to repeat criminal or civil offenses and/or simply to employ retribution for unacceptable acts. Moreover, the state also need to evaluate the appalling condition of prisons, including how they are treated by authorities, specially the juveniles and youths who had been intoxicated with a very liberal and permissive culture (Hammett, 2000 & U. S Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). Culture and Incarceration Culture is about system of beliefs, practices and common behaviors practiced through immemorial times. Behaviors however are also shaped by education, experiences, and maybe affected by genetic causes. All beings are born within a cultural make-up—molded by family, shaped by community, social class, kind of languages and faith expressed in varied religions. Generally, each family uses education, reward system and punishment to temper behaviors into something socially acceptable. Each person’s are molded in a system that is developed by parents in each home, school, neighborhood, church and law enforcement agencies. Friends, peers and relatives, media and social networks or associations may also contribute in shaping one’s behaviors but how an individual respond to influences depend on the foundational education and discipline one got at home. It may sound conservative, but the state needs really to advocate for a more responsible family in rearing children to make them better person as they are mainstreamed within the community. The American liberal and permissive culture has made youths and adults so embroiled with freedom and rights that often they’d forgot responsibility and sense of accountability to their actions. The absence of sense of responsibility and accountability ingrained them such confusion in assuming patterns of lifestyles and social roles that are deconstructive of social structures, values and social norms—those that are upheld by religions, traditions, normative expectations, cultures and social values. This may be frown at but it’s with intent of shaping desirable behaviors of future generations to ensure that America will be truant as model of good values of accountable citizenry worldwide. This will help radically change the image of a country as a nation with numerous incarcerated populace. It will also help lessen budget if numbers of jailed persons are reduced. Moreover, as crimes are said to be committed due to poverty, American government must also develop more opportunities for peoples’ employment; enhance their skills to enable them to diversify to meet their basic needs instead of inspiring them to engineer crimes for easy money. In penology, authorities must also train prisoners to become religious, sports enthusiasts, become craftsmen, and persons equipped with understanding on customary values. They should therefore undergo education albeit within the confines of the jail. When freed after serving sanctions, society and families should welcome them instead of alienating them or sidelining them as person. They needed to feel welcome, needed, and valued too. They must be encouraged to become part of formal and informal groups to help them become socially acceptable persons. Affiliating them with social group will hasten to bring out their potentials as useful person of the community, improve their identities and help them recognize their potentials to contribute to the community. The person’s cohesion with the community will also be enhanced to help him realize the significance of behaving with attitudes that are socially accepted. As such, social prejudice will be discouraged in the process against persons formerly incarcerated. Social organization is therefore relevant to engage formerly imprisoned persons to make them become responsible and accountable Americans. Making ex-incarcerated persons work for social change Incarcerated persons who were positively reformed and rehabilitated after serving sentences can be agents of the community for social change too. By embarking on positive values and pedaling on good cultural practices, they could change their lives toward unlimited possibilities for personal and communal development. They can harness their potentials and be involved in production for economic contribution; be educated and become great dreamers; help conflict resolution by upholding values; and become helpful persons who are exercising rights for better governance. On the other hand, government and authorities must also intensify advocacies and programs to stop gang wars, drugs and substance abuse (Currie, 1993) provide opportunities for people; fight collectively against poverty; resolve racism and respond to grievances of peoples that pushed them to act unlawfully. Conclusion High incarceration rates are indeed attributed to increasing criminalities rooted from social ills, social inequality, degeneration of family life, economic marginalization as well as social disorganization (Ziedenberg & Gangi, 1998). But if social change is adopted as discussed earlier, American government will have less number of prisoners; save penology allocation and channel budget to social services; improve the national economy and enhance the integrity of the judicial system. The democratization of the society will also improve social cohesion as people could restart to appreciate multiculturalism to slowly dissolve historic prejudices and racism. The federal and national government must also listen to people’s grievances, provide more venues for discourses and accommodate their complaints to lessen number of peoples who are frustrated with the system of governance and discourage structural revolution or disputes. True, government functions by laws, regulations, and coercion but must reengineer its system to avoid social conflicts, discourage misbehavior of people (Hill and Wang; Incidardi, 1992) and stop precipitating a situation that may encourage war and violence. Least, it must be realized that there is heavy burden in keeping people incarcerated out of deviancy and upheaval. Government must also realize that scaling up social cohesion also increase self-regulation. It must also therefore seriously account the relations of all social controls (Carroll, 1998) in order to model practices and utilize the effectiveness of this system to instill discipline and have responsible social capital e.g. curfew hours for youths and encouragement of responsible family (Robinson, 1996). All stakeholders should also come together and discuss about improving criminal justice system. REFERENCES Rose, Dina and Clear, Todd (2009). Incarceration, Social Capital and Crime: Implications for Social Disorganization Theory. Western, Bruce & Loury, Glenn (2011).The Challenge of Mass Incarceration in America. Harvard University. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/projects/incarceration.aspx Accesed: May 5, 2011. Education Database Online (2011) Incarceration In The United States http://www.onlineeducation.net/incarceration_usa Read Abramsky, S. (2008). American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment. Boston: Beacon Press James Austin, Marino A. Bruce, Leo Carroll, Patricia L. McCall, Stephen C. Richards (2000) . The Use of Incarceration of United States. American Society of Crim inology.. USA. Ziedenberg, Jason, and Robert Gangi, Vincent Schiraldi (1998). New York State of Mind? Higher Education versus Prison Funding in the Empire State. Washington, D.C.: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Beck, Allen. (1995) Growth, Change, and Stability in the U.S. Prison Population, 1980-1995. Corrections Management Quarterly 1, Issue 2: 1-14. Currie, Elliott. (1993). Reckoning—Drugs, the Cities, and the American Future. New York: Hill and Wang; Incidardi, James A. (1992). The War on Drugs II. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield; Jenkins, Philip. 1999. Synthetic Panics—The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs. New York: New York University Carroll, Leo (1998) Lawful Order: A Case Study of Correctional Crisis and Reform. New York: Garland Publishing. Hammett, Theodore M. (2000). Health-Related Issues In Prisoner Reentry to the Community. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. U. S Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. July 1999. Mental Health and Treatment of Inmates and Probationers. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Read More