Title: Injustice in the Prison System - Prison system
Headings: Injustice in the Prison System
Injustice in the Prison System
Content: Therefore the prisons move away from being rehabilitation centers, and become merely a place to hold those deemed as convicts until their sentences are up. This situation creates both an injustice for the people wrongly incarcerated, and for those who are inside to be re-assimilated into society at the end of their stay. To end this problem, alternatives to jail must be found for nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting and drug use. By placing nonviolent offenders into the prison system for prolonged periods of time society adds to the problem of prisons acting as long term babysitters instead of rehabilitation centers. This in turn has many ill effects in regards to the greater good of society. Angela Davis, an advocate against the prison system states “Given the recent emergence of supermaximum-security prisons … in general which are being divested of educational, recreational, and other programs historically associated with rehabilitation projects. ” To accommodate the ever growing prison populations, funding has been cut from rehabilitation projects, and placed into filling the prisons up to capacity. By simply reducing the sentences of those convicts who are inside for nonviolent crimes this process could be avoided altogether and society would be far better off in the long run. Those convicts who would remain inside the prisons would be able to learn valuable skills which in turn they could use to be successful in the outside world without committing further crimes. To combat the increasing number of convicts in the prison system the states which have an excess number of prisoners have had to turn to the privatization of prisons.