Corrections: Punishment & Prison

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Read Chapter 16 of your textbook.

Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising/interesting thing you learned? Do you think punishment can work? Why or why not?

Provide a list of terms you used at the bottom of your post

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The Poor are punished more


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The main goals of the prison system as stated in the chapter are to incapacitate (isolate) the prisoner from society, deter the criminal from pursuing further crime both individual deterrence for the criminal, and general deterrence to demonstrate the punishment of actions so that others will not commit crime. Perhaps most interestingly is the goal of retribution, and finally although unsuccessful the system of punishment is meant to somehow prevent further crime and recidivism by rehabilitating the criminal.
Perhaps interestingly I thought was the decision process before the actual punishment is served. For example the internal causes as to why criminals do what they do, versus the external causes I thought was an interesting connection. This somewhat reminded me of how juries view and judges for that matter a criminal based on their locus of control. In this case internal causes such as personality or by “choice” result in much harder punishment and sentencing. Perhaps its common sense because those who know what they are doing rather than doing something out of situational factors (external causes) should receive more severe punishment. I just thought it was an interesting side note.
The ruling on what the punishment should then be before the criminal actually serves is another controversial process. Deciding on whether to send the criminal to jail, for no more than a one year sentence, or to send the criminal to prison for long term sentence are all determined by the characteristics of the criminal and the broad discretion of the judge.
Because criminals were being sent to jail for different amounts of time for the same crimes the question of disparities in sentencing had to be addressed. The response was the evolution of sentencing guidelines specifically determinate sentences or mandatory sentences. However, judges still have broad discretion because they only need to refer to mandatory guidelines and then are free to rule based on their own opinion if they provide an explanation for the ruling.
The question then with overpopulation of criminals and the filling of jails has deterrence and prison sentence goals actually worked? I think for the most part it has. Incapacitating criminals from the general public is the main goal, and it does a very good job in doing so. Rehabilitation on the other hand is a complete failure as the book pointed out. Often time’s rehabilitation occurs at the very end of the prison sentence before the criminal is supposed to be reabsorbed into the community. However, this process is relatively ineffective. Often times while in prison the social group such as family members, and any possible positive enforcement for success once the criminal is released becomes lost. That in correlation with the negative stigma associated with released prisoners with the general public usually leads to failure and a very high rate of recidivism.
The concept of retribution on the other hand along with isolation has been very successful. Historically, criminals would be mocked and the “eye for an eye” mentality was the view of justice. In order to avoid the historic “blood feud” or the belief that people need to “take justice into their own hands” harsher sentencing and prison reforms provided a basis as to avoid individuals acting on their own. As a result the prison system became stable and harsh enough as to become the entity responsible to deter not only criminal behavior but deter civilians from acting against criminals on their own or “taking justice into their own hands.”
Prison however is fairly expensive and as we are seeing today prisons and jails are overcrowded and extremely full. This with impending state and federal budget crisis looks very dismal. However alternatives such as probation, half-way-houses, restitution and so forth can work. Although these types of punishment may have been a response to avoid overpopulation in jails they actually may indirectly backfire. For example parole officers may have hundreds of criminals they are responsible to keep up on. Half way houses foster more crime, and again things such as the “three strike rule” is taken advantage of and recidivism becomes a problem. The solution then is very unclear. Although I agree prisons are most effective, and there are other punishment options it’s controversial whether or not they work. However, solutions for change are also dismal. I doubt more funding will be available for more jails, so I suppose the system is working the best it can with the recourses it currently has.

Terms: incapacitate, prison, jail, deterrence, retribution, recidivism, rehabilitation, internal causes, external causes, juries, judges, locus of control, determinate sentencing.

Chapter 16 discusses the steps involved with punishment, including prison, probation, and other types alternatives. It was interesting to read about, especially the section about the culture of prison. I think there’s a lot of psychology involved with prison gangs, drugs, and the overall grim atmosphere.

The first step, before a criminal is even in prison/on probation/whatever, is sentencing. An appropriate sentence must be given, and judges and jurors rely a lot on psychology to make this decision. The thing I wanted to discuss is controllability vs. stability. Controllability is whether or not the criminal was in control of their behavior during the crime - do they “need” to do this? Or did they commit the crime willingly? Stability refers to the criminal’s behavior in the long run - was their actions during the crime simply temporary? This stuff is important to think about when deciding on sentencing. Obviously, crimes attributed to less controllable causes and outside factors are more likely to have a softer sentence. Going further, you can see how repeat offenders can have harsher sentences. This is because of stability. The three-strikes law also applies, because obviously their criminal behavior is more permanent than temporary.

After sentencing comes the actual punishment. I found the sections on prison culture really interesting, but I loved the discussion on supermax prisons, because they involve so much psychology. These prisons are designed for the most serious criminals. Obviously, these people can’t be placed in a regular prison, because they may be a hazard to themselves or others. On the other hand, the isolation they are subjected to is also dangerous. I found it interesting how the book said many developed psychological issues. Psychiatrists could actually use this isolation to study social psychology and the effects zero socialization has on people. Interesting!

Now for the culture of prison - I first wanted to discuss prisonization. It’s really just a general term for inmates accepting the cultures and standards of living in a prison. And their standards sound awful! These inmates lose their freedom, their decisions, their time management, etc. I can see how this can have a psychological impact. Going further, the inmate’s entire environment is violent, and this also has psychological effects. I found it interesting reading about “convict code” and unspoken rules/laws inmates follow. They must also be watching out for themselves, because the threat of violence never goes away.

I believe whether or not punishment works depends on both the type of punishment and the personality of the person. As the book states, recidivism rates for inmates is pretty high. I feel like this may have something to do with the atmosphere. Prison could possibly be more effective if the violent atmosphere was resolved, but I’m not sure. Regarding other forms of punishment, including probation, community service, and restitution, it’s hard to really tell. The probation recidivism rates are also pretty high, but better than prison. I’m not sure for other types of punishment, but it would be interesting to see which has the lowest recidivism rates.

Key Terms: Controllability, Stability, Three-Strikes Law, Supermax Prison, Prisonization, Restitution, Recidivism

I still can’t get over the timing between this class and my Criminal Justice Systems class. We just began our discussion of the correction system this week as well. Sentencing and corrections are the next step in the legal system that we have been working our way through this semester. They play an important role in carrying out the goals of the legal system as a whole and include many psychological aspects in the process.
There are several types of sentences that can be carried out. We are most familiar with incarceration, but convicted criminals can also receive sentences such as restitution (fines or labor), criminal rehabilitation, probation, or house arrest. These alternatives provide options that are less costly to the state. They also offer less severe punishments that might be considered appropriate for less serious crimes or first time offenders. In a time with limited financial resources, it is important to have other alternatives.
The different types of sentences serve the purpose of meeting one or more of the goals mentioned in the book; incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. Incarceration refers to the physical containment of criminals in order to keep them from committing any further crimes. Deterrence can serve two purposes. Specific deterrence also hopes to prevent criminals from committing crimes in the future, while general deterrence strives to keep other people from committing crimes because of the consequences. Retribution is a more emotional goal of punishment that serves the purpose of restoring “moral balance,” as the book puts it. The last goal in the book, rehabilitation, strives to change the lifestyle and thought process of criminals in order to allow for their release into society. In my Criminal Justices Systems textbook, there is a fifth goal of punishment listed. This goal is called restorative justice and focuses more on the victim of crimes. The aim is to repair the losses caused by a crime.
I was incredibly interested in the statistics provided at the end of the chapter about who constitutes the prison population. First of all, the incarceration rate in the US is incredibly high compared to other countries. The book points out that California alone has more prisoners in the system than Japan, Sweden, France, Canada, and Great Britain combined, and California doesn’t even have one of the top ten incarceration rates in the country. The number of people in the prison system can be attributed to the types of sentences given by judges. Three-strikes laws, mandatory sentences, and long sentences all contribute to the number of inmates. 40% of current inmates have at least one other family member who is or has been incarcerated and less than 33% have a high school diploma. A staggering 93% of convicts are men, which blew my mind. African Americans are incarcerated at a rate that is six times the number of whites.
The concept of punishment is interesting when you start to think about it. Does mental and physical punishment work as a way to deter, incapacitate, rehabilitate, and achieve retribution? I think that is some instances certain types of sentences achieve the goals they set out to accomplish. But, consider this, if convicts form gangs and continue drug use in prison, are any of the goals being achieved then? The system is deterring, incapacitating, or rehabilitating criminals if they are forced to into a different, and more violent, culture where crime still exists.

Terms: prison, sentencing, corrections, restitution, rehab, probation, house arrest, incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, restorative justice, retribution, general deterrence, specific deterrence, incarceration,

Chapter 16- Corrections and Sentencing
Since sentencing and prison time serves as the consequence for breaking rule governed behavior (our legal system), it is important for us to understand the circumstances and guidelines for which the sentencing process happens. Forces such as internal and external causes explain why a person may do what they do. Internal causes focus on personality and choice whereas external causes focus on situational factors that may play a role in the actions of people. Other factors such controllability and stability of a person refers to one’s internal causes; controllability is the amount of control someone has over their behavior and stability is the degree to which a cause of an action is presently temporary or if there are more permanent factors that are playing on a situation. Behaviors that present themselves and internal, controllable, and stable typically will receive the harshest punishments. This reflects back on the insanity plea as well as finding someone competent in the fact that you are trying to prove if a person has control over their actions or if they are unaware what was happening. If they are presenting something that is more permanent and need help such this might be indicative of possessing some sort of mental disorder. However the type of behavior that is being punished isn’t always the only factor that comes to play when sentencing an individual. Sad but true race and gender also play a role as factors in sentencing; African Americans are usually treated more harshly than White Americans and women are usually treated with more leniency. While some sentencing disparities are quite understandably so, others when dealing with the same crime but different races or genders we see very disturbing inequalities. To reduce these biases the federal government has established sentencing guidelines to help make appropriate sentences to be served. These guidelines present judges with information such as the average sentence given to persons who have committed similar crimes etc. If a judge happens to deviate from the guidelines and uses their own subjective opinions, they are required to write a report justifying why they decided to make that sentence. Sometimes judges will go by the three-strikes law which requires that criminals receive the harshest punishments if it is their third felony. This to me makes a lot of sense because if you are repeatedly committing crimes to that severity you need to be locked up for a certain amount of time to curve that kind of behavior.
The goals of imprisonment vary from incapacitation to simply retribution. Incapacitation encompasses the notion that if a criminal is kept in a cell and is unable to harm anyone outside of that cell or prison than society is spared from his or her criminal behaviors. The goal of deterrence operates off of the notion that if you suffer in prison long enough that when you are released you will be deterred from committing any other crime out of the fear of going back to prison. Retribution, another hopeful outcome to prison, is a more emotional approach to punishment. It provides citizens who continually abide by the law solidarity while provides criminals with an education about behaviors that are considered wrong. Rehabilitation is the most sought after goal of prison however in terms of long term goals. Eventually prisoners will be released unless they are serving life sentences or are on death row. In the instances in which the inmate will be released it is an important part of their imprisonment to improve their behaviors while locked up. In other words it is the prison’s job to transform criminals into productive members of society. Since prison becomes such a secluded subculture with its own rules and norms, prisoners often go through a process called prisonization within the first year or so of being there. They have to get used to the language of the prison, power hierarchy, rewards and punishments that are put into place there in order to fit in and survive amongst the population. This largely touches on aspects of social psychology in that powerful situations can greatly impact and overwhelm individual differences; a personality characteristic that a person may possess may be overwritten by a behavior due to situational factors.
Terms: Sentencing process, internal causes, external causes, personality, situational factors, controllability, stability, temporary factors, situational factors, race, gender, disparities, sentencing guidelines, three strikes law, incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, prisonization, norms, social psychology, individual differences.

Chapter 16 was an interesting chapter. It builds off what we have been learning throughout the class by talking about the prison sentence associated with court cases. Prison sentences is known as the form of punishment for criminals. This chapter covered the punishment sentencing very detailed.

The first thing I found interesting about this chapter was the diversity of sentencing depending on the judge. In the study they talked about in the book, based on the same offense the sentence varied from 3 years with no fine, to 20 years with a 65,000 fine. That is a drastic difference. I also found it interesting how there are sentencing guidelines which are guidelines handed down from the federal government. There is also a determinate sentencing which is where a judge has to provide a sentence between the specified range if the defendant is found guilty.

One thing I learned that I did not know before reading this chapter was that there is a three-strikes law, where once a criminal is convicted of a third felony charge they are sentenced to serve a life sentence. I also thought it was interesting that the book talked about how often times when a criminal receives their third strike they are at the end of their criminal careers anyways because they are generally around 30, which is the end of the violent crimes. Even after the criminal is serving time parole is discussed. That is where an inmate is released into the supervision of a parole officer.

There are four main types of prisons in the US. First there are jails, which are different from prisons because they usually hold inmates for short periods of times. Prisons are the next type, they hold criminals for longer periods of time. Some inmates actually live the rest of their lives in prisons. I have always wondered what the difference is between prisons and federal prisons and the book clarified what the difference is. Federal prisons hold inmates that broke federal laws. This could mean that it contained crimes in a number of different states. The last of the prisons is a supermax prison. This is where the violent and serious criminals are sent.

The next thing I learned while reading this chapter was the goals of imprisonment. Incapacitation is the first of the goals. This is the process of keeping criminals away from society so they cannot cause harm to others outside the prison walls. The next goal is deterrence, which is the goal that this punishment for their crime will keep them from committing any other crimes so they will do things to stay out of prison once they are released. Retribution is the third goal, where the criminal receives the punishment they deserve for the harsh crimes they committed. The fourth goal, which is what we have heard prisons are all about is the rehabilitation of prisoners. This is the process of preparing prisoners to return to society as better people that will act as society does.

One thing that is often discussed when imprisonment is brought up is the high costs associated with this punishment process. Imprisonment is the second most expensive punishment technique we use. The only one higher is the death penalty. Prison is worth the high price because of all of its advantages. Prison keeps criminals off the streets and away from society. This creates a safer environment for people. Ideally it slows down the crime rate when criminals are in prison but, the book states that even though people are arrested, new recruits quickly fill their shoes. One thing that does not look good is the rate of recidivism which is the rate that inmates return to prison after being released. This rate is around 67 percent which is a shockingly high number, which leads me to believe that the prison system is not doing a very good job of rehabilitation before they send people back into society.

There are a number of alternatives to prison that some people are sentenced to instead. One alternative is paying restitution. This sentence is usually for crimes involving money, where they can pay for the stolen property or work to pay it off. The next alternative is probation. This is where the criminal is released into society under the supervision of a probation officer. Probation has a problem however, because a large percentage are re-arrested within three years. House arrest is an interesting alternative where the criminal is usually equipped with some type of monitoring system such as an ankle bracelet, to keep track of their location. This system alerts the police when the criminal leaves their house or designated area of confinement. The final alternative is residential community corrections centers (Halfway Houses). Halfway houses are useful because they do not just throw a criminal back into society and let them fail.

I learned a lot of new things while reading this chapter that I did not know before. I did not know how many different types of confinement there were, nor did I know how many types of alternatives their were for prison. I enjoyed reading this chapter because of all the new information I read.

Terms: punishment, determinate sentencing, sentencing guidelines, three-strikes law, felony, jails, prisons, federal prisons, supermax prisons, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, recidivism, restitution, probation, house arrest, and halfway house.

The first thing that happens after conviction is the sentencing; this is when the proper punishment is decided for the individual who is convicted of the crime. This is done by assessing the seriousness of the crime and characteristics about the criminal. Psychologists use two dimensions to explain individual’s behaviors when committing crime. The first is controllability, which is whether or not an individual could have controlled their behavior, and the second is stability is whether the cause is temporary or permanent. There are four different types of imprisonment that an individual can be sentenced to. The first of the four are jails, these have short term holding cells and this is where none dangerous individuals and people who are convicted of misdemeanors serve their time. The second are prisons, these hold criminals for extended periods of time ranging anywhere from years to decades. Then there are federal prisons where individuals who are convicted of breaking a federal law are held. Then there are supermax prisons; these are reserved for individuals who are incredibly dangerous. There are many different goals, but there are four main goals that are hoped to be accomplished through incarceration. The first and simplest goal is that of incapacitation, meaning that if someone is locked up in a prison cell then they will not be able to harm individuals in society. The second goal is that of deterrence, we hope that after experiencing what it is like to live in prison that once the individual is release they will not want to go back so they will deter from such activities. This also gets broken down into two subsets, those being specific deterrence and general deterrence. The third goal is retribution, which is more on the emotional side of things, it’s that the criminals suffer whilst in prison and law-abiding citizens do not. The text also discusses things such as the culture within a prison because it is it’s own subculture with it’s own norms that should not be broken. Social scientists that study prisons came up with the term prisonization, which is when new inmates are getting used to the new norms, values, and language that they are to follow while being in prison. Under this subset they talked about gangs and drugs within the prisons. There was a quote from a prisoner talking about gangs in the text that I found interesting. It basically claimed that inmates have little to no choice but to join a gang and that they are mostly made up by the color of your skin. If you do not join a gang you will be a target by all the other gangs. The text also discusses alternatives to prison and there were quite a few listed. Things such as probation, house arrest, residential community correction centers. All in all I was not surprised by any of the information presented in the text since I have already taken criminal justice systems. I thought that it was all pretty much cut and dry. So it was a little less enjoyable since i already knew the information, but with that being said it is always nice to brush up on concepts.

Terms: Prisonization, house arrest, residential community correction centers, probation, fedral prison, supermax, jail, prison, controllability, stability, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution

This chapter talks about corrections, including sentencing, imprisonment and alternatives in the justice system. It starts off by talking about sentencing decisions which depends on the type of crime committed, the circumstances and reasons for which the crime was committed and other attributes about the criminal. Many times when people try to explain a reason for a particular behavior, they distinguish between internal causes, such as a personality force, or an external cause, which could be an outside force causing the person to commit the crime. Controllability decides whether or not the person could have controlled their action in the situation. Stability refers to whether or not the cause was temporary or permanent. Crimes that receive harsher crimes often have more internal causes, that are controllable and stable, compared to a crime that had more external forces that the person was not able to control, which often leads to a less harsh punishment.

However, this does not mean that two people that commit the same crime will receive the same punishment. Determinate sentencing requires judges to hand down a sentence that falls within a prespecified range if the defendant is found guilty of a particular crime. This is often determined through the use of a sentencing table, so if a person commits a certain crime they must be given a sentence within a certain range of time. Another technique a judge may use is the three-strike laws which the person is given three strike until reaching a particular punishment or sentencing. Some things that may lower the length of a sentence a person may receive include parole in which the person may be given more time not in physical prison. Prisoners often times earn this by good behavior in prison, or other extraneous reasons.

There are also a few types of imprisonment, which may include the type of prison the prisoner is sent to. Prisons are used for criminals who will be staying there for a longer period of time than a jail, and some of these may include a federal prison, a super max prison, or in other words a maximum security prison. Depending on the type of crime committed and the person as an individual determines what prison they will stay in.

There are many goals behind a person’s imprisonment. These may include incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. In other words the person is away from causing harm to society, they pay for the crime they did and that the experience will help deter them away from doing crimes in the future. In the United States punishment for crimes in earlier times included public shaming, but after the Pennsylvania Plan was developed required inmates to remain in their cells for virtually their entire sentence, that became the form of punishment for several decades. Once psychologists and others realized that this was not the most effective form of punishment they changed to a better system in which prisoners were given more humane rights. Some of these included prisoner activities, exercising, being able to talk to other inmates during meal times and even work. Prison has its own type of subculture in the process of prisonization the assimilation of new inmates intro the values, norms and language of the prison. Prison life may have improved over the past century, but there are still many problems in the system. For instance some people feel as if the prisoners are treated to harshly, there are gangs in the prisons along with drugs.

Some people question whether prison is actually effective in punishing criminals. Since prison is a public program paid for by taxpayers, many people are concerned that it cost too much. On average it costs anywhere from 24,000-$40,000 a year per prisoner. Also, 67% of prisoners will end up back in prison, which is called the recidivism rate. Some alternatives to prison include paying restitution, getting put on probation, house arrest, or halfway houses. These ways could be more effective because it would put the person on more of a path to not committing crimes because they would have to deal with their outside influences while not committing crimes, and it would also allow keeping their job and seeing their family. Although this could be good for some crimes, it should not be used for murders and rapist.

All in this entire chapter taught me all about different forms of punishment in the justice system, and which ones are more effective. I think that we should use more alternatives to prison for some types of crimes such as drug and robbery, but not a crime such a rape or murder. I think putting a criminal in an atmosphere where they are not isolated from the real world is a more practical solution and will help them in the long run to not commit more crimes. It also would save the government more money.

Key Words: internal causes, external cause, controllability, stability, determinate sentencing, three strike laws, parole, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, public shaming, Pennsylvania plan, subculture, prisonization, recidivism rate, restitution, probation, house arrest, halfway houses

Chapter 16 of the book “Forensic and Legal Psychology” is a very interesting chapter. The reason that the chapter is interesting is the fact that it talks about society’s ideas about crime and punishment. In the case of the chapter, it focuses on the incarceration or punishment aspect of our society more than anything else. The chapter starts off by talking about how prisons are the centerpiece of our system of punishment; what the chapter is saying is that our prison system is how we tend to punish individuals for committing crimes against society. An interesting quote from the book that was at the start of the chapter was “If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons to hold more criminals; and if crime is going down, it’s because we built more prisons.” The reason that I found this quote so interesting was the fact that I don’t agree with the statement at all. The reason that the United States currently incarcerates the highest number people in the world is because we put people in prison for non-violent offences. Non-violent offences can be things such as drug crimes, and white collar crimes. Our system basically puts people away for longer than they should be. The reason that our system does this is because of a thing called determinant sentencing. Determinant sentencing basically means that the judge has to go off of a “grid” to match up crimes with punishments. Most of the time, these grids don’t allow the judge to look at the specific circumstances of the person being arrested; this could be things such as the time they committed the crime, and if they were violent when they committed the crime as well. This makes it so our prison system puts a way a lot more non-violent criminal than any other country in the world. Also, it could also be due to the fact that our society punishes people fairly harshly for the use of drugs. Ever since the 70’s when the drug wars started, our prison population has been on the rise. The first thing that the chapter talks about is the means of which the judge determines the sentencing. As said above, the judge is usually bound to a “grid” that can help them with their sentencing. However, the book points out a couple of other factors that the judge can take into account of. These include things such as internal and external causes, controllability, and finally stability. Internal causes are things such as personality; external causes on the other hand or things such as other powerful situations that were happening when the crime was committed. Controllability refers to a person’s ability to control his/her actions. An example of this could be like the movie “Primal Fear” were we saw that Aaron had another personality known as Roy that would come up when he was angry. Finally, stability focuses on whether the cause appears to be temporary or permanent; that is, whether or not it seems like the person did the crime because of some factor that is still present or was it more of situational factors that led him/her to commit the crime. The next thing that the book talks about is sentencing guidelines. This is personally my favorite kind of sentencing because basically the guidelines are criteria that the judge can look at to sentence a person to a certain number of years. However, what makes it my favorite is that the judge is not bound by these guidelines. The judge can actually look into situational factors that can help them make a better decision on whether or not the person is actually a violent criminal. Another reason why this one is my favorite type of sentencing between the two is the fact that it talks about how the judge can look into the prior record of the individual and decide whether or not the person is actually violent. The reason that this system is the best in my opinion is that it takes into account the situational factors of which the crime was committed. The next thing that the book talks about is the three-strike laws. This law basically says that if you are convicted of a third felony, you must be sent to jail for life. However, there have been constitutional challenges to this because people have said that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The reason people argue this is the fact that a person who steals three times could be sent to life in prison for stealing. A thing that I found interesting about this law was the fact that it talked about how 65%-70% of violent crimes are committed by males under the age of 30. The book points out that most of these individuals are at the end of their criminal careers and therefore are putting away individuals who were just about to stop robbing. The next thing that the book talks about is the use of parole. The parole is basically a thing by which the prison attempts to re-assimilate individuals back into society. Basically, a person has to serve so much of his/her term and then if they have good behavior, they can be released on parole to the society as long as the check in with their parole officer and have some drug test done on them. The whole point of this is basically to show that the goal of our prison system is to change individuals into better ones and then release them back into society. However, our prison system currently doesn’t accomplish that. If you look at the return rates of prison after people have been released, people tend to return to prison generally right after they have been released. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the types of prisons that our system has. Our current prison system has federal prison, supermax prison. Federal prison tends to be for the people who break laws and go over state boarders or people that break federal laws. Supermax prisons tend to be for the individuals who tend to be very dangerous. These people are in prison for a very long time because of the fact that they are very dangerous to the rest of society. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the goals of our imprisonment system. The goals of our prison system are incapacitation, deterrence (specific/general), retribution, and rehabilitation. Incapacitation is basically the fact that we put all of the prisoners into one area where they sit and wait reflect on their crimes that they have committed. The next goal is deterrence, basically this means that if people think that they could go to jail for a long time for doing something, they won’t do it. These can be preventing future crimes from happening after the individual has been released from prison as well. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the evolution of our prison system and how it started off with public shaming, but then moved on to the idea that we could house all of the violent offenders in one area. The next thing that the book talks about is the prisoner’s rights in prison and the role the courts play in the prison system. The chapter goes on to talk about the prisonization process that inmates go through that get them used to the norms and language of prison life. The chapter end by talking about the harshness of prison life and how there are gangs and drugs that are smuggled into prison, as well as talking about the fact that there are alternatives to prison such as house arrest, probation, restitution, and residential community corrections centers. All of these things were stuff that I found interesting. However, the thing that I found most interesting was the fact that the prisoners actually go through some sort of prisonization process were they assimilate into prison life. The reason that I found this interesting was the fact that the book talks about how the whole point of our prison system is to correct people’s actions by punishing them and then sending them back out into society. The reason that this doesn’t make any sense for me is the fact that basically we are talking a bunch of people and throwing them into a situation where it is actually worse than in society and then we act surprise when people come out worse after going to prison. If we look at recidivism rates, it currently says that 68% of inmates that are released end up being arrested and going back to prison. That is awful in my opinion because of the fact that it shows that our prisons system goal of punishment and then rehabilitation doesn’t work in our current prison system. Therefore something needs to change. All of the stuff that I read was stuff that I learned about the prison system that we have in America. Overall, I believe that our prison system doesn’t work because of the fact that we have 68% return rate back to prison after people have been released. To solve this, I believe we need to find an alternative to prison, or at least change the atmosphere of prison so that prisoners don’t have to come into prison and then change their actions to match the actions of the other prisoners. This just leads to people not being changed in the worse way because of prison rather than helping the situation at all.
Terms: recidivism rates, house arrest, probation, restitution, and residential community corrections centers, prisonization process, public shaming, incapacitation, deterrence (specific/general), retribution, and rehabilitation, federal prison, supermax prison, parole, three-strike laws, sentencing guidelines, determinant sentencing, internal and external causes, controllability, and finally stability

Chapter 16 of the book “Forensic and Legal Psychology” is a very interesting chapter. The reason that the chapter is interesting is the fact that it talks about society’s ideas about crime and punishment. In the case of the chapter, it focuses on the incarceration or punishment aspect of our society more than anything else. The chapter starts off by talking about how prisons are the centerpiece of our system of punishment; what the chapter is saying is that our prison system is how we tend to punish individuals for committing crimes against society. An interesting quote from the book that was at the start of the chapter was “If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons to hold more criminals; and if crime is going down, it’s because we built more prisons.” The reason that I found this quote so interesting was the fact that I don’t agree with the statement at all. The reason that the United States currently incarcerates the highest number people in the world is because we put people in prison for non-violent offences. Non-violent offences can be things such as drug crimes, and white collar crimes. Our system basically puts people away for longer than they should be. The reason that our system does this is because of a thing called determinant sentencing. Determinant sentencing basically means that the judge has to go off of a “grid” to match up crimes with punishments. Most of the time, these grids don’t allow the judge to look at the specific circumstances of the person being arrested; this could be things such as the time they committed the crime, and if they were violent when they committed the crime as well. This makes it so our prison system puts a way a lot more non-violent criminal than any other country in the world. Also, it could also be due to the fact that our society punishes people fairly harshly for the use of drugs. Ever since the 70’s when the drug wars started, our prison population has been on the rise. The first thing that the chapter talks about is the means of which the judge determines the sentencing. As said above, the judge is usually bound to a “grid” that can help them with their sentencing. However, the book points out a couple of other factors that the judge can take into account of. These include things such as internal and external causes, controllability, and finally stability. Internal causes are things such as personality; external causes on the other hand or things such as other powerful situations that were happening when the crime was committed. Controllability refers to a person’s ability to control his/her actions. An example of this could be like the movie “Primal Fear” were we saw that Aaron had another personality known as Roy that would come up when he was angry. Finally, stability focuses on whether the cause appears to be temporary or permanent; that is, whether or not it seems like the person did the crime because of some factor that is still present or was it more of situational factors that led him/her to commit the crime. The next thing that the book talks about is sentencing guidelines. This is personally my favorite kind of sentencing because basically the guidelines are criteria that the judge can look at to sentence a person to a certain number of years. However, what makes it my favorite is that the judge is not bound by these guidelines. The judge can actually look into situational factors that can help them make a better decision on whether or not the person is actually a violent criminal. Another reason why this one is my favorite type of sentencing between the two is the fact that it talks about how the judge can look into the prior record of the individual and decide whether or not the person is actually violent. The reason that this system is the best in my opinion is that it takes into account the situational factors of which the crime was committed. The next thing that the book talks about is the three-strike laws. This law basically says that if you are convicted of a third felony, you must be sent to jail for life. However, there have been constitutional challenges to this because people have said that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The reason people argue this is the fact that a person who steals three times could be sent to life in prison for stealing. A thing that I found interesting about this law was the fact that it talked about how 65%-70% of violent crimes are committed by males under the age of 30. The book points out that most of these individuals are at the end of their criminal careers and therefore are putting away individuals who were just about to stop robbing. The next thing that the book talks about is the use of parole. The parole is basically a thing by which the prison attempts to re-assimilate individuals back into society. Basically, a person has to serve so much of his/her term and then if they have good behavior, they can be released on parole to the society as long as the check in with their parole officer and have some drug test done on them. The whole point of this is basically to show that the goal of our prison system is to change individuals into better ones and then release them back into society. However, our prison system currently doesn’t accomplish that. If you look at the return rates of prison after people have been released, people tend to return to prison generally right after they have been released. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the types of prisons that our system has. Our current prison system has federal prison, supermax prison. Federal prison tends to be for the people who break laws and go over state boarders or people that break federal laws. Supermax prisons tend to be for the individuals who tend to be very dangerous. These people are in prison for a very long time because of the fact that they are very dangerous to the rest of society. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the goals of our imprisonment system. The goals of our prison system are incapacitation, deterrence (specific/general), retribution, and rehabilitation. Incapacitation is basically the fact that we put all of the prisoners into one area where they sit and wait reflect on their crimes that they have committed. The next goal is deterrence, basically this means that if people think that they could go to jail for a long time for doing something, they won’t do it. These can be preventing future crimes from happening after the individual has been released from prison as well. The next thing that the chapter talks about is the evolution of our prison system and how it started off with public shaming, but then moved on to the idea that we could house all of the violent offenders in one area. The next thing that the book talks about is the prisoner’s rights in prison and the role the courts play in the prison system. The chapter goes on to talk about the prisonization process that inmates go through that get them used to the norms and language of prison life. The chapter end by talking about the harshness of prison life and how there are gangs and drugs that are smuggled into prison, as well as talking about the fact that there are alternatives to prison such as house arrest, probation, restitution, and residential community corrections centers. All of these things were stuff that I found interesting. However, the thing that I found most interesting was the fact that the prisoners actually go through some sort of prisonization process were they assimilate into prison life. The reason that I found this interesting was the fact that the book talks about how the whole point of our prison system is to correct people’s actions by punishing them and then sending them back out into society. The reason that this doesn’t make any sense for me is the fact that basically we are talking a bunch of people and throwing them into a situation where it is actually worse than in society and then we act surprise when people come out worse after going to prison. If we look at recidivism rates, it currently says that 68% of inmates that are released end up being arrested and going back to prison. That is awful in my opinion because of the fact that it shows that our prisons system goal of punishment and then rehabilitation doesn’t work in our current prison system. Therefore something needs to change. All of the stuff that I read was stuff that I learned about the prison system that we have in America. Overall, I believe that our prison system doesn’t work because of the fact that we have 68% return rate back to prison after people have been released. To solve this, I believe we need to find an alternative to prison, or at least change the atmosphere of prison so that prisoners don’t have to come into prison and then change their actions to match the actions of the other prisoners. This just leads to people not being changed in the worse way because of prison rather than helping the situation at all.
Terms: recidivism rates, house arrest, probation, restitution, and residential community corrections centers, prisonization process, public shaming, incapacitation, deterrence (specific/general), retribution, and rehabilitation, federal prison, supermax prison, parole, three-strike laws, sentencing guidelines, determinant sentencing, internal and external causes, controllability, and finally stability

For starters, I can definitely say this has been my favorite chapter to read so far. It was full of information that was completely new to me, and it was also extremely interesting!
To give a brief summary of the chapter, it talked the many different aspects of prison. It talks first about how sentencing is decided, along with how much each prison costs us U.S. tax payers each year to keep behind bars. Sentencing guidelines were put into place in order to help judges decide on appropriate sentences. This would help so that men accused of the same crime wouldn’t be serving drastically different amount of time in prison. Another strategy of sentencing that is a more radical approach called determinate sentencing, which requires judges to hand down a particular sentence that falls within a certain range if the defendant is found guilty or not. This has said to be the most complicated and elaborate sentencing system ever developed. In this chapter it also talked about the different types of imprisonment there are throughout the U.S. federal system and the distinction between them. Jails, prisons, federal prisons, and super max prison are all talked about. Basically the common distinction between them is the amount of “freedom” that the prisoner has was incarcerated. This chapter also discusses how our prison system started and the changes that have been made sense the idea was first created. During the 1800’s a leading social reformer Dorthea Dix spoke out about her views of the prison system. It began to be viewed that social disorganization was to blame for the growing amounts of criminal activity. Another concern later, was the amount of mental and psychical abuse that the prison system was doing to the prisoners. High amounts of depression were seen in many of the prisoners due to the loss of autonomy, loss of power, loss of privacy, banishment from loved ones, and removal from the opportunities of free society (Costanzo & Krauss 2012 p. 369). Discussion of gangs and drugs inside prisons is also a concern. It was talked about in the book that as soon as you arrived into prison, if a man didn’t join a gang, it was a very big threat to his life. This leads to some of my opinions about what was talked about in the chapter.
It talked the amount of drugs that are still smuggled into prison and it really shocked me. I found this to be very interesting but also very disappointing to know that some of the prison guards are the ones that are helping to smuggle this drugs inside. That extremely defeats the purpose of what the prison system is trying to do. We wonder why a high percentage of these men are found back inside prison almost just 3 years after they have been let out. Maybe it’s because they go back to their old ways of selling and doing drugs because they were not taught any better while they were there.
I think that half way houses are a great idea. For my book report I read the book called Orange is the New Black, and one of the issues that I talked about was the lack of preparation there is for prisoners when they are released back into the “real world”. These half way houses provide an atmosphere that is very similar to real world experiences, they can get used to making an income again and know what it’s like to pay bills and keep up an apartment or house.
I think punishment could work, if it is done in the right way. Murders, yes they deserve to be locked away. But prisoners who serve a sentence that will have them out within years; they should be punished but taught the right way to live. Our society will not get any better just by locking up people who have broken laws. We must teach them the proper way to act and get them back on our feet.
Like I mentioned, this chapter was very interesting to me and learned a lot. I wish I would have read this chapter before I was assigned my book report, because it related very well to what I read.
Legal terms: sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, federal prison, supermax prison, Dorthea Dix, half-way house, depression, mental illness

Chapter 16 was about punishment and imprisonment. The chapter began discussing disparities and guidelines within the punishment system. Two people that have committed the same crime may receive different forms/severities of punishment. These disparities are a result of biased judges, and gender and race of the defendant. A discussion of common guidelines that judges are expected to follow when sentencing came next. Next, the chapter went on to talk about the different types of imprisonment. Places such as jail, prison, federal prison, and supermax prisons were focused on here. The goals of imprisonment were the next topic of focus. These goals included incapacitation, deterrence (both general and specific), retribution, and rehabilitation. The chapter highlights the history of prisons focusing on the 18 and 1900s. The history section is followed by a discussion of prisoner rights which is followed by some basic statistics on prisons and prisoners. Not surprisingly, a large number of prisoners are male and black. The chapter then moves on to focus on the culture of the prison. The famous Stanford prison study was summarized followed by discussions of the harshness of prison life, gangs, and drugs. The chapter then asks the reader if prison actually works. Recidivism rates are highlighted and the chapter wraps up with alternatives to prison.


The thing that surprised me most when reading this chapter was how expensive prisons really are. I was especially surprised when the chapter discussed the health problems of older prisoners and how they can cost us over $80,000 a year. This was a topic I had never really given much thought to. I was also really surprised when the chapter said that some criminals are simply replaced when a “job vacancy” is created as a result of a criminal being imprisoned. This really surprised me because it obviously means that prisons aren’t meeting their goals all the time.


It’s hard to say whether or not prisons work. The
textbook gave good arguments for both sides of this debate. Obviously recidivism rates are still high and research has shown that prisons do a poor job of rehabilitating criminals. The chapter came up with a great list of cheaper alternatives to prison but it’s hard to believe that these alternatives serve the same goals that prisons do. For example, retribution. It’s much harder to feel like the criminal got what they deserved if they’re only on house arrest rather than in prison. In addition, I feel like many of the alternatives to prison won’t deter other criminals from engaging in the same activities. Prisons don’t work nearly as well as the public would like to believe, but it’s still hard to find an alternative that meets the same goals.


I noticed many aspects of psychology relevant to this chapter. I know I state this in almost every blog, but social psychology is extremely important here. When we look at the harshness of prison life we can see how different social groups (gangs) can influence individuals. The Stanford prison experiment was also included in this section and helps to describe how prisoners respond to obedience and how prison guards may treat prisoners. This was a famous social psychology experiment. We can also see evidence of clinical psychology when we think about how many people in prison have a mental illness. A discussion in the textbook of how prisons can make people go crazy interested me. We always assume that mentally ill individuals engage in criminal activity and end up in prison as a result. However, maybe it’s the other way around and that those who engage in criminal activities end up in prison which impacts their mental health making them “insane.” In other words, maybe those individuals in prison have a mental illness as a result of their imprisonment.


Terms: social psychology, clinical psychology,
prisons, federal prisons, supermax prisons, jails, recidivism, mental illness, Stanford prison experiment, obedience, incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution

After a criminal has been convicted of a crime, they must be sentenced. The sentencing depends on the seriousness of the crime, and other aspects of it. Some of these aspects are internal causes, external causes, controllability, and stability. Internal causes are factors that are personally chosen or free choice. External causes are factors that are caused by powerful situational forces. Controllability refers to whether or not someone could have controlled his or her behavior. And finally, stability questions whether the cause is temporary or permanent. Those who have no, or almost no, criminal record and those who are mentally challenged are more likely to receive else punishment than someone who has a history of crime, or knew that what they were doing is wrong, but still went through with it. You would think that judges are fairly representative of each other and issue the same sentence for two different people committing the same crime. This is highly untrue, as a study from our book found that judges ranged, on sentencing a criminal who committed tax evasion fraud, from three to twenty years. To help judges across the nation be more consistent, the federal government has made sentencing guidelines to help them decide appropriate sentences for certain cases. These guidelines give factors that should probably be considered, but the guidelines aren’t mandatory to be actually used. An alternative to sentencing guidelines is determinate sentencing, or mandatory sentencing. This requires a judge to hand down a sentence that is consistent with the range of the crime committed. To help determine the sentence, a “grid” was created in which you combine the offense level, and the criminal history points and you get the amount of years one should serve based on the grid. The use of this grid and the guidelines became less mandatory, and would go back to using the judge’s discretion. Another way to determine the sentencing of a criminal is called the three-strikes law. This law requires that criminals receive a long sentence, or life, when they are convicted of a third felony. The strictness of the three-strikes law varies across states, some focus on sexual offenders and some list very minor crimes as a strike. After a criminal has been sentenced and starts to serve time in prison, they may have the chance to be on parole where they are released from prison and are under supervision of a parole officer.

There are four different types of imprisonment, in which they all have somewhat similar yet very different goals that they wish to reach with a criminal. First is a jail, which are short term holding cells ran by a city our county. Usually people who are convicted or misdemeanors, or crimes that are punishable by serving less than a year in prison, are sent to jail since they won’t be there very long. Jail can also be used to house non-violent criminals while they await trial, or those who are waiting for transportation between institutions. Prisons are made to hold criminals for a longer period of time. Every state has its own prison system, but there is also federal prisons where people are placed for breaking a federal crime. The last type of imprisonment is a super-max prison. This type of prison is used to house the most serious violent criminals.

All types of imprisonment have the goal of incapacitation, which is simply containing them inside the prison. Another goal of prison is deterrence, in hoping that the prison experience will keep the criminal from committing crimes. This is a form of specific deterrence, and a form of general deterrence is that other people will choose not to commit crimes because they fear of going to jail. The third goal is called retribution where the criminal must be sent to jail to restore moral balance. It helps society feel better after a criminal act is committed. The fourth goal of prisons is rehabilitation. Like our book says, since most criminals will be released at some point in time, it makes sense to try and help them get better by giving them particular treatments based on what is wrong with them.

Through out the last fifty sum years, the rights of prison inmates have changed, giving the inmates more freedoms and privileges. One of the biggest changes to help out prison inmates was the passing of the act that prison conditions could not be inhumane or unlivable. Guards or any other officials also couldn’t treat inmates inhumanely.

Prison has also become a society of its own, a subculture with its own set of rules. New inmates go through a process of prisonization where they go through the learning of the values, norms, and language of the prison. The prison life can also take a psychological toll on inmates. Most people know about the Stanford prison study, and how the characters quickly adapted to their roles and lost sight of their true personalities. The same thing happens in prison, as it can take the weakest of offenders and harden them into a prison thug. This is because violence is the biggest threat of prison life. A lot of inmate’s disputes is solved through violence because it is all they have been taught by those before them, and it is usually the most effective means of moving up in the prison life. Fortunately there are alternatives to prison. People can pay restitution for stealing, and can offer their services through labor. Restitution is usually paired with probation, and is used to repair the damages caused by the crime. A criminal can also be put on probation where they are released and put under supervision of a probation officer. House arrest is also a form of probation that is available to offenders. This can be enforced through electronic monitoring. Offenders may also join a residential community correction center, or a halfway house, where groups of offenders live together and go to therapy.

The most interesting thing I learned from this chapter was that judges used to have mandatory sentencing guidelines. I had always thought judges used their complete discretion based on their knowledge of the law and the crime committed by the offender. Another interesting thing was the sentencing table that judges would use to take the offense level and the criminal history points together and figure out the amount of years a criminal should be sentenced to. I don’t think punishment can work because the more you punish an offender; the more the aggression builds up in that particular offender. Once that person is let out of jail, I would think he would most likely take it out on society. I also don’t think punishment can work because it takes too large of a toll on both the criminal and the criminal justice officer. The psychological aspects of jail are very strong, and punishment only increases those aspects.


Key terms: internal causes, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, three-strikes law, parole, jail, prisons, federal prison, supermax prison, incapacitation, deterrence, specific deterrence, general deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, prisonization, restitution, probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers

Chapter 16, talks about the prison systems, how they are becoming overpopulated, rehabilitation programs, sentencing and punishment, and the goals of imprisonment. The first process is sentencing, a criminal will go to court and based on the severity of the crime and the opinion of the judge, they will go to prison for X amount of years. There are different ways that you can determine severity of the crime, how long the sentence should be, and if they are likely to commit a crime again. It is controllability vs. stability that can determine these factors. Control is where the criminal was in control of the situation at the time of the crime and stability is when these actions and thoughts only a temporary situation. The three strikes law also applies in sentencing, someone who has convicted three or more serious crimes (felonies) are likely to get a harsher sentence of 25 years or more maybe even life in prison.

The severity of the crime leads to serving their punishment. There are different places that criminals can be put or different ways they can serve their punishment. A couple less severe punishments are restitution, criminal rehabilitation, and probation. These punishments are less costly to the state and also help with the overpopulation of prisons. Also less severe criminals go to jails, which only hold inmates for a short period of time. Prisons hold people for longer amounts of time or even for their whole life. There are also criminals that have performed very severe criminal acts and they are placed in supermax prisons. They cannot be put in with others who have not committed as serious crimes as themselves because they could potentially be a threat to others. In these prisons the prisoners are isolated, which leads to many psychological problems. I found this interesting because if prisons are supposed to be teaching the men that they need to behave in society, and I do not think this is the way of doing so if anything this is why recidivism is very high for inmates.

There are certain goals for imprisonment. The first goal is incapacitation, this is keeping the criminal away from society so they no longer do harm to others. The second goal is deterrence, the punishment that will keep the criminal from committing the acts again and staying out of prison. The third goal retribution is the actual punishment for the crime they committed. The final goal is rehabilitation; this is supposed to help the prisoner adjust to normal life again in society and happens at the very end of their sentence. This process can be very costly and the less severe punishments I listed earlier are ways that we can get away from that high cost, while still having criminals serve some form of punishment, but so they can work it off and pay for it. Restitution and probation are also ways where prisoners do not have to be isolated away from society, because this can cause other issues in the long run.

The prison life does not sounds desirable; the inmate loses their personhood that is losing all their rights as a human being. This can make a person very frustrated and have psychological issues that resort to violence because they feel they have to be in control of something. The prison environment is not comfortable and you have to watch your back because the atmosphere is very hostile. There is a “convict code,” that all the inmates follow and this is to protect them, they need to carry themselves with respect and give others respect as well. There is no getting into other people’s business and people do not get into your business. I am a big fan of Lockup, the TV show and this is talked about in one of episodes how things are changing and there are gang bangers coming in and don’t following the unwritten rules.

I do not know how the government is going to implement some of the solutions listed in the book, because for people in prison there is violence around every corner. Isolation can lead to other problems besides the violent behavior they already came in with, once they are put back in society after being isolated for so many years they are not going to know how to behave or what is right and what is wrong. Rehabilitation is only going to help for so long and that is at the end of their sentence that doesn’t make all the other memories and regressions before rehab go away.

Terms: Controllability, stability, three strikes law, punishment, restitution, rehabilitation, probation, recidivism, convict code, jail, prison, supermax prison, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation.

Chapter sixteen discusses what happens after a defendant has been found guilty. Sentencing depends on the seriousness of a crime but also attributes of the criminal in question. Internal causes, such as personality, and external causes, such as situational forces, are discussed when regarding the actions of others. Two other perceived causes are controllability and stability. Controllability is whether or not the person could have controlled their behavior and stability is whether the cause of the situation is permanent or not. Stronger punishments are usually warranted to controllable and internal causes while more lenient punishments are warranted in external and uncontrollable conditions. This is why many people may commit the same crime but will not receive the same punishments. This may be because of a judge’s discretion or bias or on a basis of the defendant’s race or gender. To change the biased disparities many states have create sentencing guidelines, to help judges decide sentences. A more radical and permanent approach is determinate sentencing, which requires a judge to give a certain sentence. This all lead to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, establishing tough on crime sentencing guidelines in the most elaborate system ever. The reform created a table for the judges to look at, including rows, lines, and zones for each important factor. At the federal level though, characteristics of the defendant are not taken into account. In the 2005 case of United States v. Booker the Court states that these guidelines should be advisory instead of mandatory. Along the lines of mandatory sentencing are three-strikes laws, which 25 states now have. Three-strikes laws require longer or life sentences when a person has committed their third felony. The text discusses that these laws can be unnecessary when broadly written and waste money are but when narrowly written they are popular and can help. After a defendant has been sentenced his final sentence can still be modified. Some criminals can be released from prison on parole, under the supervision of a parole officer, before their full sentence has been served. Many people on a state parole board visit and determine if an inmate is eligible for parole but there are usually many factors to look at when considering it and there are many that will make it much less likely that someone will get it.
There are a few different types of imprisonment. Jails are short-term holding and are run by cities and counties. Jails also hold people when they are waiting for a trial and cannot be released on bail. Prisons hold criminals for long periods of time. Some of the prisoners stay there for decades or their whole lives but many are eventually released. Federal prisons are for people who break federal laws, most commonly drug offenders. There are minimum security prisons, for people who do white collar crimes, medium security, and supermax security. The supermax is for people who are dangerous to society and have committed serious or violent crimes. One modern supermax prison makes the prisoners spend almost 23 hours a day by themselves with only one hour in which they are allowed to exercise out of their cells. There are many goals of imprisonment. The simplest goal is for incapacitation – if they are locked up they cannot commit more crimes. Another goal is deterrence; specific deterrence is the hope that the pain of being in prison will make it so they do not commit further crimes. General deterrence is when people will fear going to prison so they will not commit crimes. A third goal of imprisonment is retribution, meaning the criminal will be punished to restore moral balance. The text points out that this can promote moral solidarity among law-abiding citizens. Rehabilitation is another goal of imprisonment, because many criminals will be let out of prison at some point. Rehabilitation attempts to improve the criminals and their behavior.
There have been many different types of crimes that people could be convicted of in the history of the United States. When a local person committed a crime they could be subject to public shaming, letting the townspeople shame them and show their disapproval of the crime that the person committed. After the Revolutionary War many people called for a criminal justice system that was different than the laws in England. The people wanted more justice and more just punishments. Between 1790 and 1800 eight state prisons were built and the new country relied upon incarceration more than any other punishment. In the 1800s more people began to think of new definitions for crime and punishment as religion became less of an explanation. With new social-psychological theories revolving around crime came new approaches to dealing with criminals. The Pennsylvania Plan was one way that the newer rehabilitative model was put into practice. These prisons in Pennsylvania and New York required the inmates to be completely cut off from the outside and from all other inmates. Some people agreed with this isolationist way of conducting a prison but many, including Charles Dickens, disagreed and believed that it would drive the inmates to insanity. Overcrowding of prisons became an issue and bigoted holding was an issue, a disproportionate amount of Irish immigrants had been in prisoned. The beginning of the 1900s saw a bolster of the medical model and indeterminate sentencing. By the late 1900s, around the 1960s, many people were concerned with brutality and ineffectiveness of the prison system. Many prisoners began to argue for better confinement conditions and there were strikes and riots by inmates in the early 1970s. One of the worst prison disturbances was in 1971 in New York. Many were taken hostage and beaten and when the National Guard took over a total of ten hostages and twenty-nine prisoners were killed. All of these things lead to anti-imprisonment movements and calls for more rehabilitation. In 1964 Muslim inmates were allowed to receive copies of the Koran, have pork-free meals, and have religious meetings – a small victory for prisoners. In 1974 prisoners were allowed to receive mail and use law students and paralegals to review or investigate further into their cases. Courts began to impose over-crowding limits and set health care standards for inmates. In the 1980s the courts did not continue to act on the behalf of inmates, instead stating that conditions can be restrictive or harsh if they are paying for their offenses against society and are not grossly disproportionate to the crime they have committed. Many prisoners suffer from mental illnesses and the inmate must be seriously ill to qualify for treatment. It is usually up to the warden’s to determine if someone will receive treatment.
The US now imprisons more people for longer periods of time than all other democratized nations. California, the most populated state, has the most prisoners. Contributing to the rise in inmates is the longer sentences, mandatory sentencing, reducing parole, and increasing juvenile imprisonment. It has been found that the majority of prisoners do not come from privileged or stable lives; over half of the prisoners earned less than $15,000 before incarceration and more men are incarcerated than women. There is a culture that accompanies prisons, many social scientists study prisonization – people assimilating into prison life. Many prisoners take in the values of criminal gangs and these things create a brutal atmosphere, especially in maximum-security facilities. The text discusses the Stanford prison simulation study of 1971 and how sometimes the situation people are in is more influential than their personality characteristics. This study was stopped much sooner than it was supposed to be and it showed that the experience changed many people in ways that were not predicted. The guards were intoxicated with their new power and the inmates became defeated and depressed. Researchers interview prisoners and observe them to see how prison life really is, and it is shockingly different from the outside world. They have found that the core of prison life is violence or the threat of violence. There are also incidents of abuse and sexual abuse, especially to younger inmates who are more vulnerable. Prison gangs are one reason that violence and criminal behavior continues inside of the prison. One scholar found that many inmates are left to fend for themselves because gangs are such a prominent part of the prison system and because guards cannot physically punish people, especially when there are more prisoners than guards. In many prisons the inmates have no choice but to join gangs. Drugs are also a large part of prison life and are apparently easier to get a hold of inside prison than administrators will have the public believe. For inmates who receive drug treatment their rearrest rate is 20% lower than the rearrest rate of inmates who did not receive and complete treatment.
Incarceration is paid for by taxpayers and imprisonment is the most expensive way to respond to crime. As prisoners age and develop health issues it becomes even more expensive to hold them. It seems to make sense that the worst type of criminals are taken out of society but for non-violent criminals it may not make as much sense to keep them locked up for long periods of time. Most prisons do an excellent job at incarceration, keeping criminals off the streets and committing crimes, but most do not do well at rehabilitation. The recidivism rate is high, and following a release from prison about 67% of former inmates will be rearrested and sent back to jail. Alternatives to prison include restitution – paying with money or through labor, like community service. Probation is when a person is not sent to jail but has supervision of a probation officer, the conditions can be strict and require the convict to regularly meet with their officer and do things like keep a job and do random drug testing. A variation of probation is house arrest, using electronic monitoring it requires that the convict not leave their house. Residential community correction centers are halfway houses and are for groups of offenders to live and attend group therapy. People in these types of halfway houses are usually required to complete chores and find jobs. Alternatives to prisons are necessary because they are cheaper and because they are less severe.
I think punishment can work and that it is extremely necessary. Incarceration keeps criminals off the streets and from committing more crimes, although it is expensive. It surprised me how violent some prisons can be because of the prevalence of gangs.


Terms: internal causes, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, three-strikes laws, parole, jail, prison, federal prison, supermax prison, incapacitation, deterrence, specific deterrence, general deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, public shaming, Pennsylvania Plan, prisonization, recidivism, restitution, probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers

"The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Summarize chapter 16:

There were eleven points covered in chapter 16 describing how important and indispensable the elements of prisons are to the criminal justice system. However, it also discusses how expensive, harmful and how other alternatives can often produce better results than just prison.

First of all the sentencing decisions, disparities and the guidelines are covered right off the bat. In this section there is a very important legal term called three-strikes laws which is a fairly new term that requires criminals to serve longer term sentences for committing the same crime. Then the chapter transitions to the goals of imprisonment which are jails, prisons; federal and/or supermax prisons. The goals of imprisonment from the simplest which is incapacitation to the second goal deterrence for any criminal. The third goal that is described in our textbook is called retribution, which is sometimes referred to as the less practical and more emotional outlet. Most of all prison is described a a form of punishment where the surrounding should also be a form of punishment as well where the convicts are to suffer.

Chapter 16 also covers the evolution of prisons in the United States from the 1800's, which is described as America being optimistic about prisons. This section talks about pubic shaming and how that evolved into the prison system. That's when prisons became and something known as the Pennsylvania Plan came into effect. The Pennsylvania Plan required inmates to remain in their cells for virtually their entire sentence.

And also the evolution of the 1900's, from the first part of the century where prison felt continuing force was medical and social science to the growing public dissatisfication with how prisoners were being treated. That leads the chapter to the prisoners rights and the role of the courts. It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that our textbook uncovers that the federal and state courts did not exert much control over the internal ruling of prisons. The chapter also reveals the basic statistics of prisons and prisoners which shows that the US now imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens for longer periods of time that any other industrialized democracy in the world. There is a distinctive culture of prisons that is also discussed which is where the term prisonization is brought up. And that is the assimilation of new inmates into the values, norms, and language of the prison takes place. The power of the prison situation, the harshness of prison life and the drugs that prisoners have as an environment are also covered.

And finally the chapter ends with whether or not prisons work. The recidivism rate is not very high and therefore is considered not very encouraging. It also describes different rehabilitation programs and how they take different forms in the prisons but whether they really work are still very questionable. Also, there are alternative to prisons that should be considered. From probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers to paying restitution.

What was the most surprising/interesting thing you learned?

I really found the findings about the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy found in prisons that it really did reduced the recidivism by more than a third. Even though it limited its findings to only about 10 different skills targeted I really found it interesting and though there should be more studies to prove the consistency.

Do you think punishment can work? Why or why not?

Yes, people and society in general need to be punished in order to learn a lesson. It stems from being conditioned as children that when we do something and it is wrong then there should be consequences to our actions. Whether the punishment should always or automatically be prison that is to be determined by the judicial system.

Terms: prison, judicial system, criminal, sentencing, legal, three-strikes law, Pennsylvania Plan inmates, criminals, crime, jails, supermax prisons, imprisonment, incapacitation, deterrence, punishment, inmate, prisonization, recidivism rate, rehabilitation, probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers, cognitive-behavioral therapy, consequences, and legal system.

Chapter 16 goes into our prison system, the pros and cons, the ways we think about prisons and what we could do to make it better. So one of the first things that judges do when sentencing criminals is they look at external causes, and Internal causes. Also they look at Controllability and stability. External causes would be something like a situational force. Lets say for example that someone stole food because they had no money at home to feed their kids. Internal focus is on the other spectrum with if the person didn’t really have a good reason for doing it. Controllability refers to if the person could control their actions. A mentally handicapped person would be considered low controllability. Stable focuses on their criminal record. If someone doesn’t have a criminal record it means that it is unstable which was a bit confusing in the book. But it makes sense after I read it again. All of these could be contributed to behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology since they all look at outside (or inside) factors that go into a crime to deal with the best sentence possible.
Now its interesting because studies have shown that most judges have completely different opinions on what a sentence should be for similar crimes. The book said 50 different judges were asked to evaluate 20 case files and report a sentence. The result was they barely agreed on anything. One example was a tax evasion and credit fraud case ranging from 3 years no fine to 20 years $65000 fine. Its also interesting psychologically to see what kind of people receive harsher sentences than others. Females will almost always receive a lighter sentence, but African americans will receive almost always harsher sentences. Again we look at how biased our nation is. To counteract these biases though some different things were tried. Different methods of sentencing guidelines were made. The more radical version of this was determinate sentencing. Which means that if they commit a crime regardless of the circumstances they will fall into a certain time in jail. Iowa has something similar to this in murder trials. Basically regardless of the circumstances if you commit murder it is life in prison. That means if a spouse was abused by their significant other and they committed murder due to a highly stressful and psychologically/physically damaging relationship they would get the same sentence as a murder in cold blood.
The chapter then goes on to talk about what different kinds of imprisonment we have. These can range from jails, basically holding pens for either people who are not a serious offender or for people waiting trial for more serious charges, to super max prisons which are very strict in what they allow to happen.
The goals for imprisonment go through a few steps. First goal is incapacitation. Basically while they are being held they cant do anything bad. A second goal is deterrence. This works in two ways. 1. You want the person who committed the crime to understand that doing it again would be even worse than it is now. And they shouldn’t repeat their actions. 2. General Deterrence- The basic understanding that if you do something bad then you will go to jail. This makes it so most people don’t commit crimes as they don’t want to go to jail. The third goal is retribution. Most people who see people commit crimes want something bad to happen to them. This is interesting psychologically because most people wouldn’t be able to enact certain punishments, however, they have no qualms about knowing that someone will go to prison for the rest of their lives. It’s a very judgemental view point. Another thing not mentioned in the book though, is while we agree that if something bad happens then someone should go to jail. I wonder how people would change their opinions of the sentence if it was someone they knew and liked on trial for the same crime. Shame we cant ethically do a study like that. Finally though the last step is rehabilitation. Nearly all prisioners will be released back into the public at some time. Hopefully they have understood not to do anything again otherwise they will end up right back in prison. Bad thing about that though is most people understand that prison is for the most part not a bad place to be. So a lot of criminals will get caught doing something again so they can go back to prison as they are comfterable there.
Prison systems have evolved a lot since back when the US was created. At first most criminals were sentenced to a form of public shaming. Wether that be a public whipping, hanging or simply the stocks. However, after America won her freedom we didn’t want to be like the british anymore. So we got the idea of incarceration or prison systems. The early 1800’s though came a time period where it was thought that prison systems just bred crime instead of solving it. Some ways to deal with this was controlling how much time prisoners spent with the outside world or other prisoners. Eventually other countries heard about our system and wanted to change theirs to mimic ours. However, some people saw problems with the harsher methods of containment. These problems were a lot of the prisoners went insane from solitary confinement, suicides were high as were self mutilation. So even then they saw the psychological effect of being confined like that. Another problem that arose was mid 1800s there was a huge amount of overcrowding.
The early 1900s was a time where psychology was starting to come into play in prison systems. Prisoners would start getting reviewed before they were released to make sure they had actually been rehabilitated. However also during this point in time people were starting to become concerned about the ineffectiveness of prisons. They believed prisons to be bleak desolate places that no person could hope to want to improve their way of life. During the 1970s there several riots in many prisons. The worst one led to a revolt and capture of part of the prison for 4 days. During the recapture 10 hostages, and 29 prisoners were killed. All of this led to many saying there had to be a new or alternative way to deal with prisoners. During this time as well any enjoyments that prisoners did have were pretty much eliminated as most people thought they were coddling prisoners.
During the middle of the 1900s though is when things started to look better for prisoners in general. A lot of them started to get more rights while they were in prison. Up until this time it was basically however the warden wanted it done. But after this point prisoners could receive mail, have law students review their cases, among other things. However, the court systems backed off in the 1980s and even made the term inhumane a bit harder to reach. It wasn’t until 2003 when the Prison Rape Elimination Act was established. Up until this point there really wasn’t anything being done about rape in prisons. One part I think is messed up is if a prisoner is mentally ill they have to seriously injure someone or themselves for them to get any help other the discomfort is just part of their crime against society.
Studies have shown that there is a certain culture to prison. Many of us would see this in movies how when someone is first incarcerated they have to earn “respect” otherwise they will be taken advantage of. Well this actually does happen and a lot of the hierarchy that goes around isn’t controlled by the actual prisons.
An interesting area in Social Psychology was the Stanford Prison experiment, but as were going to go into that later in the week I wont go into it now that much. Suffice to say its interesting to look at how people put into power positions and those who are put into the prisoner position will act. It pretty much doesn’t make a difference who you are or what you have done. Anyone put into that situation would essentially act the same. Scary thought. Also for what was supposed to be a 2 week experiment was cut down to 6 days because of the psychological damages they faced. 6 days, and some prisoners experience years and years of incarceration.
The next paragraph is interesting because it says and I quote “Because it is impossible to fully simulate the realities of prison life in the laboratory, and because it would be unethical to expose research participants to the punishing conditions of prison life, social scientists have relied on other methods to investigate prisons.” I want to focus on the Bold part which talks about how it is unethical. I find it interesting and vaguely wrong that they can say that it would unethical to treat research students like that. But treating other humans even though they committed a crime is ethical. The paragraph goes on to say how much different prison life is compared to civilian life and the strain that can put on inmates.
Later in the chapter it discusses if prison even works. Sadly about 67% of inmates will get arrested and go back to prison for similar crimes. However it does state that people who were given CBT in prison found that on average more than 1/3rd of that number was reduced after they received CBT.
Unfortunatly there aren’t that many alternatives to more serious crimes. There is the death penalty which is a hugely debated topic that I am myself not a fan of. But other than that and torture which is unethical in the US there aren’t any options for more serious crimes. However, for less serious crimes there are things such as parole, paying a fine etc. Now dealing with the show we are watching in class there is the idea of house arrest. Electronically kept in their house this would deter many people from committing crimes. But again with more serious crimes I still think that could be a dangerous alternative.
This chapter was riddled with psychological connections from using psychology to sentence someone to understanding the psychological strains on someone that is in prison or what prison can do to someone. I think most people will agree that something needs to be done about our prison system. Unfortunatly I am not one of those people with an exact idea of how to proceed any better than the situation we are in. There were some things in this chapter that concerned me including the paragraph with unethical treatment of prisoners and research studies, but overall was a really chapter to read.

Chapter 16 talked about the transition from sentencing to prison life. During sentencing, a criminal is sentenced based on internal causes (personality or choice) and external causes (situational forces). They are also sentenced based on controllability (whether or not the person could have controlled his/her behavior) and stability (whether or not the cause seems to be temporary or permanent). Therefore, crimes that are named external and unstable end up getting more lenient sentences. Judges used to solely decide on the punishment of the criminal and they were able to do this with their own discretion, but since this can be effected by biases, the government constructed sentence guidelines for judges to follow when sentencing. A type of guideline is determinate sentencing in which a judge hands down sentences based on strict guidelines for the crime.

There are a few different types of imprisonment. The first is a jail, which is a short term holding cell operated by cities or counties. The least violence criminals are held here fore short periods of time. A prison holds convicted criminals, violent and nonviolent, for long or short periods of time. A federal prison is for people who break a federal crime, drug offenders being the single largest group of inmates. Finally a supermax prison are for people who are considered the worst and most violent criminals, and these criminals are held here for very long periods of time, most sentences are life or execution. The goals of imprisonment are incapacitation (containing a criminal so that society is spared form crimes), deterrence (dissuading a criminal from committing a crime again which is specific deterrence, and dissuading other people from committing a crime, which is general deterrence), retribution (punishing a criminal for their crimes) and rehabitiliton (fixing criminals and making them positive members of society). Something I found interesting was that nearly all members of prison would be released back into society at some point.
There are also some known alternatives to prison life. Paying restitution is done by either paying money or by doing labor to repay society for committing a crime. Community service is an example of restitution. Probation involves suspending jail time and releasing the criminal into society under the watch of a probation officer. House arrest is a from of probation where a criminal is sentenced to staying home for a period of time. Halfway houses are houses where groups of offenders live together and attend some form of group therapy.

The main thing I found interesting in this chapter what the fact that the US has the highest rate of incarceration. It has averaged about 5 times higher than any other industrialized institution and California has a bigger prison system compared to many other countries. This is so surprising to me because there is so much crime still in the world. It also makes me wonder if the other countries aren’t doing their part in detaining criminals, or if the prison system doesn’t actually work as well as we all think.
I do believe that punishment can work, but only for certain types of criminals. I believe that some criminals don’t want to change their ways, therefore they won’t. Someone has to want to change to actually do so. I also believe that for a person to change, they have to be treated humanely. It’s hard for me to think of someone like a serial killer to change and be released back into society, because they will always have that label on him or her.
Key Terms: deterrence, jail, prison, supermax prison, federal prison, halfway house, internal cause, external cause,

"If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons to hold more criminals; and if crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons--and building even more prisons will therefore drive down crime even lower." I read this quote from the beginning of the chapter by the former head of the National Criminal Justice Commission like 10 times. It really puts into perspective what a double edge sword the corrections system is like. I learned a lot from this chapter, and it was of special interest to me because I would like to work in a prison system as a corrections officer.

The first part of the chapter explains where the length of sentencing comes from. The behavior and situation are first considered. The behavior can either be attributed to internal or external causes, and the controllability and stability of the situation is also analyzed. It made it even more clear when the chapter explained that internal causes with both a controllable and stable situation will get a stronger punishment. Biases are never ending: females in the justice system get much lighter sentences than males. Therefore, judges receive certain sentencing guidelines, and even at one time a determinate sentencing. In the chapter, there was a grid for this determinate sentencing that the judge would cross reference the level of offense with past criminal history, and other situational factors included to get the months or years of sentencing. This seems a little extreme to me, as the judge really isn't doing anything of his or her accord, and is simply reading off a table. After a while, it was agreed that all of these guidelines were to be looked at as an aid rather than completely necessary. There is also a three strikes and you're out law, which is exactly how it sounds. The more of a criminal history someone has, the longer and more severe of a punishment they will receive, in this case, if it is their 3rd felony. Lastly, the chapter touches briefly on the option of parole instead of a longer prison sentence.

The chapter then moves into the types of prisons that exist as well as the intended goals. This section helped me out a lot, as I thought that the terms "jail" and "prison" could be used interchangeably. Jails are actually more local holding cells for a person who has just been arrested or sometimes for those who are awaiting trial and sentencing. Prisons are where people actually serve out their sentences, and federal prisons are for those who have committed a federal crime. There are 2 types of prisons: those with supermax security, for those who committed a more violent crime, and those for more non-violent offenders that aren't as supervised. I then learned the goals of imprisonment, which are: incapacitation (being held in confinement), deterrence (teaching the criminal a lesson, therefore stopping his criminal behavior), and retribution (hopefully the criminal will feel remorse for what he or she did by being punished), and finally, rehabilitation (hopefully the criminal will be an improved citizen upon returning to society).

Next, we get a look at how the prison system has changed over time. Public shaming was really the first attempt at some type of imprisonment and before prisoners had any rights. The 1800s was basically a trial and error period for the prison system. People were trying to figure out why crimes were committed, ranging from religion to society itself. There were different plans put in to place, one of which was the Pennsylvania Plan. This plan involved complete solitary confinement and no human contact. This really was not a practical solution, as overcrowding was an issue as well as expenses. Inmates were also growing very mentally ill due to all of the time spent confined. Eventually, changes were made and the system was improved. In the 1900s, social sciences were beginning to make a mark in the prisons, as professionals realized that there might be a deeper issue within the mind of a criminal. Lastly, the chapter explained a few prison strikes, in which the inmates took control and killed as well as injured many guards and other people. As time went on, prisoners received more rights, such as an act against prison rape, and access to psychological care, although the threshold to receive this care was high.

We learn next about what prison is like. A couple of surprising stats I learned from the text are that 93% of the prison population is male, and the U.S. imprisons the most people out of other countries. Our prisons are getting so crowded, due especially to drug crimes. The text touches briefly on the Stanford prison study, which I won't talk much about since our next post involves this, however, I found it very interesting and unexpected. Prisons are very violent, and an attribute to this can be prison gangs that are formed. Drugs are also an issue, as some people smuggle them in for the inmates. Guards are even bribed to allow this behavior.

Lastly, the chapter poses the question: Does prison work? First of all, I could not believe that prison costs $24,000 per inmate. That is more than I make in a year. The price just goes up as inmates age. The text explains that prisons do a great job in the areas of incapacitation and retribution, but fail in the area of rehabilitation. It is basically a question of whether prison is the solution or other alternatives, such as probation, house arrest, cognitive-behavioral therapy, etc. I personally agree with the chapter, in that prisons do a great job of inflicting punishment, and that is what society wants to happen to these criminals. However, I feel that punishment is not only going to do the trick. We need more psychologists in the prison setting, as well as a lower threshold to receive this kind of help. The debate then lies between taxpayers paying more or allowing criminals back into society who will be repeat offenders.

Terms: internal causes, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, level of offense, criminal history, three strikes and you're out law, felony, parole, prison, jail, federal prison. holding cell, federal crime, supermax security, imprisonment, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, public shaming, Pennsylvania Plan, solitary confinement, overcrowding, inmates, Stanford prison study, gangs, drugs

Chapter 16 discussed sentencing decisions, types of imprisonment, the goals of prison, and how effective it is. Overall I thought this chapter was very interesting in comparison to others; probably because I learned a lot of new fascinating information. First the chapter discussed sentencing decisions and that judges and juror decide on a proper punishment based on the seriousness of the crime. To do this they look at internal and external causes; internal causes are personality or free choice, while external causes are situational forces. These two help explain the behavior. Psychologists specifically look at controllability and stability. Controllability refers to whether or not a person could have controlled their behavior, while stability refers to whether the cause appears to be temporary or permanent. One thing I have always wondered is how one person who committed the same crime receives a different punishment. According to the text sentencing disparities are sometimes the logical result of differences in the details of similar crimes, however they also arise from the biased discretion of judges. I am not surprised this happens, however this is frustrating because it seems to happen more than we think. It’s simply not fair for someone to get a lessor punishment for the same crime. In hopes of reducing this sentencing guidelines have been put in place, it is a list of factors that should be considered when sentencing. They include the type of crime, viciousness of the crime, defendant’s prior criminal record, circumstance of the current offense, and the average sentence given in the past for similar crimes. This is a move in the right direction to make sentencing as equally as possible for everyone.

There are different types of imprisonment such as jails, prisons, federal prisons, and supermax prisons. Jails are short-term and operated by cities or counties while prisons hold people for long periods of time. Federal prisons are for people who break federal law, and they range from minimum to maximum security. I had never heard of a supermanx prison previous to reading the chapter, they are reserved for people who are very serious or who have committed violent crimes. When people are sent to a type of imprisonment we do so for certain reasons and we have certain goals. Incapacitation is a very simple goal and its idea is that if a dangerous individual is contained they are not able to harm anyone outside of prison. Another goal of prison is deterrence, which is the hope that the suffering they deal with during prison will influence them to not commit any crimes once they are released. Another aspect that is influenced on the general population is called general deterrence which is the idea that people will not commit crimes because they do not want to go to prison. And the last goal is retribution, which is the concept that we want an individual to serve time due to emotional reasons.

It was interesting to read about the backgrounds of people who are in prison. Many of them have come from unstable situations, most have had at least on family member in prison, many have not completed high school, and they are drug users prior to being in prison. Overall there seems to be risk factors that influence the likelihood of a person committing a crime. Researchers have also found gender differences within people who are incarcerated. Males are more likely to be aggressive and violent, therefore more likely to be in prison for violent crimes. While females are more likely to be held in minimum security prisons and they are more likely to commit suicide and have mental health issues.

The most interesting case study in this chapter was the Stanford prison experiment. Basically people who were not convicted were put in a scenario and treated like prison inmates or guards. What happened was the guards took the role very serious and began to be verbally abusive; they were also abusive in the sense of using different forms of punishment other than physical abuse such as, solitary confinement. This study has received a lot of criticism however it does express the overall environment of prison.

I think prison works in certain cases and for certain individuals. As in there are cost and benefits to the prison system. For example prisons are extremely expensive to run and the average cost per prisoner per year is 24,000. And this cost only increases the longer they are they due to health issues. The prison system would probably work better if there was education or therapy to help people in prison once they are released so they are not a likely to commit another crime. According to the text if no attempt has been made to give them the skills and resources necessary to mend their ways, released convicts will be likely to return to a life of crime. So overall I think it is a beneficial way of keeping our overall society safer, however it has some downfalls that need to be addressed.

Terms: internal causes, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing disparities, sentencing guidelines, jails, prisons, federal prisons, supermax prisons, incapacitation, deterrence, general deterrence, retribution, Stanford prison experiment, mental health, gender differences.

Chapter 16 is about the topic of corrections and discusses sentencing practices, imprisonment in a correctional facility itself, and alternatives to the traditional methods. The chapter begins by discussing sentencing methods and practices. The first topic brought up in this section is sentencing decisions. The book explains that during the sentencing process the appropriate punishment is decided by a mixture of the seriousness of the crime committed and attributions of the criminal, such as their likeliness to reoffend. The chapter describes how people explain the behaviors of others in a process such as this and draws a line between internal causes and external causes. Internal causes are things such as personality and external causes are things such as the environment and situations that the offender may find themselves in. The chapter goes on to explain that there are two other dimensions of this perceived cause, which are controllability and stability. Controllability is whether a person could have controlled their behavior in the situation and stability is whether the cause was temporary or permanent. The chapter then explains more on disparities between sentences and guidelines used in sentencing. Sentencing guidelines are used to help judges decide the best sentence for the crime based on previous sentences under similar circumstances. This section also lists the practice of determinate sentencing, which requires judges to give a specific sentence for specific crimes. The practice of determinate sentencing falls under the “tough on crime” approach to sentencing. Another practice that fits under the tough on crime approach is the practice of three strikes laws. The chapter explains that three strikes laws generally require that criminals receive a long or even life sentence when they are convicted of a third felony. It further explains that some states are more narrow in their use of three strikes laws than others, with some being limited to only violent and sexual offenders.

The next topic that the chapter discusses is types of imprisonment. In this section, it describes the differences between jails and prisons and the different types of prisons. The section describes jails as short-term holding cells operated by cities or counties and administered by the local authorities. People in jail are mainly those who have committed misdemeanors and are serving a sentence of less than a year. Prisons on the other hand hold convicted criminals for longer periods of time than jails. The chapter explains that there are state prisons and federal prisons. Federal prisons are for criminals who break federal law. The chapter describes federal laws as being laws that attempt to target crimes that reach beyond borders of individual states or crimes that involve multistate conspiracies. One example provided by the book is drug law violations, which accounts for 36% of the total inmates in prison, which also happens to be the majority. Prisons can range from minimum to maximum security typically, with an exception being supermax prisons. Supermax prisons are for criminals who are particularly dangerous.

After this, the chapter discusses the goals of imprisonment. One goal is incapacitation, which is preventing a criminal from committing further crimes by sending them to prison. Another goal is deterrence, which is divided into two types. One of these is specific deterrence, which hopes that spending time in prison will deter a criminal from reoffending upon their release. The other type of deterrence is general deterrence, which hopes that sending criminals to prison will dissuade others from committing crimes, for fear of also going to prison. The third goal listed is retribution, which involves the public outcry at the crime that was committed, such as the murder of a child. The death penalty would fall under this goal, but is an extreme example. The final goal listed is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation tries to help criminals improve themselves while they are in prison, in anticipation of their release back into the community.

The next topic I found interesting in the chapter was the subject of prisonization. Prisonization is the assimilation of new inmates into the culture of prison life. Prisonization can lead to a person who is in prison for a fairly minor offense turning into a more hardened criminal, who is more likely to reoffend upon release. This section also brings up the Stanford Prison Experiment, which I know we will also be discussing this week. The Stanford Prison Experiment shows off the power of the situation on individuals, especially in environments such as prisons.

The book also brings up the topic of whether imprisonment actually works. One of the topics brought up in this section is the rate of recidivism. The chapter explains that roughly 67% of inmates will be rearrested and sent back to prison after their release, with 50% of these people reoffending within 3 years of their release. Personally, I think that punishment and imprisonment can work, but it depends on the individual. For some offenders, prison is the best choice and for others the best choice may be probation.

There are alternatives to prison, such as paying restitution for a crime. Restitution can involve paying for damages to property or doing something like community service. Another alternative is probation. Probation involves suspending a jail or prison sentence and letting the offender continue to live in the community as long as they adhere to strict guidelines. There is also the option of house arrest instead of imprisonment. House arrest is similar to parole, but the offender is confined to their home instead of having more freedom to move about the community. The final alternative listed is a residential community corrections center, which is a halfway house. Halfway houses are places where offenders live and attend therapy for their specific type of crime, whether it was a violent or drug related crime. Personally, I feel that the vast majority of offenders would benefit more from one of the alternatives to imprisonment.

Most of the topics discussed in this chapter were already covered in my other classes, as seems to be the case with a lot of these chapters. It was still interesting as always to read about the topics though.

Terms: corrections, sentencing practices, imprisonment, correctional facility, sentencing decisions, punishment , internal causes, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, three strikes laws, jails, prisons, federal prisons, minimum/maximum security, supermax prisons, incapacitation, deterrence, specific deterrence, genera deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, prisonization, Stanford Prison Experiment, recidivism, restitution, probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers

Chapter 16 is getting behind the scenes of corrections and what we do about sentencing, imprisonment, and other ways to cope with punishment. Our last blog post was about the movie 12 Angry Men and in that blog post we discussed how the jury deliberates and figures out whether or not someone can be guilty or innocent. The power of the decision lies in the hands of the jury and the judge like we have learned before, but this time we can see what they actually look for in a particular case. In this chapter we can see that the jury and the judge have to look at external and internal causes of the crime that the person has committed. Usually a psychologist looks at the controllability or stability of a person; whether or not the person who is being convicted had control over the situation or if the cause seems to be temporary or permanent.

Not necessarily do two people commit the same offense and get off with the same punishment as we learned in this chapter, but to get around these issues the federal government has put up guidelines to help with this, they are called sentencing guidelines. These help the judge set up appropriate sentences for the convicted felons. The judge likes to look at past records of the person as well as how harmful are they to the community, are they willing to put this person back on the streets after what they have committed. It could only be a small misdemeanor but still the person could have such the record and they are hazardous to the community that they need to be locked up.

These factors can be decided and then the big decision is where to put these felons, should we place a person who is not really adequate for a supermax prison or should we put him in a county jail and see how he does there. These two types of places to put convicted people are just two of the three places to send someone; the other place is to send them to a federal prison, usually kept open for people who break a federal law such as counterfeiting.

We all know that being locked up has some ups and downs but the system does have in mind some goals of being put in prison and being locked up. There are three major goals of imprisonment; incapacitation, the person can no longer harm society and the people around it, deterrence, trying to scare the person so he will not commit the same offense at a later time, and lastly retribution, this is a more emotional way of getting people to stop. As it states on page 354 we want to see the murderer punished for what they did.

Prisons have become more and more acceptable, back in the day people used to be shammed and shunned for what they did by putting them in stocks and harassing them till they cried pretty much, now-a-days we just lock people up and call it good; but back then things were a lot more public.

In this chapter I found that people were pretty much shunned in the old days and were publicly humiliated pretty interesting. It made me think of the Scarlet Letter and how she was publicly humiliated in front of the entire village. I also think that punishment does work to some extent, if it is done right and can be executed in the correct manor then it could be done positively and not have horrible outcomes for it. If we just punished people in the most horrendous manor then things will not get through to them. It might scare them but how likely will that work? We have done studies on the D.A.R.E program schools used to put in place for children to learn not to do drugs and other bad stuff to scare them and we have seen that it does not work. Just like the studies that show when we put a bunch of kids in a room with convicts and have them yell at them and show them how tough they are and how bad prison/jail can be, they just think they are above that and they are cooler than that so they do not really give two craps about what happens to them. They just keep living life and nothing scares them.

KEY TERMS: External causes, internal causes, controllability, stability, judge, jury, sentencing, punishment, imprisonment, sentencing guidelines, supermax prison, jail, federal prison, deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, stocks

Chapter 16 talks about corrections, sentencing, imprisonment, and alternatives. While looking through the chapter I came across the sentencing table, which looked familiar, in my past job shadow at federal probation they had shown me this table and said its what they go by when writing pre-sentencing reports. They also take into consideration determinate sentencing which requires judges to hand down a sentence that falls within a prespecified range if a defendant is found guilty of a particular crime.
There are a few types of imprisonment. Each county or city has their own jail, which are short term holding cells. People who are normally put in jail are convicted of misdemeanors. They can also hold dangerous people here before a trial. Prisons are where the convicted criminals are held for long periods of time and every state has their own. Federal prisons are for people who break the federal law. Which target people who are in between multiple states, drug offenders are make up a majority of the federal prison population. The most secure and high end prison are the super max prisons they are for people who have been convicted of very serious and violent crimes, they are held in small cells with little interaction. In the book that I just got done reading for my report, “Orange is the new black”, Piper (who is the main character, put into jail) stated that “The prison system is more of a lesson that teaches its residents how to survive as a prisoner, and not as a citizen –not a very constructive body of knowledge for us or the communities to which we return” That is why I think that if it is possible for any person to be put on probation or parole then we should really take advantage of it. I am very supportive of this because it reintegrates offenders into society. We aren’t just throwing them into the real world by themselves when they get done, but we are giving them resources and guidance to become the person they want to be.
Something that I found really interesting was the basic statistics on prisons and prisoners. Especially the table that has the estimated number of inmates held in state or federal prison, or in local jail, by gender, race, and Hispanic origin, 2000-2008. From the graph crime rates are steadily going up in all areas. The United States now imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens for longer periods of time than any other industrialized democracy in the world. That type of information was also very surprising and interesting. It’s crazy how much crime is increasing, and I think that part of the reason may be because of the family trends. I currently mentor at the black hawk county jail and each of my mentees have had past family members in jail… they are just following the family trend, and there kids will probably end up in jail and their kids kids might also.
Key terms- jail, prison, federal prison, supermax prisons, parole, probation, determinate sentencing, sentencing guidelines.

Chapter 16 discussed our prison system. First, it covered sentencing decisions and guidelines. Judges have not been very consistent with sentencing terms, and often give African Americans more harsh sentences, and women more lenient sentences. Sentencing guidelines have been put into place to try to make sentencing less biased, but most guidelines have become advisory, instead of mandatory. Next, types of imprisonment were discussed. Jails are short-term holding cells, where as prisons are long-term. Jails may hold people convicted of misdemeanors, and prisons hold people convicted of felonies. Jails may hold serious criminals as well during their trial. Both jails and prisons are over crowded. Some prisons have minimum security for offenders who have committed less white-collar crimes or drug offenses. They have much more freedom, less security, and less labor. Other prisons, called supermax prisons, hold especially serious or violent criminals. They are much more restrictive, and are under much more security.

There are a few goals of imprisonment that don’t necessarily make sense together. The simplest goal is incapacitation, or containing the criminal in a space where he can no longer be a threat to members of society. Deterrence refers to punishing the criminal so that they will be dissuaded from committing any more crimes. Retribution involves punishing the criminal for the sake of justice. Lastly, rehabilitation means improving criminals during their prison time so that they will become productive members of society. The chapter also talked about the culture of prison. Prisonization refers to the assimilation of new inmates into the values, norms, and language of the prison. Some of the values, norms, and language are those of violent stress gangs who end up in prison. The environment can be brutal with these types of criminals. Regardless of someone personality, the powerful situation of prison can have strong effects on prisoner’s attitudes and behaviors.

One thing that really surprised me was the section on shock incarceration for juvenile offenders. I had never heard of this system before, and the details and theories behind it left me baffled. Shock incarceration is an alternative to prison for young offenders. The “shock” is a visit to a supermax prison, where they are informed of what life in prison is like, in order to scare them away from committing crimes. Juveniles are lectured about the horrors of prison and verbally abused by inmates in the prison. They may continue to a boot camp program, resembling a military basic training program. The juvenile (nonviolent) offenders are abused by demanding drill sergeants, forced to complete intense exercise, and live in horrible living conditions. These types of programs do not seem to have beneficial effects. In fact, juveniles who go through a shock incarceration are significantly more likely to become offend again. Juveniles are much better off going through therapy, education, and drug rehab.

I am on the fence about whether or not prison punishment works. Prisons are terribly expensive and take away government money that could be used on education, health care, and programs that help to prevent crime and promote public safety. They also are harmful to prisoners. If 99% of prisoners eventually leave prison, it seems that there should be more care about the rehabilitation aspect of prison goals.

Terms: sentencing guidelines, jails, prisons, supermax prisons, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, prisonization, shock incarceration

Chapter 16 is about the sentencing, imprisonment and alternatives of corrections. After conviction and before punishment, the criminal must be sentenced. The sentencing is decided by the judge, jurors and the public based on the seriousness of the crime and attributions about the criminal. When discussing the behavior of individuals, internal causes and external causes are terms used because they describe different things that could be influencing their actions such as personality or powerful situational factors. There are also some disparities in regards to the punishment and its sentence. Not all people who commit the same crime will necessarily get the same punishment. Sometimes there are aspects of the crime or individual that will lead to different sentences, but it is also due to biases from the judge. To try and combat these inequalities in sentencing, sentencing guidelines were created by the federal government. These sentencing guidelines include things such as determinate sentencing and three-strikes laws. Also, even after the sentence has been served in prison, decisions about sentencing continue to be made through parole.
There are a handful of different types of imprisonment that the chapter discusses. The first is jail. Jails differ from prisons in that they are short-term holding cells. People who are charged with misdemeanors usually will serve out their short sentence in prison (usually less than a year). Violent offenders charged with serious offenses can be held in jails until their trial date as well. Prisons hold convicted criminals for long periods of time (years or decades). Most of these prisoners will be set free into society at some point, but a small number of them will remain in prison for the rest of their lives. Related to prison, there are federal prisons as well. These prisons are for people who break federal law. Drug offenders are the largest group of offenders in federal prisons today. There are also supermax prisons. These are the prisons that are on the completely opposite side of the continuum when compared to minimum security prisons. The types of prisoners in these supermax prisons are those who are deemed to be very violent or serious offenders who did not do well in any other kind of security. There are also different kinds of goals that are trying to be reached with imprisonment. The goals are incapacitation, deterrence (general and specific), retribution, and rehabilitation. Prisons have evolved over time and have moved from public shaming to a focus on punishing without physically harming the individual. The kind of punishment that would be fit this is by taking away their freedom and liberty because it is thought that this kind of punishment would be more “hurtful” than any kind of physical punishment that could be implemented.
Prisons also have their own kind of culture. There is a process of prisonization in which there is an assimilation of new inmates into the values, norms, and language of the prison. The power of the prison situation is extremely strong. Individual characteristics unfortunately have much less influence on behavior than the characteristics of the situations that people find themselves in while imprisoned. There is a lot of peer pressure in prisons and you are expected to act in certain ways in order to “fit in” and not be targeted as weak by other inmates.
One of the last questions that the chapter asks is “does prison work?” It can be said that prisons may achieve some goals but not others. Unfortunately, the overall recidivism rate is not promising. Following their release from prison, 67% of former inmates will eventually be rearrested and sent back to prison and about half the people released are back in prison within 3 years. There are also some alternatives to prison. There are thing like restitution, probation, house arrest, and residential community corrections centers.
I found the discussions about the evolution of the prison system to be interesting. I have talked about this in other classes, but I felt this book gave a lot of good details that were lacking from other classes. The book broke it down into the 1800’s and the 1900’s, which were two very important centuries for prisons. I also thought the section about the types of imprisonment was interesting. I wasn’t fully aware of the types of prisoners that are housed in federal prisoners. I knew that they were offenders who broke federal laws, but the fact that drug offenders took up a lot of the space was something I wasn’t aware of. I do think that punishment can work when the end goal is deterrence and/or rehabilitation. I think that these goals are more focused on the future and will help the offenders see where their lives could be heading if they continue on the paths that they are on and how they can change things for the better. When the end goals are retribution and/or incapacitation, I think the only thing being accomplished is pissing off the offenders and making them feel like they cannot turn things around. It is important to focus on the future and not dwell on what has already happened because it can’t be changed.

Terms: internal causes, external causes, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, three-strikes laws, parole, jail, prisons, federal prisons, supermax prisons, incapacitation, deterrence, specific deterrence, general deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, public shaming, prisonization, recidivism, restitution, probation, house arrest, residential community corrections centers

The main focus of chapter sixteen was the idea of incarceration, the types of incarceration and the alternatives to incarceration. The basic idea of incarceration that was mentioned in the chapter was that its purpose is to separate the criminal from society. During that separation they hope to deter the criminal from committing to that behavior again (which would be a negative reinforcer) and to set an example for others to not act in that behavior as well.
What I learned was just how much is taken into account when deciding someone’s punishment. Like for example the causes of the crime, which in this case could be either internal or external. An internal cause would be the person in question knowingly choosing this, which of course would lead to a harsher punishment. The external cause on the other hand is the exact opposite being that the person had no choice in the matter. This could stem from maybe a mental condition or maybe he was forced like the classic question of prosecuting the man who stole bread to feed his starving family. Really its like the locus of control from the jury chapter.
Following that there was the discussion on sentencing itself, which I found had some interesting facts. Like the fact that even today there are still biases to sentencing in regards to women. When they committed the same crime as a man they were often given a lighter sentence. They may have gotten the same sentence let’s say murder. The man and woman were both found guilty the man received 50 and in some cases the woman would get 40. In no way is that an accurate time of sentencing but it sets the example of how the bias works. Another problem that came up was deciding on a sentence for someone committing a crime similar to someone else. Even though the crimes are similar each one will have some uniqueness given to the events of the crime so guidelines were given to aid in this decision. The crazy thing to me is the judges are given the ability to disregard these guidelines as long as they can explain themselves in how they came up for their decision on their ruling. The other important point in this section was the discussion on how punishment has been doled out over the centuries and prison life itself.
Back in the 1800s public shamming was the way to go about taking care of criminals. Your private life was supposed to stay just that as far as society was concerned back then, so by being caught doing something illegal being thrown in the stocks was essentially a death sentence to any kind of social life. As time has progressed though the punishments have become more of a deterrent against others committing the same crime rather than a problem of social standing. Thus when it comes time for “rehabilitation” to occur in jail, it never really works as the book states. Well in the books words it’s an abject failure. It also doesn’t help that with jail culture people can often be exposed to more violence and crime on the inside rather than out. There are gangs, social structures, violence and fights. There’s also issues with the alternatives as well. When you have the system of parole where a criminal (former in this case) has proven they can re-enter society or has served their time they can be on parole. They are re-admitted to society under the watch of a parole officer. The issue here is that one parole officer could be in charge of multiple parolees. That leads to the officer not being able to keep an eye on everyone and someone slipping through the cracks. The other problem I feel stems from the three strike rule, which is rather self explanatory being three strikes and you’re out and back to jail. While I believe that parole is a good idea for some people they’ll just abuse those chances in parole and find them back in jail. I think out system works, but just like any others there are flaws that will take time to work out.
Terms: Parole, Behaviorism, Negative Reinforcer, Three Strike Rule, Stocks, sentencing, incarceration, biases, internal and external causes, locus of control.

I have always been interested in the corrections side of criminal justice and I plan to get a job in the corrections field. Being criminology major I have taken many classes that revolve crime and corrections. In the U.S punishment has been a major issue for the public and the government, both have different views on how to punishment a criminal. Many countries have already banned the death penalty, but the U.S still sees this sentence as a way to punishment people. Corrections in America have focused on incapacitation as a way to punish, but this has cost lots of money that could have been put towards rehabilitation.
In recent years the prison system has been trying to reduce the way we handle criminals and how we punish them. The three-strikes laws are a way of combine deterrence and incapacitation. Many people want to avoid prison sentences and giving them the three-strikes can help deter people committing more problems. Give the person the chance to change their ways, but if they cannot change their life style they can face serve punishment. Giving a criminal the opportunity to get out of prison and be on parole is one step in helping the person change their life. Parole can force the person to get help on addiction problems and see avoid going back to jail. Another goal of corrections is retribution, which targets helpings the victim and the criminal. Forcing the criminal to face what he/she has done and who he/she has hurt can help the person reflect on the crime. We want these people to come back into society, but first they must get help and know that can’t keep going with the life style has in the past. I believe the government should put more money into rehabilitation programs such as drug and alcohol programs and look into medical treatments to help these criminals become part of society again.
One thing the surprised me in the chapter was the increasing rate of people being sent to jail. The prison population has been increasing even though crime rates are going down. With the war on drugs being a never ending battle prison rates will continue to rise unless we find other ways of treating these criminals. In today’s media all we ever seem to hear about is serious crimes like, murder, rape, and mass killers, but it a proven fact that these types of criminals are very rare and most inmates in prison are there for drug offenses.
There are so many problems within the prisons themselves that aren’t being talked or even know to public. Inmates that spend most of their lives in jail will often want to stay because they don’t know any other life, but a prison life. They go through prisonization were they learn how to get along in jail and deal with the stresses of being in prison. Some turn to join a gang inside the prison to survive and have connections through the prison. If a person needs to get some drugs they can turn to friend of the gang to get it. Also if an inmate is being threatened they can turn to the gang to “take care of it” for them.
The book raised a great question about if prisons really work to make criminals a part of society again. I believe they don’t, send an inmate to jail with other criminals they could learn from each other and become better criminals. Parole, probation and house arrest are get ways to help criminals get back into society, but we don’t spend enough money on these programs. It has been proven that if we find ways of treating criminals and giving them a chance to help themselves they can be citizens again, we just need to put more money into rehabilitation.
Key terms: Parole, probation, house arrest, rehabilitation, prisonization, three-strikes law, deterrence and incapacitation.

When people try to explain someone’s behavior they look at internal vs. external cause as well as controllability and stability. Based on why a jury or judge thinks a person committed a crime can lead to a lighter or heavier sentencing. But these differences can also be because of biases. Such as women usually receive lighter sentencing than men do. Some states have induced sentencing guidelines in order to make the process a little fairer. When judges deviate from these guidelines usually they must present a written statement for why they deviated from the guidelines. Another form of sentencing is determinate sentencing. Which requires a judge to decide on a sentence within an already decided range if a defendant is found guilty of a certain crime. Three strike laws are set in place in some states. By this law if a person is found guilty of their third felony they automatically receive a life sentence.

There are different types of imprisonment. Jail is usually used to hold defendants before their trial or transport. Prison’s hold convicted criminals that are sentenced to long periods of time. Federal prisons are used to hold people that break a federal law. There are also low secretary prisons that sometimes do not even have fences or guards keeping the prisoners in (this really surprised me). On the other end there are maximum security prisons. These are used to hold people that are considered especially dangerous to society. In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal the Cannibal was held in a maximum security prison. In some of these prisons the criminals spend 23 hours a day by themselves are only allowed one hour of exercise usually in shackles. This amount of time spent in solitude can have severe negative effects on a person, such as mental illness. One of the goals, however for imprisonment is rehabilitation. But if confining someone to 23 hours a day in solitude makes them develops a psychosis how is this rehabilitation? It is estimated that one quarter of inmates are mentally ill. This statistics says that prisons are making people mentally ill because one quarter does not go in that way. And if they are then we need to adjust the guilty by reason of insanity plea.

Prison’s started out as ways to public humiliate someone in order to discourage criminal activities. In the 1820’s the Pennsylvania Plan required inmates to stay in their cells alone for almost their entire sentence. They were even not allowed to talk to their family or even exchange glances with other inmates. This probably hurt the problem more then helped it since this much solitude can damage a person’s mental health. Late in the 1900’s there was a growing unrest in the brutality of prisons which lead to some strikes in the 1970’s then in the 80’s people seemed to switch views and say prison’s as a place where criminals were supposed to pay for their crimes as opposed to rehabilitation.

The U.S. imprisons more of its population than any other industrialized nation by almost 600 more per thousand than compared to other countries. Do we have that much more crime? Or do we in the United States just have a different perspective on what crime is? Black men are also put in prison more than whites and women only represent seven percent of the prison population. This shows that the criminal justice system still shows a biased towards black’s and males. Especially black males between 20 and 34. This statistic made me lose some faith in our system since it is still so biased. Blacks should not be incarcerated six times more than whites because they do not commit more crimes than whites. This shows that color stereotypes still exist. Same goes for women. Women are treated more leniently in the system than men otherwise the female population in prison would be greater. Our system still is not completely fair.
The power of prison was demonstrated by the Stanford Prison Study. Participants were randomly assigned to be a prison or guard to see how they took on the role. The guards turned brutal to the prisoners and the prisons eventually became very submissive. This study starts to explain the harshness that an occur in a prison setting. In the real prison system prisoners lose contact with the outside world, sometimes even their family. They lose their decision making power as well as the physical world. There is also much violence and rape.

Criminal activity still continues in prison. Gangs are sometimes formed which can lead to violence among the prisoners as well as against the guards. Drugs are sometimes still used in prisons by the addicts that come in. Drugs can be smuggled in. The actual amount of this activity can be hard to estimate because it is exaggerated by the inmates but reduced by administration.

Overall does prison work? Prisons do a very good job of successfully incarcerating criminals. In a maximum security prison the chance of escape is zero. But as fare a rehabilitation goes prisons are a failure. No resources are given to a prisoner or mend their behavior. And if a person enters the prison system at a young age when they get out they will not have the skills to be able to be successful in the real world. 67 percent of people once released from prison will be rearrested and sent back within three years. There are alternatives to prison including: house arrest, probation, restitution and residential community corrections centers. However these are used for lesser crimes usually. For those being released from prison has an unfair advantage since the rehabilitation rate is so low. I think prisons should do more to help prisoners change their attitudes and behaviors so they have a greater chance of making it once they get out. If we do not give them the tools to change how do we expect them to change?

Terms: Stereotype, biases, jury, judge, prison, jail, house arrest, probation, restitution, residential community corrections centers, rehabilitation, Pennsylvania Plan, Sentencing guidelines, determinate sentence, Stanford Prison Study, maximum security, three-strikes law, parole

Chapter 16 is all about the transitions from ones's sentencing to the prison liffe they will experience and overall how the prison system works. The former head of the National Criminal Justice Comission summed up the rationale for prison construction in this manner: "If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons- and building even more prisons will therefore drive down crime even lower." This isn't necessarily the case. There are optimistic views on prison as a social laboratory to reform the lives that have gone astray compared to some people's view that prison just creates more crime and more issues.

When a criminal is being sentenced you think the decision is solely based on the seriousness of the crime right? Wrong. The judges, jurors, and even the public need to take into consideration the attributes of the criminal. This is more of the psychological look into the behavior and thought process of the criminal. People attempt to explain the behavior of the criminal or just anyone in general, they distinguish between internal causes, which is the personality or free choice of someone, then there are the external causes, which are powerful situational forces. Psychologists look at controllability and stability when observing or examining a criminal. Controllability refers to whether or not a person could have controllesd their behavior, and stability refers to whether the cause appears to be temporary or permanent. I found it interesting that criminals labeled as more unstable are given more liniency in thier sentencing. Someone who is unstable could still be jusst as dangerous as someone who a specific intent when they comitted their crime. These attributes really play into Behavioral Psychology and Cognitive Psychology. You have to really get into the mind of the criminal to figure out their motif for committing the crime and examine their behavior as well to determine what they deserve for a sentence.

I found it surprising that females receive more leniency in sentencing than men do, and that African Americans almost always receive a harsher sentencing. This just goes to show you how biased our nation's prison and court systems are. Guidlines for sentencing have been made to try to avoid these biases. One guidline that is followed is determinate sentencing, which means if a criminal commits a crime regardless of the circumstances they will spend a certain amount of time in jail. Basically if you commit any crime you have to do time. For example if a murder is committed the criminal will receive life in prison despite that criminal's attributes.

Now I want to get into the different types of imprisonment. One is jail, which is describes as more of a short term holding of a criminal that is run by cities or counties. This is the holding for the least violent criminals. Prisons are used to hold criminals that have already been convicted. Prisons contain all kinds of convicts, from the violent to the non- violent, which I used to get confused about because I always thought that prison was for the violent criminals, which leads me into the next type of prison, supermax prison, which is the holding for the criminals that are considered the most violent and worst menaces to society, just overall the worst. I've never really looked into the fact that there are goals when it comes to imprisonment. That has been a foggy subject for me. First off, there is incapacitation, which is the process of detaining a criminal so society is spared from their crimes. I know, this goal is pretty obvious. The next goal, which I really didn't know all that much about is deterrence, which is the dissuation of a criminal to keep them from committing a crime again, more specifically the same type of crime they just got busted for. Next there is retribution, which is punishing the criminal for the their crimes and then the last goal is rehabilitation, which is helping the criminal in order to release then back into society as a more positive member.

The prison system has changed a lot over the years. Today I don't think you would go out for a walk and wander into town and see someones locked up in stocks as punishment for a crime, which was a common form of public shaming back in the day. Like the goals of the prison system, public shaming had its own set of goals to follow: The first conviction for a crime was paying a fine or go through a whipping. The second conviction was paying a fine that was tripled and the offender would sit on the gallows for ans hour with a noose around their neck and then be tied up to a whipping post and be subjected to 30 lashes. Ouch! The third conviction resulted in hanging... so technically an automatic death penalty without a fair trial. These steps in conviction were considered to be the first "three strikes" law. Following the Revolutionary War people desired a more structured prison system. From about 1800- 1820, it was believed by the public that prisons caused about more problems than they solved. Large riots would break out amongst the inmates and the inamtes would even share their knowledge of crime with one another. This allowed the inmates to work on and improve their criminal skills. Changes in society and disillusionment with prisons triggered a deeper analysis into the causes and consequences of crime. The Pennsylvania Plan was fromed during the 1820s. This plan required inmates to remain is solitary confinement for a majority to practically all of their prison sentence so riots and such wouldn't continue. Later on this idea, that seemed like a good one at the time, changed due to the fact that solitary confinement had a large psychological toll on the inmates. Inmates would turn to acts of self- mutilation and even suicide because they would go insane from the constant solitary confinement. The early 1900s was the dawn of psychology's role in the prison system. Prisoners would go through a psychological evaluation before being released just to be sure that rehabilitaion was successful for the inmate. Prisoners soon started to get more rights so they wouldn't feel like they were some grungy animal locked up in a cage all the time. They were given the right to work jobs within the prison, like a kitchen job for example, they would earn money and have an account, they could receive mail and family members could come visit but only for an hour or two. This really puts the prisoner at somewhat of an ease and didn't put a major toll on them psychologically.

I agree and disagree with some of the alternatives to imprisoment. The topic of the death penalty is a very touchy one so I don't really no for sure what view to give on that. Probably just that if the crimes are terrible enough and it its a repeat offender then a serious action should be taken other than a criminal rotting away in prison for life some would say that the death penalty is too harsh, anyway this is a seesaw of a debate so I won't go further. Then there are other alternatives like house arrest where the criminal is limited to their activites but they aren't locked up in a cell somewhere but they have to wear an electronic device around their ankle to monitor them. This could be tricky because the authorities don't always have a close eye on the criminal but is is way more lenient. Overall this was probably one of the most interesting chapters in the book. I really got to learn about the history of the prison system and the major part psychology does play in determining the punishment for a criminal whether it be a slap on the wrist, life in prison, or the death sentence. It makes me realize the work prisons go through to establish punishment but psychologists would be a lot more help in the actual prison setting. It still concerns me though that there is a gender bias when it comes to sentencing. Women can commit crimes just heinous as any crime a man commits so they should absolutely receive the same amount of time locked up as if they were a man.

Key Terms: attributes, internal causes, external causes, controllability, stabiility, Behavioral Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, gender bias, racial bias, determinate sentencing, jail, prison, supermax prison, incapacitation, deterrrence, retribution, rehabilitation, public shaming, the "three strikes" law, The Pennsylvania Plan

Prisons are an essential part of the Criminal Justice System. We as human share the common understanding of punishment for a moral wrong doing. This is where prisons and incarceration come into play. With out the prison system in America there would be many more harden criminals on the streets, but there would also be billions more in the tax payers wallet. The prison system isn't perfect but it is effective in many of overall goals.
Being a criminology major, the majority of this chapter on corrections and the prison system is review. If anyone is deeply interested in the punishment and prison system in America, “Crime and Punishment” with Dr. Gorton is an excellent class that explains both in-depth. To better understand the criminal justice system we must first understand sentencing Sentencing of a criminal is a very complex thing. The amount of varible that effect the sentencing are almost endless. However, this can also be very beneficial on a criminal by criminal bases. If sentencing was limited to a one size fits all, many offenders would not receive the proper punishment and rehabilitation that would best suit their reintegration into society. Disparities and guidelines better help the court set boundaries or preferences for each crime. Sentencing guidelines and determinate sentencing are tools that help the court system find the best fitted punishment for each convicted criminal.
In this chapter I found the evolution of the prison system to be the most interesting From the 1800's to present time the prison system has changed drastically. The shift was from isolation and social order to a focus on the psychological and mental needs of many prisoners. The public and the courts started to recognize the psychological problems many prisoners dealt with. In the 1900's the focus changed from straight and strict incarceration to a rehabilitation and psychological treatment of these offenders. For example, in the 1800's the Pennsylvania Plan required inmates to spend the majority of their sentences in solitary confinement, without any contact with other people. This was in hope to keep social order but to also reenforce punishment. This type of isolation was very harmful for many inmates with psychological and mental disorders; for their only enemy was their own mind. In the 1900's the medical and social sciences influenced the push for psychological care. From this push, many psychological and medical models of prison emerged. With these changes, light was also shed on the brutality and ineffectiveness of the prison system. This evolution of punishment to treatment and rehabilitation can still be seen today. The psychological needs from one prisoner to the next can vary. The courts and prison system recognized that.
Does the prison system work? I feel like this question can't be answered with a simple yes or no. We first must take some factors into consideration before deciding on a verdict. What is defined as “working”. The prison system is a huge, complex infrastructure that has to meet the needs of thousands of men and women. If that huge system is able to effectively rehabilitate, punish and deter one individual from every committing a crime again; is that success? Is that the prison system working? As states in Chapter 16 of the text book, over 67% of inmates upon release will be rearrested and sent back to prison. Well over half of the inmates are not effectively rehabilitated or deterred from committing a crime after being released from prison. Another factor to consider, money. The prison system is payed for by the tax payers. According to that percentage I stated earlier we can basically say that 67% of our tax dollars are basically ineffective...No. While those criminals are locked up they can not commit other crimes out on the streets. Study after study has shown the public that the cost of keeping an inmate locked up for a year is much less than the cost that criminal would produce on the street with, crime, public safety officers, ambulances, vandalism, etc. That difference in spending increases even more when averaging 100 inmates for that year.
In my opinion, considering other factors and understanding the overall goal of the prison system(incarcerate, rehabilitate, punish, retribution), the prison system is working effectively Given the size and complexity of the American prison system we can not expect perfection. However, prison does reduce crime and tax payer spending. Prison is also effective for that other 42% of the inmates that are released and do not re-offend The prison system is working and is an effective entity of the criminal justice system.

Key Terms: psychology, criminal justice system, criminal, re-offend, deterrence, incarcerate, incapacitation, crime & punishment, retribution, rehabilitation, American prison system, inmates, rearrest, Pennsylvania Plan, disparities, guidelines for sentencing, recidivism.

Chapter 16 is about sentencing, and imprisonment in corrections and alternatives. After conviction and before punishment, the criminal must be sentenced. This is determined by the internal and external causes, controllability and stability on has in doing the crime. Internal causes are behaviors attributed to personality or individual choice, while external causes are behaviors attributed to the situation or environment. An example would be a personality disorder versus being held at gun point, both of these may cause someone to commit a crime, but neither makes a person commit a crime. Controllability is a criminal’s ability to control their behavior, while stability is whether a criminal’s behavior is attributed to temporary or permanent causes. These behaviors help a judge or jury decided on the harshness of a one’s punishment for the crime they committed.
The chapter also explains the different types of imprisonments. First there are jails. Jails are distinguished from prisons by their function. Jails are short-term holding cells operated by cities or counties and administered by local authorities. Sometimes people convicted of misdemeanors serve out short sentence in the local jail. Prisons hold convicted criminals for long periods of time, sometimes years, sometimes decades. Most prisoners will eventually be released into free society, a small minority will live out the remainder of their lives behind prison walls. Federal prisons are for people who break federal law, crimes that reach beyond the borders of individual states or involve multiple states. Both state and federal prisons range from minimum to maximum security. At one end of the continuum are the open security federal prisons where prisoners are held in cottages or dormitories; they interact with few restrictions and spend much of their time doing light prison labor. Some medium security prisons have “campus style” prisons which feature small, scattered buildings enclosed by a tall fence. At the other end of the continuum are supermax prisons which are reserved for people deemed to be especially serious or trolled. Inmates spend nearly 23 hours a day alone in their cells without counseling, vocational training, or prison jobs. Over time, many inmates exposed to these conditions develop serious mental illnesses, including profound depression and psychosis.
There are different goals of having someone imprisoned. The first is incapacitation through containment, or securely containing people to prevent them from engaging in criminal activity. The second is deterrence. The theory of deterrence is that instilling fear of punishment in people will prevent future criminal acts. The third goal is retribution, or belief that the punishment for a crime should be proportionate to the harm caused. It is intended to make the harmed party feel that justice has been served by punishing the perpetrator. But some may ask “Does prison work?” Studies show that prisons are expensive, frequently harmful and that other less severe sanctions often produce better results. Different alternatives would include: Paying restitution with money or through labor, probation or letting someone out of the criminal justice system early and into the community under the supervision of a probation officer, house arrest, or home confinement, and residential community corrections centers (also known as halfway houses), where groups of offenders live in a communal environment and attend some form of group therapy.

Terms: Internal Causes, External Causes, Controllability, Stability, Jails, Prisons, Federal Prisons, Supermax Prisons, Incapacitation, Deterrence, Retribution, Restitution, Probation, House Arrest, Residential Community Corrections Centers.


Chapter 16 is about what happens after a defendant is found guilty and how the legal system decides on appropriate sentences for convicted criminals, the role of prisons and the psychological effects of imprisonment.
The sentence of a criminal depends on the seriousness of the crime and on the acknowledgments about the criminal. When people attempt to describe attributions of another they looks for two things, internal causes, personality, or external causes, powerful. On the other hand psychologist look at two other attributions controllability, does the person have control over their behavior, or stability, is the cause temporary or permanent.
Disparities and Guidelines- When two people commit the same crime they are not necessarily sentenced the same way. Studies were given at it seemed that judges had given out different sentences for the defendants. The studies also showed biased, some of the judges were more lenient towards women when carrying out a sentence. To reduce biases sentencing with the judges sentencing guidelines were constructed. Sentencing guidelines were made to help judges decide on the appropriate sentence. Of course these were not set in stone and the judge were not required the sentence that was recommended. Determinate sentencing was basically a sentencing table that gave a range of sentencing depending on the offense level and the history of the criminal. Depending on those factors a judge had to sentence the defendant within the range of the chart.
There are two types of imprisonment. People who are convicted of misdemeanors usually hold out their sentence in jail, a short-term holding cell. Jails can also be used to hold people until their trial date. The other type of imprisonment is prison, a long-term holding for criminals. Most criminals in prison will eventually be released, after their sentence is held out, some will spend their entire life in prison and very little will be held until they are killed in execution. The chapter talks about two types of prisons, federal and supermax. Criminals who are sentenced to federal prison are the one who break federal law. Criminals who are sentenced to supermax prisons, which stand for super maximum-security prisons, are people deemed to be especially serious or violent criminals.
The chapter then goes on to discuss the development and rules of the prison. The punishment sentenced cannot be cruel and unusual. In the prison the conditions have to be humane. Next the chapter discussed the power of prison situations. In this section it talked about the Stanford University study. This was the most interesting thing in the chapter for me. I have never heard about this study before, it’s hard to believe knowing that it was a famous study. I thought it was interesting to see how people who take on those roles and fall into character or are obsessed with power, for the guards, and demoralized, the prisoners. They had to end the study early because it was unethical to keep the participants. The rest of the chapter talks about the culture of prison, and does prison work.
I think that being sent to prison can basically go either way. It’s a hit or miss. I think for the prisoners who feel bad about their crime are most likely going to get out of prison and change their ways. These are the prisoners who do not like it in prison. For the other prisoners who fit right in and join gangs, I believe these are the ones who will get out of prison and sometime later end back up in prison.

Terms: internal causes, external causes, stability, controllability, sentencing guidelines, determinate sentencing, jail, prison, federal prison, supermax.

Chapter 16 starts off by explaining that prison is the centerpiece of punishment in the US. For more than three decades the prison system in the United States has expanded, whether the crime rate is going up or down. The former head of the National Criminal Justice Commission says the "If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons to hold more criminals; and if crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons and building even more prisons will therefore drive down crime even lower." It makes me wonder why they are building so many prisons sometimes because prisons do take a lot of money to run with so many people in them. Probably less than putting someone through college. The Chapter continues to talk about the sentencing, imprisonment, and alternatives for corrections.

The way a judge and jury makes the sentencing decision for a defendant is based on a couple different factors. One is if the cause was an internal cause which would be something that happened because of their personality or free choice. The other is the external cause which are things such as powerful situational forces. The other factors are contrallability and stability. Contrallability refers to whether or not a person could have controlled their behavior and stability refers to whether the cause appears to be temporary or permanent. The judge and jury put those things into account and then they determine the sentencing which also involves a sentencing table that shows the offense level on the y axis and criminal history category on the x axis. If a felon gets three-strikes, it is required that the criminal receives a long sentence or a life sentence when they are convicted of a third felony.

There are a couple different types of imprisonment where felons end up. There are the jails which are short-term holding cells operated by cities or counties and administered by local authorities...usually county sheriffs or city police. Then there are prisons that hold convicted criminals for long periods of time. And there are federal prisons for people who break federal laws and there are supermax prisons reserved for people deemed to be especially serious or violent criminals. In supermax prisons there is super maximum security. The goal of imprisonment is incapacitation through containment. IF a criminal is securely contained inside prison walls, he or she is unable to harm people outside the prison. Prisons have definitely evolved through time. Prisoners are supposed to have some rights now instead of getting beaten by guards for no reason or public shaming. Although there are still things that happen in the prisons that shouldn't, prison has evolved. Prison is a harsh world. You have no contact with the real world and there a many dangerous people that live around you. I know I would never want to be thrown in prison because there are many shankings and killings in prisons that Arian gangs or other gangs start. There are drugs that get into the prisons and I think its a pretty corrupt world in prison.

The most surprising thing that I saw through the chapter were the statistics of prison. There were 846,000 black men in prison or jail compared to 712,500 white men. There are more white men in this country than black, but they continue be the top target for police. 40% of people in prison have had a family member that's been in, 62% are regular drug users, 18% are married and over half made less than $15,000. I think the punishment and jails and prisons do work because it is really the best thing we have. you can put people on house arrest, but they can escape or still commit crimes there. They would have to be on a lot of surveillance. And although prisons are not cheap, it is the cheapest thing there is for 2.5 million people in prison and jail. Us taxpayers are just paying for more people to get thrown in prisons and jails.

This chapter deals with the psychological ramifications of actually putting someone in prison. It discusses sentencing, and prison goals, as well as conditions and treatments. The first thing that stood out to me was how the jury/judge decides how long the sentence will be. They consider internal causes, like the personality and choices of the person on trial, external causes, like where they grew, and any other pressures that may have contributed to the illegal behavior. They also consider the controllability of their actions, or whether or not they could had the ability to understand and manipulate their actions. This could come into play if the person had a mental disease, like the personality disorder Aaron feigned in Primal Fear. The other factor is stability, or how permanent the causes that made the person commit the crime are. For example, if some committed a crime and were convicted, however the circumstances are attributed to external, stable factors that a low controllability rate, then the sentence would likely be much lesser than that of someone who’s crimes were due to internal personality issues, that were completely in their control who had virtually no sustainable out side forces that led them to commit the crime.
The next interesting thing I came across was the fact that America uses two different types of sentencing. First is the determinate sentence, where you will go to prison for a certain amount of time, say 5 years, and you will actually be in prison for 5 years. The alternative is an indeterminate sentence, where if the sentence is 5 years, there will also be an assigned minimum amount of time let’s say one year. This means as a prisoner, you will definitely serve at least one year in prison, however any time after that with good behavior and the opportunity to get out on parole, you will likely leave long before the 5 years of the original sentence. The three strikes law also interests me. If you are convicted of a felony 3 times, then you are eligible for life in prison. I understand the deterrent factor of this law, however I think that it would tend to increase the recidivism rate of those who have already committed two felonies and have served long enough that it is difficult for them to become adjusted in society again.
Another interesting psychological aspect of sentencing, is the possibility of parole. If one believes that if he is good enough, that he will be able to get out early, then that would be a natural incentive to do everything they’re supposed to. However, it is my understanding, that even if you are offered the potential of parole, you are unlikely to get it if you committed a felony of class B or higher. To me this seems cruel and clever to allow a person to believe that they have a chance, if they do everything right, to get out. Although it seems like a natural defense for the prison, so that more prisoners will behave, I also believe there is a breaking point. If a person is put up for parole review on several occasions over many years, they will begin to lose hope, and it will have a negative outcome. They may become violent toward the guards, blaming them as the cause that they are still incarcerated, or they may feel worthless after working very hard to be good, and may turn to suicide or other means.

Terms: psychological ramifications, prison, prison goals, sentencing, jury/judge, internal causes, external causes, trial, controllability, personality disorder, mental disease, stability, convicted, determinate sentence, indeterminate sentence, good behavior, parole, three strikes law, felony, deterrent, recidivism,

After reading chapter 16 I have a better understanding of how our judicial system handles corrections and sentencing. The sentencing process of how a person is sentenced is based on factors such as the type of crime, reasons and circumstances for that crime, as well as individual attributes of the perpetrator. Internal causes to a crime have to deal with the perpetrator's personality and reasons for committing the crime. Within the internal causes, we look at controlability and stability. Controlability is the amount of control over a certain behavior. Stability is the degree to which a cause of action is presently temporary, or if there are more permanent factors on the situation. External causes have to deal with more of the situational factors surrounding the crime. Crimes that have been deemed internal, controllable, and stable receive harsher penalties than others.

Punishments for crimes are given out in the form of sentencing from a judge. Determinant sentencing requires a judge to give a sentence that falls within a prespecified range if a defendant is guilty of a specific crime. This is usually done through the use of a sentencing table that deems the punishment within a certain range of time. In some states, the three strike law gives a person three strikes until reaching a particular punishment or sentence. Parole is given out to lower a person's sentence in person, usually due to good behavior or other reasons.

There are also a few types of imprisonment. Jail is a more temporary means where as the holding time is not usually very long. Prisons are for convicted criminals who receive a longer sentence. There are state prisons, federal prisons, and super max, or maximum security prisons. Where a criminal goes to serve their time depends on the type of crime committed and individual factors of the person.

There are four goals of prison. The first is incapacitation, or taking the person out of society. The second is detterence of the behavior committed. This is a behavior modification technique and has specific and general detterance in that people will not want to commit the crime for fear of prison. The third goal is retribution, or making up for the crime committed. Lastly, we have rehabilitation, so that the criminal can maybe get better and be released.

To prevent against public shamming of prisoners, the Pennsylvania Plan was put into effect where inmates remained in their cell for basically their entire sentence. This has been found to be ineffective and prisoners have been given more humane rights, like yard time, social eating, jobs, and even education. This increase in rights has created a sort of prison subculture. New inmates go through the process of prisonization, or leaning the values, norms, and language of prison. This can often have a negative effect, hardening new inmates and making them more violent. Many new inmates have to join a gang in order to survive. Unfortunately, prison has a recividism rate of 67% of inmates released ending back up in prison.

Thankfully, there are alternatives to prison. Restitution for crimes can come in the form of probation or community service, where people may repair the damages to the crimes they committed. House arrest is a form of probation where the individual cannot leave the house and is monitored through an electrical device. Residential community corrections centers, or half-way houses, allow groups of offenders to live together and go through therapy.

The most interesting thing I learned was that judges have a set of guidelines they use when sentencing people. I think this is a good idea, but I also think that judges should be able to use discretion and their person judgement when giving a sentence as well. I think that punishment does work. It deters most people from committing the crime in the first place and protects us from repeat offenders by taking them out of society.

Terms: Sentencing Process, Internal Causes, External Causes, Controlability, Stability, Determinant Sentencing, Sentencing Table, Three Strike Law, Parole, Jail, Prison, Federal Prison, State Prison, Super Max Prison, Incapacitation, Detterance, Specific Detterance, General Detterance, Retribution, Rehabilitation, Public Shaming, Pennsylvania Plan, Subculture, Prisonization, Restitution, Probation, Community Service, House Arrest, Residential Community Corrections Center, Halfway House, Recividism Rate

Chapter 16 is about the corrections system as a whole. When it comes to sentencing there are many factors that most people don’t consider. Internal causes are things that we are able to control for example personality and the ability to choose. External causes come from forces outside of our control. The book also talks about controllability; this is whether a person is able to control their actions or behaviors. Stability refers to the permanence of the cause, for example temporary insanity, or trauma could render a person unstable. When sentencing all of these factors come into play. The heaviest sentences are given when a person has control of their actions and their crimes were internally motivated.
Many states use sentencing guidelines to be sure the correct sentence is given. Things considered within sentencing guidelines are the type of crime as well as the criminal record of the person on trial, and past sentences given for similar crimes. If the crime is extremely violent and the defendant has a history of violent crimes, it is likely that the person would receive a heavier sentence than someone with no criminal record and a less violent crime. Many criminals will not have to be in prison for their whole sentence, most receive parole, which could possibly take many years off of their sentence.
There are also many different types of imprisonment. Jails are used for short term imprisonment, like waiting for the trial or a common holding cell is called the ‘drunk tank’ where people arrested for public intoxication are held until they are sober. Prisons hold people for long periods of time; this is where someone would go after they have received their sentencing. Federal prisons are made for people who break federal law, for example, drug charges, fraud, or other white-collar crimes. These types of prisons are lower security and often set up more like a camp than prison. Supermax prisons are reserved for those deemed extremely violent offenders.

Key words: sentencing, internal causes, external causes, stability, controllability, sentencing guidelines, criminal record, past sentencing, type of crime, parole, types of imprisonment, jail, prison, federal prison, supermax prison

I found this chapter on corrections and sentencing kind of fun to read. While the material itself is interesting I like to apply to things I’ve seen or noticed in the past.
When first reading the chapter I was shocked when it came to the sentencing difference based on the judge. The book talked about a case where they had the same offense. Although it was the same crime the difference in the judges made a huge difference in their life. One only got three years, without a fine. The other got a 20 year sentence and a $65,000 fine. I don’t believe that this is fair. I think there should be a strict range of sentencing for a specific crime. I don’t see it as justice for one to get off SO much easier than the other. I think that’s more injustice than justice. A man either got off incredibly easy or another man got prosecuted like he wasn’t supposed to. A judge isn’t supposed to be biased. There are so many measures to making sure the jury and attorneys aren’t biased I think they should have to do that for the type of judge you get as well. Whether or not either of them deserved to be punished, it should be equal for the same crime, if not it least somewhat close of a sentence.
I think that punishment can work. I believe that for some people they are actually being helped by being incarcerated. I believe that psychologically, it’s beneficial to leave, certain, criminals alone with their thoughts. While there are the exception of sadistic and suicidal criminals should be, I think solitary confinement is beneficial. For the weak minded criminals I believe it’s possible for them to break. I think that being left alone in an empty confined space like that, that their thoughts would torture them. While, it’s argued that solitary confinement can make a man go “crazy,” I still think it could help turn some criminals in the right direction. That being left alone with their evil acts will disturb them into becoming a better person and changing their ways. Whether or not this works or not, I believe punishment can work depending on the person and the type of punishment.
I don’t know if prisons actually “work,” but I don’t think that they’re going to do any harm, they’re already convicted prisoners. The book gave a few alternative options that are cheaper but I don’t think it the proper way to treat a convicted felon. For example, the book suggested retribution. I don’t think being on house arrest. I understand that that would help them get back into the community. It would help with jobs too. It would look better, still bad but better, to be on house arrest than being in prison. However, I feel as though the criminal would just feel as though they got away with their crime. It should be more severe than that.
There were a few things the book talked about that really surprised me. One of them was how expensive prison is. One of the numbers they presented to us was $80,000 that gets spent on the health problems of older inmates. I can’t believe it costs that much a year, just for medical bills. They’re criminals, yes we shouldn’t let them die in prison but why should we be paying for their healthcare? They wouldn’t be getting it if they were out on the streets. They’re getting it for free. That just doesn’t seem like it fair. Granted they’re in prison, but that was due to their choices, not anyone else’s. Another thing I noticed was that criminals can be “replaced” now that their “job” is available. It’s a never ending cycle, when one goes to jail, another takes it place. The fact that this cycle even exists is just hard to fathom. I never really gave it a second thought.


Terms: corrections, sentencing, judge, offense, injustice/justice, biased, punished, crime, incarcerated, psychologically, sadistic, solitary confinement, convicted, felon, retribution, prison, inmates.

Chapter 16: Corrections: Sentencing, Imprisonment, and Alternatives
This chapter I felt was a good eye opener on the life that is given to someone who is found guilty and before and after being sentenced to prison. The dehumanizing lifestyle that prisoner are put through, before and after sentencing. However the prison system is one of the largest industries the United States has. But is the treatment that those who are incarcerated helping at all? Or just making those who are on the inside become shredded away from the outside world, so much that they can’t adjust once they are back in it. This chapter emphasizes on the how the legal system decides the right sentence for the convicted, the roles within the prisons and the different.
First off, the types of information juries, judges, and the public decide on is based off on the internal, external causes, controllability, and stability of criminal behavior. Internal causes include personality, or free choice. Did this the convict have the free will or choice to commit this crime? External causes are powerful situational forces that have two components, controllability, and stability. Controllability refers to whether or not the person who committed the crime could control their behavior. This is also a huge component in why people commit deviant acts, in general; the level of self-control he or she has. Stability refers whether the cause/reason appears to be temporary or permanent.
If there two people that have committed the exact same crime, does not make it necessary for them to receive the same punishment. The legal system, along with the federal government collaborate a set of guidelines for the courts to follow in determining the sentencing of the convicted. These guidelines are also attributed for lessening decisions of sentencing by the judge’s attitude, racial, and gender bias. These guidelines are known as sentencing guidelines. These guidelines include different factors that help the judge determine sentencing. These factors are type of crime, viciousness of crime, defendant’s previous criminal history, circumstances of the current offense, and the average sentence given in the past for crimes similar to the one being charged. Unfortunately, the judges don’t need to use these guidelines for a recommended sentencing. They only have to provide a written report as explaining as to why they chose to stray away from the guidelines. However, a more fundamental why for the courts to construct a sentence is to use the determine sentencing, or “mandatory sentencing”, which involves the judge to hand down a sentence that falls within “ prespecified” range if a defendant is found guilty.
Next, there are a variety of imprisons, with a variety of roles with in those places. The most common known one is the jail. Jails are considered short-term holding cells that are controlled by cities or countries, and managed by local authorities. Second are the prisons. Prisons hold convicted criminals for a many months, years, or even decades, (which could be a life sentence for some). Then there are federal prisons. These prisons are for people who have broken federal law. And lastly, there are the supermax prisons. These are for seriously sever convicts who are deemed as violent criminals. Goals with in these imprisonments are incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and lastly, rehabilitation. Incapacitation is the easiest goal for prisons to obtain; keeping the criminals inside the walls and away from harming others. Second is deterrence. This is the hope that criminals will suffer enough in prison and not want to commit crimes anymore. The third goal is retribution, people seek revenge. It goes without saying that most of us want to revenge once we have heard something bad has happened to ourselves or our loved ones. But how much suffering is deemed necessary for an inmate? The final goal, and which I find most debatable, is rehabilitation. The system trying to “improve” the inmates, before they are released back into society. I think that this is not a goal at all. I believe that once a person is thrown in prison, male or female, they are completely stripped of their individual identities, and made sure to know that they are powerless. How can you rehabilitate someone if when you treat them like garbage, make them incapable of improving, and then throwing them out into the wild. That’s just setting people up for failure. Now I know that some people really deserve to suffer in jail, but then why have rehabilitation as a goal then?

Psychological Terms: internal, external causes, controllability, stability, sentencing guidelines, sentencing guidelines, determining sentencing, mandatory sentencing, jail, prison, federal prison, supermax prison, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation.

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