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Jails And Prisons In The United States Correctional System

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Jails And Prisons In The United States Correctional System
Jails and Prisons
Grace Melendez
CJA 490
December 24, 2012
Kevin Perry

Jails and Prisons
In the world of Criminal Justice, jails as well as prisons play an extremely important role in society. These facilities serve the purpose of housing individuals who have committed a crime. This paper will focus on the various types of prisons, the comparison of jails and prisons in the United States correctional system, the advantages and disadvantages of probation and parole, the role of community-based corrections programs and last arguments for and against privatizations of prisons.
Types of Prisons
In the United States there are federal and state prisons. Within the federal and state prisons there are different types such as women facilities, …show more content…
In our society today jail’s serve an even greater purpose and plays an important role such as housing inmates for federal, state or other authorities because of overcrowding in their facilities, hold inmates sentenced to short terms (generally less than one year) (Hall, n.d.). They temporarily detain juveniles, mentally ill, and other pending transfers to appropriate facilities, and they also operate community-based programs with day reporting, home detention, electronic monitoring, or other types of supervision (Schmalleger, 2009). Jails and prisons are alike because they house criminals so that they cannot commit further criminal activity. If there were no jails what would our society do with the overcrowding issues going on with the prison facilities and since more prison inmates are sent to jails, the jails are overcrowded. The importance of jail is a must to keep prison’s …show more content…
Private companies running a prison can be less costly than if governments were to run the prison. This because of lower labor cost. Public service employees earn more money than private employees. Private companies claim that because the contracts with governments can be terminated, they have a greater incentive to provide better service, which means that private prisons are safer, have better living conditions, and rehabilitate prisoners back into society more effectively. Arguments against privatization of prisons include the treatment of prisoners. Private companies can place regulations and restrictions on the types of inmates it accepts, taking offenders with lesser offenses. Another argument against prison privatization is that if the companies goes bankrupt all the prisoners it houses would have no place to be housed, therefore they would end up in the streets again making the communities and society
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