Incarceration in the United States - Essay Example

Incarceration in the United s Question How has the privatization of prisons impacted the lives of American inmates? Privatization of Prisons Following the unprecedented growth of the number of citizens imprisoned in the U.S, US prison system stuck. The system ran out of money. The states lacked money for building more prisons and running the existing ones. Usually, they would ask the voters to approve the cost of building or running them, but it reached a time when they refused to approve the plans of their states. In response, many states turned to private investment to acquire capital for running and construction of new prisons. In 1984, some Tennessee investors created Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) with the aim of constructing new prison to lease to the state in a profit-making endeavor (Barak-Erez 17). Today, there are several firms engaged in the business. The three largest firms are CCA, Cornell Corrections, Inc., and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. Private prison firms have capitalized on mass incarceration. They are using shrewd tactics like extensive lobbying, control of information, financial rewards, and lavish campaign contributions to acquire more government contracts. The aim of private prisons firms is not to assists the government to minimize the cost of managing US prison system while still ensuring that they serve their purposes. Just like any for-profit business, private prison firms focus on maximizing their profits. They thus reduced the budget of essential services like the cost of food, clothing, security, staff costs, and medical care. The reduction of cost has affected the inmates and the public negatively. In most privately operated prisons, inmates are not receiving enough service that can assist them change their behaviors as firms operating them are trying to reduce management cost in order to increase their profits (Barak-Erez 32). For instance, reduction of the medication cost has cause serious problems in health care in prisons. Many prisons are less likely to meet all the medical requirements of prisoners as their budget do not allow them. For example, Idaho State Correctional Center (ISCC), which is run by CCA, has been blamed severally for violation of inmates’ rights. Inmates at the center have difficulty accessing medical care. There are several claims that the prison neglect patients even when they require medical treatment urgently. In one case, a mentally sick prisoner who had scored high on an assessment of suicide risk committed suicide after he was left without medical assistance (Carissa). In addition to medical problems, the center is also blamed for increased violence. In spite of congestion of inmates, the prison is understaffed thus resulting in violence. Therefore, privatization of prisons has negatively affected prisoners and consequently the public. Prisoners in privately operated correction centers do not receive required services that can assist them to transform their behaviors. Prisoners in these prisons are thus left worst than they were when they entered their respective prisons. Question 2 Discuss how “prisonization” impacts the psychology of inmates. Prisonization Prisons have certain factors and issues that require an inmate to adapt to in order to survive the prison experience. In the U.S prisons, inmates face overcrowding, violence, ill-treatments, lack of basic needs, and others. Therefore, they must adapt to them in order to survive. Prisoners are thus transformed and shaped by their prison environments. They adapt to the environment psychologically. Some of the psychological adaptations include hypervigilance, relinquishment of autonomy, emotional over-control and alienation, interpersonal suspicion and mistrust, and psychological distancing. Furthermore, an individual adapts to the prison environment through social isolation and withdrawal, adoption of exploitative norms of prison culture, and a diminished sense of personal value and self-worth. For example, correction centers require prisoners to give up their autonomy and freedom to decide and make choices. However, people may find it hard to adjust as required upon their arrival to a prison. Nonetheless, after sometimes, inmates adapt to the loss of independence by surrendering or moderating their self-initiative. The prisonization effects jeopardize behavioral and personal characteristics. Question 3 How are inmates prepared for release? Preparation of Inmates for Release As seen above, privatization effects jeopardize the behavioral and personal characteristics of an inmate. For instance, an inmate may lose the ability to be an effective employee or parent. Therefore, he/she must be prepared well for tasks and issues in the outside world. Usually, inmates who are about to be released are concerned with building positive new relationships, getting a job, an expectation of family members, staying clean, and others (Cornelius 8). On the hand, family and community members have many concerns about an inmate. They may be concerned with whether he/she will be trustworthy, stay clean, responsible or will get a job. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare an inmate for release. There are several ways of preparing a prisoner for release. An inmate may be given courses that will assist him/her with any behavioral problem like drug or alcohol abuse, financial pressures, aggression, gambling, depression and others. The courses will also help him/her develop an ability to handle tasks related to employment, health, money, housing, family, and others. He/she is provided with up-to-date information on these and other factors during the training. A prisoner can also be given a chance to work for a local community. They can be involved in projects that target elderly people or disable children, fund-raising, sports activities, and environmental projects. An inmate will develop self-confidence and a sense of social responsibility through working with other people in the society. Closely related to community work is community visits. A prisoner, especially a younger inmate, can be allowed to visit their friends or family members who live in the locality of the prison. Question 4 What are two explanations for the rapid increase of the prison population in the 1980s Mass Incarceration The United Sates’ prison population increased in the period between 1980 and 2009 by 500%. In 1980, there were about 320, 000 inmates. By 2009, the number had increased to 1.62 million individuals (Puryear 9). The increase is not due to changes in crime rates. Changes in sentencing policy and law are the key reasons for the increase. In 1986, U.S. Congress passed Anti-Drug Abuse Act in attempt to fight drugs (Clear, Todd, and Frost 7). The act changed the federal system of supervised release and probation prisons into a corrective system. Earlier, the system was used to rehabilitate drug addicts. In addition, the bill provided new compulsory minimum sentences for persons found in possession of drugs like marijuana. The act mandated a five years sentence without parole for a person found in possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine. The launching of the bill led to an increase in the number of prisoners. The number of people imprisoned for drug offenses skyrocketed to about a half million individuals in 2013. The number of African-American women imprisoned in state jails for drug crimes increased by 828% in the period between 1986 and 1991. The population of women in federal or state jails increased from 11,000 women in 1977 to over 111,000 women in 2004 mostly because of drug offenses (Clear, Todd, and Frost 11). The harsh impact of the mandatory incarceration of people convicted of drug offenses has been promoted by the insensitive sentencing law, which requires drug offenders to be incarcerated for a minimum of five years. Before Anti-Drug Abuse Act was made into law, drug offenders spend an average of 22 months being rehabilitated. The length of time increased due to changes in sentencing laws and policies. By 2004, individuals convicted of drug offenses had to serve an average of 62 months in prison. The long stay in prisons leads to overcrowding as more people come in, and less are released. Question 5 Discuss the special needs of female inmates. Special Needs of Female Inmates More than 200,000 women are incarcerated in the United States. A large number of them are in prison due to drug offenses. The population of women arrested for drug crimes increased by 19 percent between 1999 and 2008. The percentage of women in prison has been increasing at a rate that doubles that of men. In the last third years, the population of women in prisons has been increased by about 800 percent while that of men has been increasing by 416 percent. In spite of the high rise in the number of women entering prison, many prison programs often focus on the needs of men. The focus on men is mainly due the fact that most of the prisoners are male. Even though, men are the majority, programs that target women should also be made as they have different needs from those of men. Female inmates require adequate medical care. Unlike men, women have different and usually more severe health problems. Many of them suffer from extreme conditions that result from family violence, drug use, adolescent pregnancy, sexual assault, poor healthcare, and malnutrition (Tapia and Vaughn 21). For instance, they require medical assistance during pregnancy. Female inmates also require protection against harassment, sexual assault, and privacy infringement (Fowler, Blackburn, Marquart, and Mullings 226). Women prisoners should be protected against inappropriate, illegal, and involuntary exposure body searches. Many of the female prisoners have past experiences of physical and sexual abuses from men. Therefore, they may be traumatized if men search them. Female guards should thus search them whenever possible. They should be protected from involuntary exposure. In addition to privatization, female inmates ought to be protected from sexual harassment. Some guards may attempt to force female prisoners for sex by threatening or offering them favors. However, female prisoners ought to be free from unwanted sexual attention. Even though, prison guards are allowed to touch female prisoners; they should not touch them sexually. Incarcerated women have difficulty separating from their children. Even though, they probably were not good mothers, separating from their young children weights heavily on imprisoned women (Van, Wright, Salisbury, and Bauman 271). Women in prison should thus be assisted to cope with the situation. They need to be assisted to connect with their children in order that they may seek for forgiveness, assure their children that they love them, and encourage them to work hard in school. They should be encouraged to register with a program like Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program that helps them connect with their children. Section 2 This section is intended to address information obtained primarily from the readings. The reading would be attached. Based on the article, “Suspended Identity: Identity Transformation at a Maximum Security Prison” by Schmid and Jones (1991), discuss how inmates manage a “dualistic identity” while incarcerated. (1 page) Management of a Dualistic Identity According to Richard Jones and Thomas Schmid (1991), prisoners struggle to come to terms with the inconsistency between their preprison identities and their prison identities. Before incarceration, a person initiates an introspective analysis, which culminates in him/her resolving not to change his/her behavior while in prison. Jones and Thomas said that inmates share little before their arrival in prison apart from their conventionality. They have vague perceptions and understanding of the prison. The see prisoners are hostile, alien, and violent human beings who are not like them. They thus worry about what will happen to them and as a consequent resolve to protect their identities. However, when they are imprisoned, their different identities, which they had resolved not to alter, are brought into a common situation. Prisoners then start to have feelings of discontinuity, differentiation, and vulnerability as the inappropriateness of preprison identities will reduce their self-definitions to pure emotions temporarily. The consequent of emotion will be the creation of self-protection strategies. Nonetheless, an individual will not be able to insulate himself/herself fully in prison as he/she spends much of the time with others. The inmate will realize that his/her idea of prison is incomplete. Therefore, in order to acquire enough information, he/she will interact with others in order to gain first-hand information. A prisoner will then differentiate between his/her “true” identity/ preprison identity and “false” identity. His/her true identity will remain subjective while his/her prison identity will serve as his/her a social or objective basis for interaction with other prisoners. Therefore, a prisoner manages his/her dualistic self by presenting his/her false identity to the public while utilizing his/her preprison identity to examine his/her false image. Section 3 Discuss at least one issue addressed during the workshop that has altered your perspective on the topic. Why? Response to Jones and Schmid’s Argument According to Jones and Schmid, an individual does not lose his/her preprison identity totally. He/she retains it by presenting an acceptable behavior, which protects him/her from harm. Self-insulation thus leads to the protection of the original self of an inmate. There is no need therefore for a preparation of a prison for release, as his/her actions are pretenses. However, prisoners usually require preparation before release. In the discussion on prisonization, it is noted that prisoners adopt behaviors that jeopardize the original behavioral and personal characteristics of an individual. The prison environment transforms and shapes an individual into a person capable of staying in that particular environment. Prisoners do not pretend to have adopted a behavior. Instead, the adopt behaviors thus requiring careful guidance when they are about to be released. Therefore, the idea of self-insulation, as postulated by Jones and Schmid, is not valid. Work Cited Barak-Erez, D. "The Private Prison Controversy and the Privatization Continuum." Law and Ethics of Human Rights. 2011. Print. Carissa,Wolf. “Inmates at the Idaho State Correctional Institution denied human, constitutional rights.” Boise Weekly. April 18, 2012: Web. Clear, Todd R, and Natasha Frost. The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America. , 2014. Print. Cornelius, Gary F. The Correctional Officer: A Practical Guide. Durham, N.C: Carolina Academic Press, 2010. Print. Fowler, Shannon, Ashley Blackburn, James Marquart, and Janet Mullings. "Would They Officially Report an In-Prison Sexual Assault? an Examination of Inmate Perceptions." The Prison Journal. 90.2 (2010): 220-243. Print. Puryear, Eugene. Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America. , 2013. Print. Schmid, Thomas J, and Richard S. Jones. "Suspended Identity: Identity Transformation in a Maximum Security Prison." Symbolic Interaction. 14.4 (1992): 415-432. Print. Tapia, Natalia D, and Michael S. Vaughn. "Legal Issues Regarding Medical Care for Pregnant Inmates." The Prison Journal. 90.4 (2010). Print. Van, Voorhis P, Emily Wright, Emily Salisbury, and Ashley Bauman. "Womens Risk Factors and Their Contributions to Existing Risk/needs Assessment." Criminal Justice and Behavior. 37.3 (2010): 261-288. Print. Read More