Pros And Cons Of Prisons

There are many benefits of giving an offender a second chance and preparing them to have a better livelihood, back in society. It restores family ties, rehabilitates them and provides more constructive activities such as education and employment, to further decrease the probabilities of committing crimes. While the prison populations continue to increase, penitentiaries are having difficulties finding the proper housing. Although the Federal Bureau of Prisons are addressing the matter by building new facilities to improve overcrowding, the living conditions are still poor. From my understanding upon reading the chapter, rehabilitation efforts such as reintegration have also aided to the prison overpopulation. The majority of convicts under the control of the American correction systems are on probation. Probation is a criminal sanction in which a convict is allowed to remain in the community, rather than being imprisoned. When an inmate follows the rules of the prison, a discretionary release can be granted. A parole board, which are a body of appointed citizens that decides whether a convict should be granted release before the end of his or her sentence, are the individuals that can give an offender a second chance.
The expense of probation is much cheaper than prison cells because there is no need to provide a secure physical space to detain an offender. Additionally, an offender on probation can also do community services such as infrastructure improvements, which decreases the need to use taxpayer funding. The probationer also gets a chance to serve their remaining jail time outside a jail cell, doing something productive instead of getting into