The purpose of the correctional system in the United States is to keep criminals who may be dangerous to the public off the streets, punish lawbreakers guilty of certain crimes, and protect the U.S. The United States’ corrections system is not effective. The fee of detaining prisoners is astronomical; lawbreakers are in prison for they need to get disciplined, and many prisoners live a corrupt life after and before prison.
The amount of money used in the incarceration of a prisoner is exceptionally high. Each year, the United States nationals’ tax money is spent to keep the jail up in progress. A single city spends roughly “$167,731 to feed, house, and guard each inmate last year, according to a study, the Independent Budget Office released this week” (Salib, 2017). The cash from one city is just enough for around five prisoners because there are many towns and cities, but millions of inmates exist. “The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion. The annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,286 per inmate” (Salib, 2017). The money taxed went to the jail supplies for the criminals comprising purchasing foodstuff to feed millions of persons and purchasing various items to put in the court.
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The United States’ correctional system is ineffective due to the high overcrowding rates in the prisons. Several prions are overcrowded despite the suggestion that the general population of inmates is declining. It is somewhat because the prisoners released are usually those who pose less threat to the community. The number of prisoners who are very dangerous to the public tends to remain consistent. There are inadequate facilities with high security that can safely stock the most dangerous prisoners. Old facilities being used to house dangerous criminals pose a threat to the staff. The issue has worsened because new facilities with high security required to dissolve overcrowding are hardly built since they are costly (Salib, 2017). Once built and operational, prisons are hard to maintain. More correctional services are needed to ease congestion in jails and prisons in the U.S.
The correctional services in the U.S. might increase criminal activities. The harsh jail environment could impair mental health issues, make individuals susceptible to aggression, or make them distrustful and suspicious of the legal system. When lawbreakers are sent to prison, we expect them to learn lessons and not re-offend. Inmates surrounded by violence in prison are very likely to replicate what they see, increasing violence rates. Or inmates could learn from the other inmates how to be worse criminals (LaFree et al., 2020). Those sentenced to jail are most likely to commit a more dangerous crime in the future than those sentenced on probation, even if they had not been sent to prison. Indeed, prisons are riskier for offenders with “petite” crimes, like theft. When the criminals are imprisoned for a month or more, they could probably learn much to commit a more violent and horrific crime.
The U.S. correctional services do not provide adequate safety to the staff. Inmate violence and staff safety are so intertwined that they deserve to be discussed in a consolidated concern. Prisoner violence, especially between the more dangerous sectors of the prison population, becomes a problem for both the staff and other inmates. Since the greatest dangerous prisoners are needed to be kept in the correctional facilities for a longer time, it raises the potential for recurring violence in the prisons. When prisoners attack one another, the staff intervene to control the condition. The intervention of the staff puts them in danger (LaFree et al., 2020). Nevertheless, concern for the staff’s safety is not primarily caused by inmate-on-inmate violence; some violent prisoners may target the staff.
Mass incarceration is concentrated in particular places, and a dramatic rise in incarceration has been intense in those neighborhoods. Mass incarceration rates are very uneven, with some societies experiencing stable and high rates and other communities have very few residents being imprisoned. The neighborhoods and societies with the highest mass incarceration levels tend to have high unemployment rates, poverty, and racial segregation ( Blankenship et al., 2018) . Mainly, the geography of mass incarceration is dependent on race and intense poverty, with humble African American societies bearing the impact of higher rates of imprisonment. Similar places also have high violence rates and regular contacts with justice institutions like the police and court systems. The imprisonment of black women rises when the African American populace is intense in metropolitan regions, and poverty rates increases, but the white women are unaffected by the changes.
Mass incarceration affects several groups of people, including children. Without queries, mass incarceration changes lives, but it has adverse effects on many persons. The millions of people imprisoned lose their homes, jobs, freedom, and family connection. Although a jail sentence is thought to rehabilitate, most inmates get into cycles of crimes due to either turning to unlawful actions for financial aid or being dragged into gang activities. Most of the people released from prisons come back less healthy than when they got incarcerated. It includes both mental and physical health. Most prisoners who have severe mental problems become poorer during incarceration. Inmates are also more likely to be infected by any spreading diseases than the general population. Besides health problems, many inmates are freed back to the community without being well rehabilitated and with a serious lack of resources. The freshly released prisoners are likely to re-offend for being jobless, homeless, and lacking family connections.
There are many pathways through which mass incarceration affects family members, including stress, strain, and stigma. Before being imprisoned, the person might have supported others through monetary or/and non-monetary ways like household management and child care. Loss of the resources can be expensive and could lead to economic destabilization of the person’s family. The family resources can also be restrained by the costs such as court fees, fines, and expenses during visits attached to incarceration. As per a recent review, having a family member imprisoned has adverse effects on women and fewer health issues on men ( Blankenship et al., 2018) . For instance, women who had family members imprisoned have higher heart attack risks, obesity, and poor or fair health. Both mothers of imprisoned adults and mothers of kids with imprisoned fathers experience psychological stress and additional financial burdens.
Society pays the price of mass incarcerations. Economics aside, the fee that mass incarceration takes on societies is inestimable. Kids who lose one or all parents to detention are set up for damaging mental health problems and a life of poverty. Additionally, societies with higher mass confinement rates are regularly compressed by “zero-tolerance” rules in their schools. Therefore, kids usually experience their leading arrest in their first adolescent years. It means that they swiftly find themselves on paths of repetitive imprisonment. When out of prison, it becomes hard to find a job because they do not get chances to make applications.
The US correctional system can emulate Norway’s management of correctional facilities and systems to improve their effectiveness. Norway believes that instead of punishing lawbreakers, they help recover the destruction that occurred during the crime. Even with the vast population of five million, less than four thousand Norwegians were in prisons in August 2014. Norway relies on a concept called “restorative justice” to repair the damage caused by the criminal ( Sterbenz, 2014) . For example, the Halden prison focuses on the rehabilitation of prisoners rather than making punishments. Halden is a facility on a seventy-five-acre land, built to give the feeling of as much normality as possible. This concept helps to decrease crimes and reduce the number of repeat offenders. Therefore, there is so much the United States can emulate from Norway to make an efficient correction system. Since Norway believes in rehabilitation and restorative justice, it does not have life imprisonment and the death penalty. Twenty-one years is the maximum prison sentence; however, courts have the powers to add more years to a prisoner who is not fit for release or is not fully rehabilitated.
In Norway prisons, there is no overcrowding. Norway has a policy of a single inmate per cell. It is in contrast to the United States, where prisoners are frequently triple or double-bunked. Norway has a lower inmate-to-staff ratio making it easier to ensure the individual safety of inmates ( Sterbenz, 2014) . It is an excellent policy to emulate and change the corrections system in the U.S. All jails in Norway provide education, training programs, treatment, and mental health monitoring. The United States should provide adequate funding for such activities in the prisons.
Additionally, Norway offers support to offenders who are released from prison. They emphasize assisting released lawbreakers in reintegrating into the community. They offer access to active employment market programs set in place to assist ex-convicts in finding jobs and contacting various social livelihood services, for example, housing, disability insurance, and social assistance ( Sterbenz, 2014) . Emulating such a provision will help ex-convicts have an easy time accessing various services in society. The Norwegian corrections system places low-level criminals in open prisons, which have less security and more responsibilities and freedom. The prison conditions are, therefore, favorable to different kinds of offenders. They separate minors from more hardened criminals. More serious lawbreakers who have disruptive behaviors and violence are sent to closed prisons that have higher security.
In conclusion, the United States correction system is not sufficient and needs some adjustments. The prisons need to ease overcrowding and prison conditions. The system should also focus on rehabilitating offenders to be better people when released back to the community. On the other hand, mass incarceration has many health issues for the inmates and their family members. The United States should emulate various issues to improve their corrections service systems. Improvement of the correction system will bring positive impacts to the United States’ residents.
References
Blankenship, K. M., del Rio Gonzalez, A. M., Keene, D. E., Groves, A. K., & Rosenberg, A. P. (2018). Mass incarceration, race inequality, and health: expanding concepts and assessing impacts on well-being. Social Science & Medicine , 215 , 45-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.08.042
LaFree, G., Jiang, B., & Porter, L. C. (2020). Prison and violent political extremism in the United States. Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 36 (3), 473-498. https://www.projectproton.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Prison_and_Political_Extremism_in_the_United_States.pdf
Salib, P. N. (2017). Why Prison: An Economic Critique. Berkeley J. Crim. L. , 22 , 111. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/40d6/9f1fbd0cf0ba3799f660b6c069bfe97817c2.pdf
Sterbenz, C. (2014). Why Norway’s prison system is so successful. Business insider , 11 . https://www.businessinsider.com/norways-prisons-are-better-than-the-american-prisons-2018-6?IR=T
