Prison Assignment
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date of Submission
Prisons
More individuals are imprisoned in the US than in any other country in the world, both overall and per capita. Sevenfold more individuals are behind bars today than there were in 1970, totaling 2.3 million, considerably exceeding both population growth and crime rates.
Over two million prisoners are being watched over by roughly 500,000 correctional officials in the US. Within a secure prison setting, correctional personnel is subject to certain workplace risks.
Provide as complete an answer as you can to the following questions using the videos from this week and your textbook. Don’t cut your responses too short. Make sure they are grammatically correct and have complete sentences.
When did jail overcrowding start to become an issue in the US, and what was the main reason that led to the overcrowding?
Inmates in American prisons increased dramatically between the 1970s and the 1990s.
The federal government’s pursuit of the “war on drugs” left the states in charge of managing the congestion, but these governments had inadequate resources, which was a major contributing factor. In general, this is what caused the jail overcrowding, which may be said to have begun in the 1980s, at the onset of the War on Drugs. During this time, law authorities began to detain anyone who had committed a drug-related offense and take them to jail. As a result, there are today more people behind bars for drug-related offenses than there were in 1980 for all other crimes combined.
Generally speaking, jail overpopulation may cause a number of linked problems, including an increase in violence, suicides, and mental health issues (Champion, 1994).
Read Chapter 10 of your textbook, “Community Sentences: Probation, Intermediate Sanctions, and Restorative Justice,” to find out more. Complete the chart below, starting with probation and choosing two more alternatives to imprisonment:
| Alternative | Explain how this alternative works. | List one pro. | List one con. | Is this alternative effective? Why or why not? |
| 1. Probation | Probation enables an individual who is convicted of the crime to stay in their community rather than spend time in jail. When providing probation, the courts set rules as well as regulations that require the probationer to obey. Therefore, in case the probationer fails to abide by these rules as well as the regulations, he/she is then sent to jail to serve the sentence there. | There are various advantages of probation, however, the major advantage is that it is quite cost-effective. because sending an inmate to prison cost about $25,000 a year while putting him/her on probation only costs about $2,000 a year. | There are also various disadvantages of probation. One major disadvantage is that while serving probation, the probation officer has every right to search for the home without a search warrant and this is a potential invasion of privacy. | Based on my opinion, I believe that probation has turned out to be quite effective because it keeps the majority of non-violent criminals out of jail and this prevents overcrowding in prisons. |
| 2. Restitution | Restitution might need the offender to pay back to the victims of crime or even to do various duties or tasks in their community, for instance picking up trash, and cleaning up public parks rather than serving time in prison. | The main advantage of this method is that it is very cheap/inexpensive especially to manage and it also when providing a reimbursement back to the victims. | The key disadvantage is that the judges, as well as the probation officers, view restitution as a great benefit to offenders, victims, the criminal justice system itself, and society. | Based on its efficiency, I believe that I believe that community service restitution is effective since the majority of the offenders who are sentenced to restitution complete the required number of hours and can learn from their mistakes and they are likely not to commit a future crime. |
| 3. Electronic Monitoring | This is essential in keeping track of the offenders, then the system ensures the implementation of the house arrest sentence is essential. Therefore, the system requires various devices, for instance, an ankle monitoring system that shows the location of the individual. The electric monitoring systems ensure that the offenders can comply with the new limitations on their freedom set by the judge. | One major advantage is that it can save taxpayers as well as detention facilities money since the offender is needed to pay for the monitoring among other fees(Siegel & Worrall, 2015). | The major disadvantage of this system is that Some who have committed serious offenses are allowed to use this system. However, I feel that such individuals should not be given this freedom. | This alternative is effective since it decreases threats to public safety. It also allows the probation officer to track and know where the offenders are, and if they are not obeying the rules. |
The use of the death sentence by the courts in extreme circumstances including the crime of murder is particularly contentious. While executions for other crimes have been permitted in the past, all inmates on death row at the moment have been found guilty of murder. Answer the following questions in full sentences using your textbook’s Chapter 9, “Punishment and Sentencing,” and the link below.
The Death Penalty Information Center offers crucial data, such as information broken down by state. Hover over the states on the interactive map to see the fundamentals. For further information, scroll to the bottom of the page and select one or more states. You’ll get a summary for each state you choose on the right side of the page. With 14.4 murders per 100,000 people, Louisiana has the highest murder rate in the nation.
As it relates to the state you live in, complete the table below.
| State you reside in? | Death penalty in your state? | If not, when was it abolished? | If yes, how many are currently on death row? | What is the total number of executions in your state (including before 1976)? | What is the number of innocent people freed from death row in your state? |
| North Carolina | Yes | About 140 were on death row based on the report of January 1, 2020, in the state of North Carolina. | 43 individuals have been executed in North Carolina Since 1977, all of these people were convicted of murder. | This required and involved deep research. Based on the research I have done, only two innocent individuals have since been exonerated and they had served 30 years in prison. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were disabled half-brothers and were released from death row in 2014 after confessing to the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, but DNA evidence proved them innocent. |
Do you think the death penalty is still appropriate and successful at preventing crime? If not, why not? (If you can, be specific in your response.)
My justification leads me to believe that the death penalty is somewhat useful in some cases, but that innocent person shouldn’t be sent to death row for a crime they haven’t committed. According to recent studies, 1 in 25 people on execution row are innocent; regrettably, this figure is rising daily. Because it is viewed as cruel and inhumane, the death sentence has currently been abolished in the majority of states.
When someone is given the death penalty, they are executed by lethal injection; but, in the past, the United States has also used electric shock and other methods of execution. Because of this, I believe that the death penalty should continue to be used to punish some significant offenders so that others will not consider committing crimes (Herrmann, 2008).
References
Champion, D. J. (1994). Offender risk assessment: A guide for criminal justice. Publishing house Greenwood Group.
Herrmann, J. (2008). The background of the death penalty in the US. Verlag GRIN.
Worrall, J. L., Siegel, L. J. (2015). Overview of criminal justice. Cengage Education.