However, the Russian prison system subject inmates to poor conditions that generate several health concerns. For instance, Russian prisons have acted as a source to tuberculosis because of poor prevention, treatment, and management of the disease (Sarang et al
Department of State, 2012). The American prison system is based on the technique of solitary confinement, which has been utilized as a means of prison management and rehabilitation for a long period of time (Vasiliades, 2005, p
Indeed, many assail the United States as being the civilized and industrialized country with the most criminals per capita while others might say that this only because there are a lot of criminals and all of them could and should be incarcerated for the actions they commit. Further, the United States has roughly three hundred million guns and a lot of the crime that get people sent to prison involves those guns, whether possessed or bought legally or illegally (Cook, Harris, Ludwig & Pollack, 2015)
Even if the idea of habitual offending sentencing sounds good in theory (and it does to many people), there are concerns that race and ethnicity are playing entirely too high a role when it comes to who gets slapped with such harsh sentencing and who does not. One study on the subject, as authored by Crow and Johnson, found that Florida was disproportionately levying habitual offender sentences against ethnic and racial minorities as compared to white people, just as one example (Crow & Johnson, 2008)
While both sides have compelling arguments, there is a good and single path forward and it requires ex-convicts, drug addicts or mentally ill people to actively participate in their redemption and/or rehabilitation or they will seal their proverbial fate when it comes to how productive and fruitful their lives will be. While people who make mistakes should get second chances if they are serious about doing the right thing, people that repeatedly break the law and game the system should be hit with punitive and thorough measures to ensure that they know that this is not a game and that their anti-social, insidious and hurtful behavior will not be tolerated or accepted on any level (Goodman, 2012)
This has happened for a litany of reasons such as concerns about racial disparities in sentencing, overcrowding, recidivism rates, rehabilitation performance and the policy-making process in general. There are also questions and concerns about the number of drug users/addicts in prison, the amount of mentally ill people in prison and how prisons now seem to resemble the asylums and institutions of the past in that they are more about warehousing undesirables rather than actually administering justice a lot of the time (Houser & Belenko, 2015)
This is seen as a major and important movement due to the things and events that can happen when recidivism occurs such as homicides, sex offenses, larceny, assaults and batteries. There is also the factor that the government almost always uses some sort of confinement method to deal with criminals and thus isolating them from society (Matusitz & Breen, 2013)
Of course, those people need to learn their lessons, change their habits, change their friends, etc. It is just like the idea of a prior heroin addict needing to stay away from situations where drug use is present (McLeod, 2015)
While is a lot of concern about the ongoing lives of criminals once they get out, there are many in society that are unsympathetic. Even so, reintegrating prior criminals back into society is important because an ex-convict that has a record is much less likely to find gainful employment and this increases the odds that they will return to a life of crime and/or will otherwise be non-productive during their life (Miller & Spillane, 2012)
People complain about some sentences being too light while others assert that some sentences are entirely too harsh given the crime involved. Others are at odds over habitual offenders who keep getting into trouble and whether escalating sentences over time, regardless of the severity of the crime, is a good answer for crimes and criminals that just do not seem to stop (Pinto, 2015)
While people who make mistakes should get second chances if they are serious about doing the right thing, people that repeatedly break the law and game the system should be hit with punitive and thorough measures to ensure that they know that this is not a game and that their anti-social, insidious and hurtful behavior will not be tolerated or accepted on any level (Goodman, 2012). The overall problem that will be addressed in this report is how to address and handle the fact that the amount of crime and incarceration in this country is entirely too high given the ostensible modernity and advancement of our society (Redburn, Western & Travis, 2014)
Time in the current prison system was usually about thirteen years and ranged from six to nineteen years. Time in any prison system was about fourteen years on average and ranged from nine to twenty years (Rosen, Dumont, Cislo, Brockmann, Traver & Rich, 2014)
Ruderman, Wilson and Reid (2015) looked at precisely this subject in a recent treatise about prisons and California was indeed one of their main focuses in terms of location. In particular, they looked at how overcrowding aggravates the drug abuse of inmates due to the overcrowding causing less efficacy in the providing and enforcement of rehabilitation while inside (Ruderman, Wilson & Reid, 2015)
Even if there is not a real and firm comparison between discrimination based on race or gender as compared to discrimination based on drug use or felon status, there are people in the latter two groups that are well-intentioned and that are ready to get their life straight but they are not really getting an honest chance to do so. While prevention would be much better as an overall strategy, something must be done with the people that have gone astray but want to redeem themselves (Saxonhouse, 2004)