Please respond to the following discussion posts/responses….. The first response/question is in response to Writer #34767 work done in order number # 490716. Make each response 2-3 paragraphs.
1. Great observation. Most states, the country as a whole, and many other countries have invested in large-scale increases in corrections (probation, intermediate sanctions, incarceration, restrictions placed on those with felony records, etc.) to achieve several goals. One is to increase public safety. Another is retribution. There are other goals (e.g., educating the public about the laws on the books, obtaining justice for victims, society, and offenders). A central challenge is how to do so? For example, exactly how much incarceration is needed to achieve a certain reduction in crime? How much probation? Rehabilitation programming? More generally, what is the best investment of resources across various types of sanctions that will garner the largest gains in safety and that simultaneously will achieve desired amounts of retribution or other goals of punishment? Answering these kinds of questions is necessary before we can determine if more incarceration somehow is effectively achieving what we want it to achieve.
2. Research shows that incarceration rates are five to ten times that of other Western countries, the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, but our country’s prisoners account for one fifth of the global prison population. The United States incarcerates more people in numbers and per capita than any nation in the world, including the far more populated China, which rates second, and Russia, which rates third. These numbers reflect misuse of incarceration to respond to social challenges and basic human needs. People struggling with addiction and mental illness are jailed rather than treated. People who need community-based supervision, education, and jobs to end the cycle of recidivism receive longer and longer sentences instead. Young people in neglected neighborhoods who are exposed to poverty, violence, and trauma are pushed out of schools and into prisons rather than embraced and healed.
Incarceration has grown at the federal and state level, but most of the growth was in the states, which house the vast majority of the nation’s prisoners. In Texas, for example, the state incarceration rate quadrupled. In the late 1970’s, the state incarcerated 182 people for every 100,000 residents. By 2003, that figure was 710. These changes were encouraged in part by laws like the 1994 Crime Bill, which gave states money to continue policies that bred bloated prisons. In fact, while it received little attention, the rise of mass incarceration was a phenomenon that has affected the entire country for many decades. Legislators across the United States are realizing that America’s obsession with incarceration is unsustainable and costing taxpayers billions of dollars while doing little to prevent crime. Important recent state criminal justice reforms have included allowing parole for elderly prisoners, reducing criminal penalties for drug crimes, decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana, raising the threshold of misconduct for what constitutes a felony, using non-prison sanctions for technical violations of probation and parole, and eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing. As a result, many states including New York, California, and Texas have significantly reduced their prison populations in the last several years.
3. Mass incarceration in America and other countries was conceived as a corrections method to correct undesirable behavior. It is why it is called corrections. However, this does not explain why incarceration has increased by such a large percentage from the 1960s. In many Western countries, the use of imprisonment has been rising year on year with no prospect of a halt (Stern 1999, pg. 231). Most of the numbers can be credited to the war on crime and stricter sentencing guidelines with mandatory minimums. Currently, there are 2.4 million people confined in America, 1 out of every 100 adults (Cullen, Jonson, & Stohr 2014, pg. xiii). Dr. Mears described in his week one notes pg. 4 that there are several big picture goals of punishment, and these goals can be achieved in several ways. The goals listed were justice, retribution, education, and public safety (Mears, class notes, p.4-5). We can sum it up with the primary goal being rehabilitation and allowing the offender to reintegrate back into society; this is what America and other countries hope to achieve.
Between the 1700s and 1800s, punishment began to change in most civilized counties with corporal punishment being set aside and mass incarceration beginning. Imprisonment had been used as a punishment on a selective scale before 1770. Places of confinement were generally used as waystations for persons awaiting trial for convicted felons awaiting execution and transportation and crucially for debtors (Ignatieff, 1981, Pg.159). 60% of persons incarcerated at the time were for debtors. In Ignatieff’s research paper, he lays out how incarceration has changed and why the changes occurred. Mass imprisonment offered a new strategic possibility- isolating a criminal class from the working class, incarcerating the one so that it would not corrupt the industriousness of the other (Ignatieff, 1981, p.172-173).
Does mass incarceration achieve the goal of rehabilitation is a question that has been asked since mass incarceration started? Looking at empirical research, we will find that research done in the 1960’s that many of the traditional modes of crime control were ineffective and inefficient in reducing crimes and improving the safety of communities (Welsh & Pfeffer, 2013 pg. 539). Along with mass incarceration comes with what to do with the inmates that are confined. Some opportunities need to be explored with what to do with the inmates while they are locked up. Does rehabilitation work? Which rehabilitation program works the best for the class of inmates. There has been a lot of empirical data on this subject. Mass incarceration will not work unless there are programs to aid in rehabilitation.
In the United States, the goal is rehabilitation. However, we do not have the programs in place to allow this to happen on a large scale. Prisons are overpopulated, and courts are ordering a lowering of the prison population. Having overcrowded prisons will not allow rehabilitation to take place as there won’t be enough spots in the programs when prisoners are released that are often placed on probation. If you violate your probation, you are sent back to prison. It is a cycle that has been ongoing for many years, and there has not been a significant program to decrease this recidivism rate.
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