Introduction
The American criminal justice system serves as a mechanism to administer societal justice. To ensure societal justice, the legal system deters crime by detaining unlawful violators, eradicating them from society and providing appropriate punishment. It accomplishes these goals through the prison system.
However, the contemporary criminal justice system witnesses serious decline. Unfortunately, the prison system no longer upholds its conventional justice model. Frankly, our prison system seems more like a privileged playground than place of punishment. Apparently, prisoners receive better treatment than our most impoverished law-abiding Americans. Rather than punish, the prison system rewards prisoners for their malevolent machinations, psychologically reinforcing criminal behavior, exacerbating recidivism. Prisoners deserve no such comfort.
Without deterrence, prisoners only replicate crimes. Whatever happened to the just deserts model, which advocates corresponding retribution for reprehensible conduct? Yet, administrative incompetence unceasingly persists. Unduly depriving taxpayers of money, the federal government invests exorbitantly on these criminals, confiscating inordinate funds to accommodate them. Why?
Additionally, as prisons at all levels become progressively more inundated, overcrowding presents another problem of unprecedented proportions. First, the prison system fails to classify prisoners corresponding with criminal severity. Our prison system seems to unnecessarily punish those individuals who truly deserve rehabilitation.
For example, innocuous individuals such as drug addicts, among numerous others, who pose minimum threat, belong in rehabilitation centers and lower level jails rather than prison. Unbelievable! American prisons seemingly target victimless crimes, and yet insufficiently punish more culpable criminals. Such misplacement of these persons unconstitutionally violates their 8th Amendment right, which prohibits ‘Cruel & Unusual punishment’. Go figure.
To compound the problem of overpopulation, illegal aliens swarm our prisons. Why not deport them? Hence, for these aforementioned reasons, ineffective administration of disciplinary punishment, superfluous government expenditure, and negligent prisoner overpopulation, the prison system necessitates extensive reform.
In contemporary American society, many prisoners experience undeserved special treatment. Rather than receive impartial punishment as the conventional criminal justice system advocates, they actually live a privileged lifestyle due to correctional facilities, which reward them for their actions. In prison, recreation encompasses various program activities. For example, ranging from passive activities to sports, recreation may include, “television/movies, board games, card games, billiards, bingo, hobbies such as ceramics, photography, music, art, basketball, volleyball, and/or strength training exercise like weight lifting,” (Correctional Recreation: An Overview, 1).
While prison institutions vary extensively in the recreational programs offered, “federal facilities tend to support a wider range of activities,” such as, “jogging tracks, outdoor recreational yards, softball fields, photography dark rooms, music rooms, hobby rooms, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, theaters, etc.,” (Correctional Recreation: An Overview, 1). How unconscionable! These criminals deserve no such rehabilitation.
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