Prison in the U.S In Accordance to John Irwin - Essay Example

Prison in the U.S In accordance to John Irwin's " The Warehouse Prison: Disposal Of The New Dangerous One reason for the eminent criminologist John Irwin to venture this project of writing a 380 page book on US prisons is because those over the last quarter of the century the number of prisons in the US has increased almost ten times. "The rate of incarceration zoomed from 100 to over 500 per 100,000. As a result of this expansion and the punitive ideology that underpinned it, hundreds of new prisons were built at a cost in the billions of dollars, and completely new prison regimens were introduced. In this book, I examine the causes of this binge, the new forms of imprisonment it produced, and the particular and broader effects it caused."(Irwin, 1) The prison John Irwin chose as the site for his study was Solano State Prison. Solano State Prison is a prison that exercises technology of the latest mode and is quite popular within the criminology fraternity. It can house about 6000 prisoners and enjoys a security level of II and III in accordance to the California's range of custodies. "This book is about the contemporary "warehouse" and "supermax" prisons, how prisoners cope in these new prisons, and how they fare after release.5 I also attempt to explain why the United States has the world's largest prison system. To this end, I examined the role of punishment in society, the development of the prison as society's primary penal device, and the history of American prisons. A grasp of this history is necessary to understand prisoners' contemporary modes of adjustment to prison life." (Irwin, 2) During the studies Irwin found out that longer termed prisoner i.e. prisoners sentenced more than 5 years were, though not brutalized, extensively harmed by the newer form of imprisonment. This form of penalizing the prisoners led to a future problem and the prisoners found it very difficult to coup up to the society outside the prison walls once they were released. It is obvious that there are no specific grudges against these prisoners and the newer form of penalties are all well researched and impeccably implemented but the end words keep proving against these prisoners. This could be termed as discrimination against the prisoners serving a longer sentence than 5 years but in reality it could be expressed as an experiment gone wrong. Like most community linked organization, or in other words, organizations dealing with a lager number of members there bound to be some form of discrimination whether one likes it or not. But the ideal situation is to place the discrimination under a certain amount of check in order to yield a long termed fruit for the organization or, more often than not, to survive. Down the line of history there has not been a single instance in any society over every strata of governance where discrimination was not a part of the machinery. This is true for every imperial, capitalist, socialist, communist, dictatorial, anarchist, feudal or fundamental state. And prisons are no different devoid of their location - Algeria or America. In American prisons this discrepancy comes out in different forms. They have their own priority based on the every sect of human differences. This can include age, sex, sexual preference, color, creed, belief, social stature- anything and maybe everything that could be taken into consideration. "Rules established by Supreme Court decisions were insignificant. We were able to demonstrate that escalation of punishment and the incapacitation of more and more "criminals" had little or no impact on crime rates. We also discovered that the majority of persons sent to prison in this punitive binge were charged with unserious felonies, crimes that would have received short county jail sentences or probation before the punitive era, and that the binge disproportionately incarcerated African Americans, other nonwhites, and women. Since then, it has become increasingly apparent that the financial cost of the binge damaged other government undertakings, particularly education and social welfare." (Irwin, 1-2) In fact, in a more recent report by Shaphan Marwah it was mention "The report's findings showed a marked discrepancy in the racial make-up of the prison, highlighting the phenomenon of disproportionate numbers of blacks and Hispanics in prison." (Marwah, 1). In another report Bonnie Kerness, the Director of the Criminal Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee, Newark, NJ mentions that "race has been shown to be a major determining factor in the imposition of the death penalty, and the application of the death penalty is almost exclusively used against the poor. The politics of the police, the politics of the courts, the politics of the prison system, and the politics of the death penalty are a manifestation of the racism and classism which governs so much of the lives of the disadvantaged in this country. Every part of the criminal justice system falls most heavily on people of color, including slavery being still permitted in prisons by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution." In this situation it is but obvious that discrimination would be a palpable part of the US prison system. (Kerness, 1) There are multiple reports from the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The World Organization Against Torture, and Prison Watch Internationale, Paris that suggest there is a predominant mode of human rights violations within the boundaries of the US prisons and these are mostly triggered by discrimination based on color and creed. There are reports of torturing and abusing mentally ill patient too. According to a report from Amnesty International, 1999, "Even when the USA has ratified human rights treaties, it has often done so only halfheartedly, with major reservations. For example, it has reserved the right to use the death penalty against juveniles, expressly forbidden by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which the United States ratified in 1992. The United States repeatedly has continued to use international law and intergovernmental systems when they serve U.S. foreign policy interests, but have sometimes discarded or condemned these systems when they are perceived to run counter to its interests." And all these takes place at a time when "prisoners do not simply comply with the regimens imposed on them. They actively conspire to survive, to reduce their state of deprivation, to ease their moral condemnation, and to pursue their own self-interests. To the extent that their situation allows, they fully or partly cooperate with other prisoners and form their own social organizations with their own values and rules to achieve their goals". (Irwin, 7) And it could not be just coincidence that 60% of the abuse and torture is targeted towards people of color or Hispanic origin. Asians and prisoners of unnatural sexual orientations also suffer the same fate but not in such degree, statistically. The nature of these abuses are not always the same and Irwin puts a historical aspect to this phenomenon by saying, "when we examine the history of humans living in societies governed by law, it is clear that unfair, unjust, cruel living conditions precipitate steady efforts on the part of individuals and groups to correct these conditions and to make things more humane and just. In fact, it is from the reformers' efforts that legal systems have become as fair, just, and humane as they are. Legal systems left to evolve from the acts of unrestrained rulers will remain despotic, tyrannical, and unjust." (Irwin, 5-6) Thus, when judgment is more often biased the it could be concluded without much deliberation that the result of this biased judgment would yield only more biased apprehension as an end product- in this case, the US prison. In this context it would not be very inappropriate to mention what John Irwin actually thought about the lawful system in perspective of legal discrepancy. He mentioned that "The "legislation of morality," as it has been referred to, is also a factor in the ongoing making and enforcing of the law whenever rulers believe there is widespread nonconformity to central, sacred, or crucial standards or mores. This frequently occurs when rulers believe that minority or "inferior" groups, such as the Irish immigrants in America at the end of the nineteenth century, are not following the morality of the superior group." (Irwin, 4-5) thus we can easily conclude that the phrase 'discrepancy in US Prison' was nurtured and reared up in the court rooms of US legal system and what we find in today's US prisons are nothing but the snow-ball effect of the law enforcing honorable people. There are multiple examples of discriminations within the walls of US prisons and different Human Rights organizations has presented numerous examples to prove that. One of the most serious issues in this respect is the discrimination and sexual assaults against women in US prisons. In 2005, Amnesty International USA pointed out in their Woman's Human Right section that, "The imbalance of power between inmates and guards involves the use of direct physical force and indirect force based on the prisoners' total dependency on officers for basic necessities and the guards' ability to withhold privileges. Some women are coerced into sex for favors such as extra food or personal hygiene products, or to avoid punishment." It has been further established that in many states guards have access to and are encouraged to review the inmates' personal history files (this includes any record of complaints against themselves or other prison authorities). Guards threaten the prisoner's children and visitation rights as a means of silencing the women. Guards issue rules-infraction tickets, which extend the woman's stay in prison if she speaks out. Twenty-five correctional departments may place women who report custodial sexual misconduct in solitary confinement. This issue, put forward by Amnesty International USA, is one of the most important matters that the authorities must look into to avoid further misgivings by the international fraternity of Human Rights Activists. Apart from being sexually abused, women in US prisons are also not provided with adequate medical facilities. It has been reported that women are often denied essential medical resources and treatments, especially during times of pregnancy and/or chronic and degenerative diseases. (Amnesty International USA, 2005) the main discrimination points can be enumerated as follows: Failure to refer seriously ill inmates for treatment and delays in treatment Lack of qualified personnel and resources and use of non-medical staff Charges for medical attention Inadequate Reproductive Health Care Shackling During Pregnancy Lack of treatment for substance abuse Lack of Adequate or Appropriate Mental Health Services These are just surface areas of discrimination within the US legal custody. The abyss could be more violent and volatile and regardless of John Irwin's substantial work on the subject much is yet to be fathomed and rectified. To put it into john Irwin's own words, "James Austin and I evaluated parolees' experiences, and the picture was depressing. Most of those we interviewed were not achieving economic viability or coming close to realizing their life aspirations, and most returned to prison after release. It appeared that most who did stay out were on the edge, many descending into dereliction" (Irwin, 10) Reference Irwin, John. The Warehouse Prison: Disposal Of The New Dangerous Class. Roxbury Pub Co, 2005 Marwah, Shaphan. Report warns U.S. prisons overcrowded. University Wire April 15, 2002, Monday Kerness, Bonnie. TORTURE AND SLAVERY IN U.S. PRISONS: A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS. SonicNet, 1999 Amnesty International report, 1999 Amnesty International USA, Sexual Assault and Misconduct Against Women in Prison, 2005 Read More