In the book, A place to Stand, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Baca writes about prison and how being incarcerated can have impact on a person and their family. With the most beautiful, strong and poetic language, Baca tells us the story of all the people who faces difficult times in order to find their place in the world. Baca always felt like he had no place to stand in society because, all of his life he was put down by his family and friends. From the age of five Baca experienced his dad and uncles going in and out of jail from being addicted to alcohol. Baca knew he would eventually end up in jail sooner or later because that’s what he had experienced all of his life. Baca writes, “Whether I was approaching it or seeking escape from it, jail always defined in some way the measure of my life” (3). Baca felt that his life would always head in the wrong direction because of his family issues. Baca shows being in prison can cause a lot of emotional impact on a person’s life, as well as affect the community.…
Society’s legal system before the 1700s was very different from what it is today, and punishment has made a huge turn around that is almost unbelievable to study. Criminals have gone from cruel and harsh punishment to obtaining on bail or just pay a fine for their crimes. In modern times, society is use to see criminals paying for their crimes in prison doing two years, 10 years, and sometimes life. The Prison system is very modern compare to the old punishment criminals use to obtain. Physical punishment was use back in history as well as corporal punishment and capital punishment. Laws have change within time creating too many rights for the criminal and giving light punishment. Punishment and the correction system make drastic changes every century, and the understandings of both are complicated do to their changes. A part of society wants harsh punishment to comeback and the other big part are not agreeing with incarceration it all.…
The life of a prisoner was very different from that of today's prisons. The prisoners were treated as animals and considered less of a human because of their lawlessness. They were made to right the wrongs that they have committed either through "physical pain applied in degrading, often ferociously cruel ways, and endured mutilation, or was branded, tortured, put to death; he was mulcted in fines, deprived of liberty, or adjudged as a slave" (Griffiths 157). Therefore, prisons were a product of the latter punishment, which meant the accused and convicted must be deprived of his or her liberty and declared a slave to society. When in prison, the life of the accused was not as strict as today's. There were windows that the prisoners could look through in order to beg for charity from the people walking by, and "sometimes prisoners would be allowed to sell things at the prison gates" (Rodgers 91).…
Private enterprise is no stranger to the American prison. When the United States replaced corporal punishment with confinement as the primary punishment for criminals in the early nineteenth century, the private sector was the most frequent employer of convict labor. Prisoners were typically either leased to private companies who set up shop in the prison or used by prison officials to produce finished goods for a manufacturer who supplied the raw materials to the prison. The former arrangement was called the contract system, while latter came to be known as the piece-price system. In both instances, a private company paid the prison a fee for the use of prison labor, which was used to partially offset…
In 1790 came the birth of the Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The penitentiary was different than other systems in that it isolated prisoners, “ …isolated from the bad influences of society and one from another so that, while engaged in productive labor, they could reflect on their past miss-deeds…and be reformed,” (Clear, Cole, Reisig). The American penitentiary and its new concept was observed and adopted by other foreign countries.…
Your young and make an obnoxious decision in stealing a bear of earphones if not bailed you spent 6 months in jail. Later your taken to an adult prison to get sexxually and physically harrasted and leave the jail with a urge to commit suicide. Kids who are getting punished by doing crime are being sentenced to adult facilities. Although teenagers who commit these crimes may deserve to be harshly punished, Juveniles who commit violent crimes should no longer undergo punishments as harsh as their adult counterparts because kids deserve a second chance to overcome their faulty selves which is unachievable in adult prisons.…
Fees, race, work programs, laws, Juveniles, and justice are all components of what is known to America as the prison system. All of which contains both positive and negative aspect of the American penal system. When it comes to our prison system today there is an increased number of inmates. This is due to the prison industrial complex which is the rapid growth of prisoners in the United States of America due to pressure from private companies on political figures so companies can gain a profit. However when the American justice system was set up it was to show that there is a consequence for your actions and rehabilitate criminals so they can learn for their past actions. Therefore prison is initially meant to correct what society defines…
In his essay “Why Prisons Don’t Work” by Wilbert Rideau, the author has sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1962 to be executed or imprisoned for life. He presents the idea that prisons don’t work because people go in and come out the same way, unchanged. He says that authorities think the best solution is to “get tougher” by slowing down on crime and locking away the criminals in prisons, but Rideau had an experience in one of those prisons and knows that the solution wasn’t helping. He mentions that people in prisons need to be punished, but also given a chance to change their ways. Rideau, argues three functions about prisons: to protect the public, to punishment prisoner and to rehabilitate the offender to stop them committing another crime.…
An important point I learned after reading Schools, Prisons, and Social Implications of Punishment is that schools should do more to help students succeed in life and not end up in prison. There are a lot of students that have a difficult family life and that leads them to have a difficult academic life. The school's solution to trouble kids is to just suspend them and that is increasing their chances of ending up in prison. Throughout the United States, schools most frequently punish and suspend students that are minorities (especially Blacks and Latinos), males, and low achievers generally. The students that are getting in trouble are the students that need the most help. The schools give up on these students and just kick them out school, instead of helping them by providing them with a trusting adult or giving them counseling.…
Incarceration for punishment brings on prison development; some of the earliest prisons ever formed were in the sixteenth and…
I think that some disorders, as well as, life situation can play a role in people’s actions. Some examples of this could be a sleep disorder, schizophrenia, or other symptoms of mental disorders. I also think those individuals that have experienced a traumatic event can develop a distorted perception of what is right and wrong. I feel anyone “normal” or otherwise is capable of committing a crime. Someone that has been raised in an environment of crime and experiences violence as a way to communicate is more likely to react in violence. A child that was raised in a sexual abusive relationship might think that is okay. A drug addict trying to support their habit, with no life skill support might resort to stealing. I defiantly think that they look at situations different than someone that has never been exposed to that type of behavior.…
The cost of imprisoning an offender is high. With western regions like the US, UK and Australia experiencing consistent rising imprisonment rates and the limited availability of public resources, efficient use of prison and criminal justice resources is imperative (Marsh, Fox & Hedderman, 2009). A cost benefit analysis (CBA) of prisons essentially measures how effective and efficient certain criminal justice interventions are. Marsh et al. (2009, p. 146) states that this measurement is done by assessing an intervention where the aim is for the benefit of a certain intervention to outweigh the initial dollar cost put into it. CBA are favoured by economists and criminologists as multiple interventions can create duplicate results. This is why the cost benefit analysis is an effective tool as it can determine what the cheaper option is (which produces the same outcome). Sentencing of criminals aims to create three main benefits to both offenders and society. They include rehabilitation, deterrence and incapacitation effects. Of course, with different categories and variables in offenders, there are a range of factors that influence how cost effective specific punishments can be and whether certain punishments can produce the three sentencing effects previously mentioned. From here, it is appropriate to ask ourselves whether imprisonment is worth the cost and whether prisons produce the three sentencing benefits. For the purposes of this essay, the cost and benefits of prison sentences will be compared with community based sentences. The incapacitation effects of prisons will be discussed along with a brief overview of deterrent and rehabilitation effects of prison and community based sentences. It’s also appropriate to discover whether community sentences provide less or more value for money to certain types of offenders compared to incarceration. From having analysed such interventions and their outcomes, it’s also appropriate to make recommendations of how…
Prison is known to be a place where people are physically confined and usually underprivileged of a wide range of personal freedoms. Imprisoning has, in itself, not always been a form of punishment but rather a way to confine offenders until such time as corporal or capital punishment was ordered.…
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime. Prisons are not normal places. The prisoners are deprived of freedom and normal contacts with families and friends. The deadening disciplines, fear, helplessness which are inherent in the prison system produce mental stagnation. The emotional and material deprivations cause frustration.…
Threading through the history of civilization, the pursuit for punishment of lawbreakers was almost as bloody as the crime committed. Punishment then was prompt and pitiless. Although there were penitentiaries in the annals of early correctional system, its characteristics just redo the barbaric practices of treating erring individuals.…