The Prison System
The Prison System
The Prison System
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The United States Prison System
Wage Gap
A Glimpse Behind the Bars
Global Warming
Currently there are 2.2 million Americans behind bars.
The Debt Limit
They cost the country $60 billion a year.
Foreign Aid
Studying the American prison system and the issues that currently exist within it is
Universal Health Care an exhausting task. Even taking a mere glimpse at the overlaying problems will
provide an intense awakening and much material for critical thought.
Higher Education
Discrimination based on race clearly exists within the prison system.
Medicare
1. On December 31st, 2005-There were an estimated 491 prisoners per 100,000
Voting United States residents, up from 411 at the year 1995. As well, there were 3,145
black male sentenced inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States.
The Prison System There were 1244 Hispanic male sentenced inmates per 1000 Hispanic males
and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 while males, at this time. To visit the
Social Security
Bureau of Justice Statistics page, Prison Statistics, click here.
The American Dream
This racial discrimination that exists within the prison system is having great effects
Outsourcing on the country, especially in the area of voting.
1. The United States has the highest per capita rate of people in prison.
2. In the year 2000, the Human Rights Watch found that 22 states and the
federal prison system operated at 100 percent or more of their highest
capacity. Due to this extreme overcrowding the rise in privately operated
facilities has recently spiked. Such private prisons now house 5.5 percent of all
state prisoners and 2.5 percent of all federal prisoners. This information was
gathered from the Human Rights Watch article on the general state of the
American prison system. To view this article, click here.
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Robert A. Fangmeier entitled Myths and Realities About Prisons and Jails,
that contains this information, click here.
It has been questioned whether or not the crimes many Americans have been
imprisoned for actually merit incarceration as the fairest, most economical, efficient,
and ethical punishment option.
1. Upon their investigation, the Human Rights Watch found that many prison
inmates have “scant opportunities for work, training, education, treatment, or
counseling” because of taxpayer resistance to increasing the already
outrageous amount on money spent on the prison system. Finding themselves
in such seemingly hopeless situations, inmates with long sentences, little hope
of release, who are jammed into poorly equipped facilities—therefore with
little incentive for good behavior—often become violent. To read the Human
Rights Watch article on the general state of the American prison system
entitled U.S. Prisons, click here.
2. The Human Rights Watch also found that prisoner on prisoner sexual abuse is
currently a rising issue in the US prison system, as the number of inmates
continually increases. As the issue of rape increases, so do the numbers of
those both physically and psychologically damaged. Physical effects vary from
instance to instance and include the transmission of diseases/infections, such
as HIV (a particularly growing concern). The psychological stress that
inevitably follow sexual abuse is another area of great concern as “victims of
prison rape commonly report nightmares, deep depression, shame, loss of
self-esteem, self-hatred, and considering or attempting suicide.” Because of
the damages that accompany sexual abuse anger and tendencies toward
violence often increase. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspects of the issue of
sexual abuse in prisons is that “prison authorities, unsurprisingly, generally
claim that prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse is an exceptional occurrence
rather than a systemic problem”. Due to this attitude, along with the issues of
funding previously discussed, victims of sexual abuse in prisons do not often
receive adequate care. To read the official Human Rights Watch report No
Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons, click here.
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Missing from and unable to be seen in the statistics above is the number of children
left with one or no parents, the families that struggle to make ends meet with limited
income, and cyclic nature of imprisonment in the U.S. This cycle mentioned now is
one in which children lacking opportunity become constrained in a sort of negative
mindset without the influences of essential figures in their lives.
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