Penology

There are more prisons than colleges in the United States. In the south, there are more people living in prison than on college campuses. How can this be? The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with 707 adults per every 100,000 residents. To compare, the average rate is 100 adults per every 100,000 residents. (Ingraham) The number of the incarcerated is not stopping either. According to a 2012 Vera Institute of Justice study, within the last 4 decades the number…

As many people know, there are flaws in every system created by humans due to the illusion that nothing is perfect. There are many things that could be pointed out that are wrong about the American judicial system but the most flawed concept, by far, is the capital punishment sentencing. Although courts have been accepting DNA as evidence for over two decades now, it is not always the key evidence in a conviction. More often than not, the defendant in a case is sentenced on circumstantial…

What happens when good people are put in an evil place? What about when innocent individuals are systematically punished and humiliated? Is human identity rooted in one 's situation? A 1971 endeavor, now known as Zimbardo 's Prison Experiment, attempted to explore these questions and others. Deep beneath the Psycology Center of Stanford University, a tiny prison was created. Eighteen boys were meticulusly selected from a large group of volenteers. It is important to note that before the…

Capital punishment, the United States law that is enforced on society’s most dangerous criminals such as rapist and murderers to “ensure” the safety of citizen and deter crimes as promised. As of right now, there are thirty eight states in the United States that have a death penalty and the cost of the death penalty for each state is different but one thing in similar is it’s not worth spending so much money on killing somebody that could face a better way of punishment. Many believe that the…

Should unfair punishments be changed to make them more fair for the criminals experiencing them? Some people may agree that these punishments should be changed while others strictly do not. There are many crimes in that can be punished when the punishment is cruel, and unfair. Many criminals die from horrible punishments.These punishments should be changed to make punishments more fair. Because some crimes are worse than others does not mean the punishment needs to be cruel and unfair these…

Capital punishment has been in history from the beginning of the human race. There have been many types of capital punishment and people have made judgments for punishment from death to light sentencing. Capital punishment focuses on the death penalty. Capital punishment affects many people from the defendants to the family members left behind. The focus of this paper is that Capital punishment sentencing can have an outcome that is derived from jurors being swayed by the defendant’s race,…

Would you consider flogging to be a humane alternative to prison? This question is further explored in the article “Should Flogging Be an Alternative to Prison?” by Adam Cohen. Cohen’s article was about the two methods of punishment, prison or flogging. Prison was described as a barbaric punishment with ineffective results because prisoners aren’t provided with resources that would help them re-enter society. The article explained Moskos’ idea of flogging. Moskos provided ideas on how flogging…

Entering into Lebanon Correctional last Wednesday, I had expectations and prejudgments of the inmates that I prepared for myself mentally. With Lebanon Correctional being a third level prison, the exterior of the facility has barbed fencing and security, housing various criminals who have committed felonies. Before meeting the inmates, I expected them to be of the stereotypical dramatization that is portrayed in the media: intimidating, cold, threatening, possibly even sociopathic. With the list…

For many years capital punishment has been a talking point. It has been widely debated whether it is a humane practice or not. As a society through the years we have been split. There has always been a debate for both sides. Even in early times when the death penalty was widely accepted. There were naysayers to the way it was done. We also see the death penalty go as far back as ancient times. The bible states that death should be done to anyone who commits murder, rape, larceny, or burglary.…

Prison is not a friendly place. Knowing that point, does prison have to be a place where one’s life comes to an end? In the United States, there is an incarceration rate of almost 700 people to every 100,000 people; this means the United States has the highest prison population in the world; over a period of ten years (2000-2010), the number of prisoners has increased from 1.937 million to almost 2.3 million (www.prisonstudies.org). Looking at The Shawshank Redemption (1994), the viewers see the…