PRISON OVERCROWDING

Prison Overcrowding

Prison Overcrowding

Introduction

The topic of crime within humanity has been a problem for numerous centuries past. There has always been origin for penalty of lawbreakers, but only recently has jail become the major organisation for doing so. Until the 18th years there were many methods for punishing misdeed, many too gruesome to be advised utilising today. Prison is now glimpsed as being the greatest pattern of penalty an lawbreaker can be granted; the greater the crime, the longer the sentence. But if this was the case, certainly misdeed rates would be decreasing. The number of prisoners being incarcerated is gradually increasing, but likewise, so is the crime rate. If jail is actually as truly incredible as its proponents claimed it to be, then the crime rate should be decreasing. Instead we are actually living in a high misdeed society. These bigger crime rates can be partially attributed to an increased grade of describing misdeeds, but that will not be the sole explanation. The fact that jails are not as productive as they should be can better account for increasing misdeed rates.

Background

Before the 18th Century, imprisonment was only one, and by no means the most significant, element in schemes of punishment. These took the pattern of aggravated patterns of death penalty such as shattering on the wheel, corporal punishment such as whipping, and public shaming which was accomplished through the pillory. In gentle situations banishment and penalties were used. Crime rates at this time were comparatively reduced to modern times, even though jail was not the major pattern of punishment. This could just be due to a poor system in recording infringements or it could highlight the fact that prison itself does not decrease crime rates. In the 18th Century there was a growing revulsion against public, corporal and capital punishment. Evidence suggested it was counterproductive in that it often served to inflame rather than subdue the mob. This led to Enlightenment critics promoting prison as the generalized response to crime (Carrabine et al., 2004).

As jail is now the major procedure for penalizing offenders, there is an expanding number of persons being incarcerated. This is conceiving a problem of chronic overcrowding. In alignment to try and slightly alleviate this difficulty there are currently a variety of alternate institutions. These can be grouped under two major types. The first is localized jails and remand hubs, whose primary task is to obtain and consign prisoners to the courts. The second is Young lawbreakers organisations and adult teaching prisons. All prisoners inside these assemblies are classified either A, B, C or D according to a scheme devised in 1966 by Lord Mountbatten (Carrabine et al., 2004). Those who are in category A are glimpsed as being highly dangerous, while those in class D are glimpsed as not dangerous. Mountbatten called for the engrossment of all class A prisoners into one single-purpose, maximum-security fortress. This was rapidly rejected on the cornerstone of security and ...