LIFE IN PRISON

Life in Prison



Life in Prison

In what way, if any, has your understanding of prison life changed since reading this text?

Although many facilities have been introduced by the American government in modern prison setups but there is much to do further (Adams, 2004). The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that there are currently over 2 million offenders incarcerated in jails and prisons and the use of jails and prisons for punishment in the United States is burgeoning.

Citizens in the United States tend to equate prison with punishment, while viewing other forms of punishment, such as probation, as a slap on the wrist. This view is fueled by the crime control model of justice, which focuses on the victim and encourages harsh punishment for offenders. The men and women who find themselves incarcerated create their own culture within the prison walls as a mode of survival (Cullen, 2004).

This entry discusses the demographics of those who are incarcerated and examines the inmate culture as well as offenders' adaptation to prison life.

With the rising number of males and females being incarcerated in the United States, more and more individuals are struggling with their adaptation to prison culture. Some feel that policies should be implemented at the institutional level to assist offenders in successfully adapting to prison life, specifically for female offenders, and that addressing policing and court-level components of the criminal justice system could reduce the overrepresentation in the correctional system of minorities and those with lower education levels (Cullen, 2004).

Describe the adaptation strategies used by "Anonymous N. Inmate" and other inmates in adjusting to prison life. Compare these strategies to those described in Voices from the Field: Prison Adaptation Strategies for First-Time Short-Term Inmates.

The rehabilitative ideal has not totally dissolved in the current era, however. “Re-entry” has replaced “rehabilitation” today, affecting the thousands of prison and jail inmates that are released every year. More people in prison means more prisoners having to “re-enter” society since only 7 percent of prisoners are serving life terms or facing execution (Clear, 2005). Two stages can be targets of re-entry efforts or alternatively impede success outside of prison: during and after incarceration. Re-entry efforts inside prisons include educational and vocational training, psychological counseling and drug treatment, and prerelease programs. Most prisons offer one or more re-entry programs, but resources are scarce compared to the ballooning prison population and participation rates accordingly dropped over the decade of the 1990s. In 1997, a third of inmates participated in educational programs, just over a quarter in vocational programs, and just over 10 percent in prerelease programs designed specifically to help them survive on the outside (Clemmer, 2005).

Further, many programs are not as glamorous in practice as on paper; few educational and vocational programs occupy over twenty hours per week of inmate time, and over three quarters of “drug treatment programs” are inmate-led Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings (Foucault, 2005).

Once prisoners are out of full custody, transitional residential programs, where closely supervised ...