In society today, it is commonly known that crime rate has increased dramatically by the years. This is where many of us look for ways to solve such issue. It is the last place anybody would want to be in. but unfortunately we have hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions around the world. Thousands in just the United States, Those are prisons. Just hearing that word makes us think bad things right away. Murder, theft, violence, and everything bad that happens in this world. We live in a world where prisons and jail are very important and almost every country, state, county, or city must have at least one.
Prisons now are much more crowded than they were 20 years ago. The number of inmates in just the United States has doubled between the years of 1992 and 2011. The question many of us should ask ourselves is why do we need prisons? Are prisons effective in any way? Are prisons causing economic issues? Are prisoners getting proper treatment while incarcerated? According to bureau of prisons (work cited 1) in the United States over 1. 8 million inmates were prisoned or put behind bar either in a federal, state, or county prison as of late 2013.
That is a huge number to talk about. And most of them are sentenced to stay over a year or two in prison. Most of us now can’t stay in the house for a couple of hours. Yes they are criminals, but is that the most effective way to punish them? Because we all know that most criminal come back to prison after they are released. According to bureau of justice (work cited 2) it was estimated that 70 percent of inmates that are released return to prison within 3 years period, with a new more serious crime. This sets a light bulb.
Prison is the not most effective way to deal with a law breaker or criminal. And most of the inmates in the United States prisons are non-violence drug offenders. As many of us might think, prison can be a good place to change someone’s prospective on life. However, the question is whether being in prison has benefits or not. A prisoner might learn or encounter to live a peaceful life without trouble. Many of us think that putting criminals in prison really “works”, while other say it only hardens prisoners hearts.
Commonly, prisons are usually used to punish, protect, and rehabilitate the offender to protect them from doing the same wrong act again. From my prospective, prison does not have any beneficial functions as to changing someone’s mind. Rather, it gives inmates the opportunity to pick up new skills from other inmates and escalate their skills when they are released. Prison will only cause mental, physical, emotional problems to inmates. First, inmates will encounter mental issues by being locked up for almost 22 hours a day in about 6 by 8 feet cell.
According to (work cited 2) inmates who are incarcerated are more likely to face depression, anger, and might lose hope due to the fact that they are locked up alone with no communication what so ever, other than the shouting of other inmates, which is a way humans can lose their mind. The second thing is that inmates are more likely to face physical problems because they are not given much time to walk or exercise throughout the day, other than the one hour have in the yard. Lastly, prisoners will develop emotional issues because they are separated from their loved ones.
Another thing that causes emotional problems is that they have to wait a couple of day to get a visit from a family member. And there are so many other problems that inmates face in prison from not eating healthy foods to fighting with other inmates that don’t care about their lives. The question many of us should consider asking is how prisoners are being treated while they are incarcerated. Prisoner are being physically and sexually abused by other inmates, as well as officers whose job is to guard them. Not to mention the suffering they face throughout the day.
Inmates are being beaten, kicked, shot, raped, chocked, and slammed to the concrete floor by officer and other inmates. It is common that inmate will develop broken jaws, ribs, missing teeth from the beating they’re with by officer as well as other inmates. In addition, many of us assume that officers are mainly there to protect inmates from beating, or cause any kind of harm to each other or other officers. And also to prevent them from escaping. However, it is known that officers will turn their back on other inmates who are being beaten to almost death.
Prisoners should not have to face such brutality from officers whose job is guard them. Even though prison is not meant to be a good place for anyone, we as humans make mistakes and that is what prisons are made for. In addition, I believe the United States should consider a close look at what those inmates are facing throughout their day. While we are sitting at home with the family enjoying our dinner, prisoners are facing difficulties getting through the day because of a mistake they made many years ago. While prison can be intimidating, it certainly has its pros and cons.
Let’s start off by discussing the pros or advantages of incarcerating criminals or prisons in general. One of the benefits of putting criminals behind bars is reducing the amount of offenders that we have on the streets, which make the public safe and more secure. Now in some cities or villages people are afraid to walk out of their houses alone because there are so many criminals. Another benefit of keeping criminals behind bars is to give them an opportunity to better themselves by continuing their education because a lot of prisons offer educational programs of rehabilitation programs.
In addition, some prisons offer the prisoner jobs, which can help them provide for themselves and their families or at least learn something in live, and use the skills they learned in prison to find a good job when they are released. While most of us think that prisoners don’t do nothing or not obligated to do anything, a lot of non-violent prisoners do labor work or community work, they go out and clean public places like parks, playgrounds or plant trees in around the community, they do that with the supervision of a deputy sheriff.
That way everyone benefits, the citizens, prisoners and the environment. The prisoners benefit by having to go out of the 6 by 8 feet cell to the streets and get some fresh air and change the routine. While citizens enjoy the cleanness of the city. Therefore, prisons can be a great way to get inmates to change their thoughts about life, do something better and appreciate life more. Despite all of the benefits, there are many cons to having prisons.
Many prisons are run and maintained with citizen’s money. Most of us don’t want to pay taxes for anything, but unfortunately we all have to pay taxes to pay for so many things that we don’t want them to happen or agree on, like taking care of the criminals in prisons. While we work very hard, so many days and hours to provide money for ourselves and our families, money just gets taken out of our pay checks and is put to programs that can be funded from many other resources.
Like having the prisoners work and pay for the amount of time they spend in prison just like paying rent. That was they would think twice before breaking the law. Another disadvantage of having prisons is the cost it takes to maintain them, according to the crime report website (work cited 3), it costs more than $31,000 to keep one person in prison for one year. That’s more than what a lot of us make yearly. So instead of spending that money on prisoners, that money could go toward education.
Build more public schools, there are students that have to travel to another city to go to school because public school like middle or high schools that are full in a lot of cities. My brother and sister had to go to a middle school about 8 miles away from our house because the one close to our house was full. So there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to having prisons. Now that we know the pros and cons of having prisons and how they affect our lives and our economy, we need to start thinking of ways to eliminate unnecessary expenses or at least reduce them.
I think that instead of having prisons, we should isolate a small piece of land that needs to be build and have prisoners work on it, and then use those buildings to shelter homeless people. And I think that is one of the reasons why people tend to steal or commit crimes. It is because they don’t have anything in life and they become hopeless. So there are so many things that we can do to fix the prison and inmates problems, we just need to start thinking in a different way.
