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Introduction
Mass incarceration has become a major problem in the United States as illustrated by a large number of people in jails or other forms of correctional supervision. An article published in Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice (Mass incarceration, n.d.) presented an argument that mass incarceration is not best explained by rising crime rates. On the contrary, it is a policy choice by the legislation to use imprisonment as punishment for crimes. The many dangers of this approach have been explored in scholarly literature where a consensus reached is that imprisonment hardly solves America’s problem. Therefore, there is a need to address the question of why mass incarceration is still the primary correctional practice despite evidence showing that it does not work desirably. The focus of this paper is to expound on the perceived dangers of the imprisonment policy and offer recommendations on the subject for both practice and policy.
The Problem of Mass Incarceration
Correction and sentencing practices in the United States can be labeled as ineffective and inefficient. Mass incarceration has seen a huge percentage of people being imprisoned. Prison Policy Prison is an online publication that keeps track of the imprisonment practices in the country. In 2019, Sawyer and Wagner (2019) established that almost 2.3 million people were held in state and federal prisons, Indian county jails, local jails, juvenile correctional facilities, and military prisons. In addition, other confinement facilities include those dedicated to immigration detention, state psychiatric hospitals, civil commitment centers, and other prisons in the U.S. territories. In 2020, Sawyer and Wagner (2020) note that these figures have not dropped but the number of facilities has risen. The only argument for this trend is that the country refuses to accept that there can be better alternatives to incarceration or at least that the policymakers are not keen on exploring them.
The ineffectiveness of mass incarceration can be examined in terms of the extent to which it fails to achieve correctional objectives. According to Copp (2020), incarceration often increases the risk of violent recidivism, which means that imprisonment does not make people better. A similar sentiment has been expressed by Stemen (2017) who states that more incarceration does not make society safer. Such an observation can be described as a paradox because incarceration has been shown to have little effect in reducing crime even though it is used as the primary response to delinquency in the country. Another paradox noted by Stemen (2017) is that the policymakers have been attempting to reduce mass incarceration for more than a decade while at the same time calling for tougher sentences and more incarceration to fight crime. The key idea is that imprisonment does not reduce crime, which means it is neither an effective deterrence nor a viable intervention. Sawyer and Wagner (2019) have also noted that many people in jail are being held before their trial, which adds to the growing statistics. However, the fact remains that the country has overemphasized imprisonment.
Besides recidivism and failing efforts, other dangers of mass incarceration have also been explored. For example, parental incarceration tends to harm the well-being of the children who can grow without parental attachment and the appropriate emotional support (Wakefield & Wildeman, 2018). According to Sawyer and Wagner (2019), most of the prisoners are the result of the war on drugs, which means that the wrong approach has been used to address the drug crisis in the country. Despite these observations and dangers, it is important to acknowledge that imprisonment serves certain critical purposes and could be the best solution in some cases. However, the number of people in jails is too much for a democratic country. From an economic perspective, imprisonment deprives the country of a huge proportion of the labor force. Additionally, other externalities can emerge, especially because the goods and services consumed by the prisoners are produced through normal economic activities (Cox, 2020). The redirection of resources to a huge prison population means that the current policy and practice need reconsideration.
Practice and Policy Recommendations
The first recommendation for policy and practice is the exploration and use of alternatives to incarceration. Such a recommendation is based on the notion that imprisonment does not make society safer as expressed by Stemen (2017). Additionally, the observation by Sawyer and Wagner (2019) that many prisoners are the result of the war on drugs means that there are alternatives to jailing drug offenders. Most importantly, crimes committed as a result of drug use would require rehabilitation and other forms of behavioral modification. Alternatively, community-based and family-focused interventions as recommended by Ryon et al. (2017) can also be considered for the appropriate cases. For example, incarceration of juvenile offenders has been considered to be very costly, which means that community-based and family-focused interventions serve two purposes: reduce the costs and pursue real correctional outcomes. Such an idea emanated from a growing body of evidence to suggest that cost-saving can be achieved as in the case study of Florida described by Ryon et al. (2017). Therefore, some alternatives offer better outcomes than incarceration and should be implemented.
The second recommendation is based on the first one since the alternative selected should be the one that yields the best outcome. Therefore, the criminal justice practice should implement a risk management framework to help determine the approaches taken to sentencing. According to Kopkin et al. (2016), such a framework can be an effective remedy to the problem of mass incarceration. Risk assessment is not a new concept in the legal system considering that its use has been rapidly growing in recent decades. As such, it is only a matter of finding new uses for the strategy in the form of determining sentencing decisions. The current use of risk assessment includes such determinations as parole and bail, as well as civil commitment. Therefore, it is apparent that the strategy is already in use in criminal justice. However, the recommended approach, in this case, is that the risk assessment is used in the selection of the alternatives. This means incarceration is only undertaken when the result of risk assessment indicates that it is the best solution.
The recommendation to use risk assessment to determine alternatives to mass incarceration is based on the assumption that some crimes deserve punishment while others require rehabilitation. Additionally, several risk factors need to be considered while selecting an alternative. For example, a minor addicted to drugs may and committing petty crimes may still require incarceration for rehabilitation to take place. On the contrary, a parent who commits a road offense may be placed under house arrest or sentenced to community work where he or she can still have adequate time to spend with children. Such an offender poses an insignificant risk, and other such alternatives as fines can also be implemented. In extreme cases, serial killers, for instance, incarceration is probably the only way to keep the public safe, in which a risk assessment exercise can support this decision. The potential benefits of risk assessment in sentencing have been outlined by Kopkin et al. (2016), who indicates that even judges can make more informed decisions. For example, such matters as recidivism and creating the appropriate deterrence for crimes can be addressed. Recidivism should be a major concern for the criminal justice system.
Conclusion
Mass incarceration in the United States has been depicted as a major problem for the country, which means alternatives and solutions are needed. However, the basis of the discussion in this paper was that there exist paradoxes in the practice where imprisonment is preferred by policymakers despite evidence showing such an approach does not help the country much. Therefore, the practice and policy recommendations offered are based on the idea that the justice system needs solutions that work. Therefore, alternatives to incarceration have been proposed as the first recommendation. Instead of jailing offenders, other punitive measures can be implemented depending on the nature of the crime. Secondly, it would be unwise to use alternatives that would also fail to yield the desired outcomes. Therefore, a risk assessment framework has been recommended to support the selection and implementation of the alternatives. The basic idea is that jails should be used when other alternatives fail, which would go a long way in reducing the levels of mass incarceration.
References
Copp, J. (2020). The impact of incarceration on the risk of violent recidivism. Marquette Law Review, 103(3), 775-791. Web.
Cox, R. (2020). Applying the theory of social good to mass incarceration and civil rights.Research on Social Work Practice, 30(2), 205-218. Web.
Kopkin, M., Brodsky, S., & DeMatteo, D. (2016). Risk assessment in sentencing decisions: A remedy to mass incarceration?Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research, 9(2), 155-164. Web.
Mass incarceration. (n.d.). Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice. Web.
Ryon, S., Early, K., & Kosloski, A. (2017). Community-based and family-focused alternatives to incarceration: A quasi experimental evaluation of interventions for delinquent youth.Journal of Criminal Justice, 51, 59-66. Web.
Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2019). Mass incarceration: The whole pie 2019 [PDF file]. Prison Policy Initiative. Web.
Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2020).Mass incarceration: The whole pie 2020. Prison Policy Initiative. Web.
Stemen, D. (2017). The prison paradox: More incarceration will not make us safer [PDF file]. Vera Institute of Justice. Web.
Wakefield, S., & Wildeman, C. (2018). How parental incarceration harms children and what to do about it [PDF file].National Council on Family Relations, 3(1), 1-2. Web.
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