Custom «Jail Issues» Essay Paper Sample

The main objective of this research paper is to demonstrate a careful investigation on the past, present and future issues concerning major issues in jail. The major concern has been investigated on inmate’s social life in relation to the criminal justice system while inmates are serving their sentences. In addition, it demonstrates and includes predictions as well as recommendations that need to be addressed for the public jail to have the fair treatment of while serving their sentence.

Problem Statement

Social discrimination in jails has been a major problem raising the argument that justice does not exists in jails. Further investigation concerning the notion of race as an analytical tool has proved that black inmates receive the unfair treatment in comparison to their counter parts white inmates while in jail.

Secondly, more inmates are being taken to jail because of crowding. This has also been recognized as major a serious issue at the local, state and federal levels jails. Jail crowding is directly associated with getting tough polices that lead to mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent and violent offenders. It has been established that overcrowding problem is seriously advanced by the fact that the house facilities that house all prisoners, including women, men and juveniles are few.

More, health problems in jails are also pathetic. HIV/AIDS and other diseases in Jails have kept on spreading due to the fact that they are not properly addressed. For instance, prevention of the spread of the HIV virus in prisons and other communicable diseases has not been addressed properly leading to inmate deaths in prison.

Literature Review

Jails are institutions that are designed to securely house people who have been convicted of crimes. There are public and private jails. A public jail is run by the local, state, or federal government. For this reason, the government manages all tasks. These include all undertakings of how the jails are run in terms of ensuring the safety of the inmates who are housed within the prison and society. On the other hand, private jails are contracted by the government to provide the service of imprisoning criminals. Private jails are purely on business purposes and the more inmates they house the more profit they make.

These criminals are termed as prisoners or inmates and are kept in barred safekeeping for a certain amount of time. The type of crime committed dictates the length of the sentence an inmate serves.  In order for a person to be imprisoned in jail, they have to be accused of violating the criminal law tried and found guilt of the offence in the court of law

Jails are solemnly supported by the government for the purposes of correcting the law offender. Thus jails are supposed to rehabilitate law offenders and try to reform them such that they become resourceful citizens in the society and not law violators. Jails should equip inmate with education through vocational training.

According to Frankie and Alice (1999) many inmates pass through the jails as rehabilitation institutions which include federal prisons, state prisons and county jails. This, correctional institutions have many problems which range from under educated inmate, prison overcrowding, rehabilitation, too hush prison conditions, and the extended longer sentences for the uncontrollable inmates. The jail institution example here below, represents the clearly the examples of the jail crises and buses against Prisoners. It also describes the circumstances in which the greater part of prisoners are living .

In reference to Carl and Edward (1960) many inmates live in severely overfull, dirty and not well ventilated cells .He further argues that over the last couple of years , the prison inmates have doubled because of the custom use of pretrial imprisonment ,even for nonviolent crimes . On the other hand two-thirds of the law offenders are still waiting for trial. In many establishments, conditions of imprisonment constitute disparaging treatment by local laws and a worldwide human rights rule which has failed to address prison issues.

Findings and Discussion

Carl and Edward (1960) point that many prisoners belong to the racial minorities, specifically a large group of prisoners are of African-American origin, although they represent around 12% of the whole inmates’ population. Racial discrimination in the U.S. criminal justice and jail system is a common occurrence. For decades the rate of discrimination in jails has increased prompting the number of black prisoners whose experience explicit forms of segregation to be condemned by the public.

In reference to Frankie and Alice (1999) a Prisons and the judicial system operate on the bases of color blindness principle which is the part of voluntary discrimination and which has made it impossible to adhere to strict criminal policies resulting in penalization of minorities.

Afro-Americans are more responsible for undergoing policy controls and are more often arrested than others. Moreover, their social and economic conditions are increasing their imprisonment rate. They are committing more crimes and are lacking money to pay for their defense or the program which is an alternative for the detention. The lack of money is the main reason of Afro-Americans’ deviance.    

Moreover, Frankie and Alice (1999) argue that some findings have shown the unequal treatment of Afro-Americans compared to others during different law proceedings. The statistics show that the race of defendants and victims contributes to the result of such proceedings.  For instance, at the federal level, the Afro-Americans are convicted for longer period of time compared to others, while committing the same crime. This can explain why the greatest disparity in treatment of Afro-Americans and whites, for instance, can be found in convictions for fewer crimes.    ;

It is also equally important to note that the majority of those white inmates involved in death sentence majority of their cases end up with a plea bargain that does not rule out the death penalty. Marvin (2003) Argues that 60% death penalty proceedings authorized by the U.S. Attorney General many times involve a black defendant and while only 20% involve a white inmates. To address the issue of crowding in jails, a variety of programs have been devised to solve the problem of prison crowding. These solutions include; building new public and private prisons, early release programs for prisoners, and alternative sentencing for nonviolent offenders. Despite these measures, the United States continues to face major problems with crowding in prison facilities.

However, Marvin (2003) argues that this has not been the case. The justice system has been hit by corruption and serves citizens unequally on the racial bases the issued at hand points out that  likelihood of black person going to prison in their lifetime is greater compared to that of white race. He further points out that the other social factors   such as; socioeconomic status, the environment in which one is brought up, and the highest educational level a person has achieved are still linked to the racial inequality in the criminal justice system. To this effect, he points out clearly that the race a person is born into has a substantial effect on the amount of discrimination they experience while in jail.

Carl and Edward (1960) again point out that inmates are released out of jail with the very little skills needed to obtain and keep a job; they find themselves attempted back in to the same mistakes which land them into jail. He also adds that it is difficult for them to find valuable jobs to sustain them. It is also difficult for them to get general and post secondary education and a struggle to keep them out of the streets. For this reason many inmates are undereducated with low reading, writing and communication skills. Those who participate in the correctional educational programs have a better chance of staying in the community and finding a job or making a career.

According to Marvin (2003) argument, it is evident that jails issues are more complicated and the major issues that need intervention are social and racial discriminations issues, overcrowding, sexual assault within jail, gang violence, lack of rehabilitation facilities such educational facilities and bad medical care should be addressed  by the government.