Opinion on the Us Correctional Facility

Tantania Dixon Corrections 320 Final Paper If we ever want our economy to recover and our citizens to prosper, we need to overhaul our correctional system immediately. The correctional system has three main goals: punish, protect the population and rehabilitate the offender. However, it is unclear how well the modern U. S. correctional system achieves these goals and whether the money invested in the correctional system might be better spent. Perhaps the most obvious goals of the correctional system are to punish those who are found guilty of crimes.

In theory, this is supposed to serve as prevention against one repeating criminal activities and as an example to others of why criminal activities should be avoided. Incarceration is the most common example of punishment in the correctional system, but the death penalty and lesser penalties such as probation are also designed to be punitive. However, the correctional system acts as being too lenient on those who commit crimes. They’re let into the prison/jail and are just free to live, something as far as harsh punishment needs to be put in action, or their mentality of jail being a “free ride” is going to remain the same.

If there isn’t any other punishment being put into force, besides the fact that their sentenced to time in prison, the offender is basically getting over on the system. A basic day in the life of a prisoner is eat, sleep, working out, visits, community service, and communication with other inmates, and that’s not teaching them what they did was wrong at all. They need to be put in classes, as if someone gets a speeding charge they have to go to driving classes, not only because they committed a crime, Tantania Dixon ut to understand what crime they have committed and why NOT to do it again, and the value of what can happen if it’s done again. In addition to punishing a criminal, the correctional system is supposed to protect the rest of the society from criminals. This includes the policing of streets as well as the imprisonment of criminals in jails. By keeping criminals in prison, they are not among the public and are not in a position in which they could harm the public at large with additional criminal acts. The protection of inmates also needs to be stricter than what it previously and still is.

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There are prisoners that get physically, mentally, and emotionally abused in prison, and even though it probably isn’t visible it happens, whether it’s man on man inmates vice-versa for women inmates, but not only inmates, sometimes a correctional officer can commit these crimes as well. That can make an inmate retaliate on themselves, because they can feel like their privacy of themselves and their surroundings has been taken away. If this is done so, the inmate doesn’t have anyone to speak with regarding that their treated like they don’t have feelings and concerns because they are inmates.

However, at the end of the day inmates are still human beings, and correctional officers need to take notice of that. The correctional system is also supposed to rehabilitate inmates. Rehabilitation, if done well, will make the criminal functional in normal society after release. This may include vocational training, counseling and drug rehabilitation treatment. Rehabilitation is intended to shift the criminal from being a cost to society to being a contributing member of society. Some believe that if we want to rehabilitate criminals we must do more than just send them to prison.

For Tantania Dixon instance, we could give them a chance to obtain job skills, which will improve the chances that inmates will become productive citizens upon release. The programs must aim to change those who want to change. Those who are taught to produce useful goods and to be productive are likely to develop the self-esteem essential to a normal, integrated personality. This kind of program would provide skills and habits and replace the sense of hopelessness that many inmates have. Another technique used to rehabilitate criminals is counseling.

There are two types of counseling in general, individual and group counseling. Individual counseling is much more costly than group counseling. The aim of group counseling is to develop positive peer pressure that will influence its members. “One idea in much sociology text is that group problem-solving has definite advantages over individual problem-solving. The idea is that a wider variety of solutions can be derived by drawing from the experience of several people with different backgrounds. Also one individual’s problem might have already been solved by another group member and can be suggested.

Often if a peer proposes a solution it carries more weight than if the counselor were to suggest it. ” (NYS Dept. of Correctional Services. 2000) Incarceration of criminals is expensive. It often costs more that $40 per day to keep a criminal in a prison. Similarly, the criminal prosecution process is expensive. In addition to paying the salaries of judges and district attorneys, the state must pay for criminal defense attorneys for criminals that do not have the financial means to hire an attorney on their own. This can easily cost thousands of dollars for a felony prosecution.

Being that it’s so costly to keep an inmate in prison, the US Correctional System must ensure that the prisoners behind bars, aren’t Tantania Dixon innocent, and has actually committed the crime. The costs of just one inmate is very high, therefore the system needs to make sure that they are giving justice to the right criminals, and also if the crime is such as a minimum charge (i. e. drugs, vandalizing, stealing) they should have other justifications for that, so the state won’t have to be issuing extra money for people with no so harsh crimes. The chart below, basically gives you an ideal of the estimated prices for inmates.

Capital punishment, also dubbed the "death penalty," is the pre-meditated and planned taking of a human life by a government in response to a crime committed by that legally convicted person. “It violates the right to life... It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. There can never be any justification for torture or for cruel treatment. " (Death Tantania Dixon Penalty Information Center). There are some defendants who have earned the ultimate punishment our society has to offer by committing murder with aggravating circumstances present.

I believe life is sacred. It cheapens the life of an innocent murder victim to say that society has no right to keep the murderer from ever killing again. In my view, society has not only the right, but the duty to act in self defense to protect the innocent. As of October 2009, capital punishment in the US is officially sanctioned by 34 states, as well as by the federal government. Each state with legalized capital punishment has different laws regarding its methods, age limits and crimes which qualify.

Although Capital Punishment is the way of getting people to understand killing or other crimes isn’t right, wouldn’t that be contradicting itself? If someone kills, then they should be killed for committing that crime? That law isn’t showing leadership whatsoever, that’s showing that killing is the way, and that it is right. However, The Death penalty does in some way help the prisons from overcrowding, although if a criminal gets sentenced to life without parole or to the death penalty, the sentencing needs to be 100% accurate.

Due to the facts in some states there have been false accusations and that’s absolutely not acceptable to an innocent human being. Here is an example, how being a falsely accused criminal can ruin your life; “Brooklyn school custodian Francis Evelyn once walked proud, worked hard and looked forward to a peaceful retirement. Now he's too scared to go out his front door. Five months after his face was broadcast worldwide as an accused child rapist, Evelyn, 58, can't sleep. He can't stop the tears. He can't wipe away the nightmare of being arrested, jailed and wrongly accused.

Berated by cops, taunted by Rikers Island inmates and branded in his native Trinidad, the dignified, law-abiding immigrant has filed a $10 million claim against the city (New York) for ruining his life by believing a troubled child with a history of lying. Evelyn was Tantania Dixon paraded before television cameras and spent two days at Rikers before prosecutors, in a nearly unprecedented move, rushed to a night judge to drop the charges. "I had two more years to retire," he said. "After you work all that time, all that sacrifice, it comes to this?

I want to get over this! " he said. "I don't want those charges just to be sealed. I want it to be washed away! I want an apology. Come on. Clear my name! " (New York Daily News Newspaper, September. 2007) Although Mr. Evelyn’s charge was dropped, he still has to face life of once being called a child molester, he shouldn’t have to live with that accusation to his name, it’s cruel and very un-justice. In conclusion, the US Correctional System has a lot of cleaning up to do, its name needs to be clean, and show America how to be a good leader.

We as Americans don’t want our children to be able to look at cops as being crocked, and not being able to see them as being truthful. The correctional system does have good goals as for getting the criminals off the streets, protecting the community, being able to let people know that they are safe. The prisons in America take the criminals and give them justice, show them that they are wrong and shouldn’t be free to live their lives, because when they were given the chance to they screwed up and now have to pay the time, for committing the crime.

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