We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow blogger.com more Highest crime rate, slummy, dangerous, ranked one of the worst 5 cities in the United States. Organized crime central in New Jersey including the 5 families. Used to live near there. Driving in some neighborhoods looked like scenes of bombed cities in wwii films. And lots of gang activity Apr 09, · Last year, the United States tallied more than 20, murders — the highest total since and 4, more than in Preliminary FBI data for points to a 25% surge in murders — the
Stock Quotes, Business News and Data from Stock Markets | MSN Money
Prison labor has had a long, yet controversial, history in the United States penal system. Under the system of prison labor, some have toiled away for years, sometimes until their deaths, while others have been able to achieve some sense of financial independence or positive mental amendments through their work.
Prison labor is not a novel concept to the United States penal system. In fact, prison labor has existed since the very beginning of American history, going as far back as the post-Revolutionary War, pre-Civil War, era, albeit early manifestations were far more inhumane in comparison to contemporary forms of labor. Furthermore, unlike present-day incarnations of prison labor, which is more or less concerned with promoting rehabilitation and preventing inmate idleness, colonial era prison labor was imposed as means of instilling discipline in unruly penitentiary populations.
Convicts who were not facing the death penalty were chained and subjected to public hard labor throughout the day, forced to spend hours repairing roads and buildings before why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high to their cells at night.
When analyzing how labor became a primary mode of punishment in England, the system being introduced as early as the sixteenth century, a few parallels between contemporary American prison labor and colonial-era England become apparent. The modern-day manifestation of the penal system in the United States has been one which houses and contains lower and working-class individuals relegated to the outskirts of society.
After desocialized, low-skill wage labor moved overseas for cheaper labor, these people were left with no choice but to engage in illegal or illegitimate modes of work to secure a somewhat steady income. Though the contemporary American system of prison labor is ultimately quite different from that of the colonial English system, the two systems, however, do bear resemblance in their mutual imprisonment and employment of individuals forced into crime due to rampant unemployment and job unavailability in their communities.
While not all jobs offered in contemporary American prisons are tied to capitalist means of free market commodity production, there is somewhat of a paradox inherent in employing the poverty-stricken unemployed through prison labor. Eventually public labor would create problems of its own, motivating convicts to protest their work or, in some cases, even commit more crimes while working. This led to the incorporation of rigid, scheduled, factory work in Pennsylvania prisons, reminiscent of the industrial labor northern capitalists were incorporating into their workplaces during the nineteenth century.
Realizing that craftsmen who formerly worked within a non-factory, non-industrial why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, would not be so easily recruited into the poor conditions and physically exhausting atmosphere of factory labor, northern capitalists turned to prisons to house the factories where prisoners would become the new source of labor. Prisoners, however, did not.
Adult convicts were forced to work fourteen-to-sixteen hour days while children worked for ten to twelve hours. Outside of punishment, work-related physical trauma was commonplace. One example from a prison in Michigan City, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, Indiana why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high that over one year, there were accidental injuries or deaths among a population of inmates, meaning that about one-third of workers were critically and permanently disabled, or killed by their work environment.
Inmate workers could be subjected to beatings or outright torture for a number of reasons: breaking rules, failing to produce the required number of products in the allotted time, damaging equipment—accidentally or purposely—or for no reason whatsoever. Throughout the nineteenth century, prison factories in the North achieved high rates of labor productivity through the mental and physical torture of inmates, private enterprises sometimes making profits of up to twice the initial costs of convict labor.
The result was the convict leasing system, a form of prison labor which specifically exploited black male prisoners and subjected them to cruel and inhumane labor until death.
Prior to and after slavery had ended, an African-American in the South could be arrested arbitrarily, and if arrested, had little to no chances of appealing their arrest in court due to the southern culture of intense racism towards black people, whose plight was justified out of a perceived inferiority.
Blacks could be arrested for any reason whatsoever—after slavery was made illegal throughout the country, former slaves could be arrested on the grounds of simply existing. In reality, acquiring laborers entailed paying corrupt government, prison, and police officials to arrest, convict, imprison, and ship black convicts to private companies. So, under this new system of prison labor, thousands of African-Americans who were likely to not have committed any crimes were thrown into the penal system and made to work for free while awaiting their eventual death, often facing punishment equal to if not worse than those used in the northern industrial system, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high.
Inmate laborers working within the convict leasing system were not held in actual prison infrastructures, but rather, contained in and chained to rolling cages which roamed across the South building railroads and working in coal mines, sawmills, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, phosphate beds, and brickyards. Under the convict leasing system, a former slave who had finally been able to escape the brutality of southern plantation slavery could also find themselves back on a cotton or sugar plantation if arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.
Conditions in this system were even worse than that of prison factories in the North. Convicts often worked for fifteen to seventeen hours a day, were malnourished due to being underfed, and also worked within disease ridden environments. Labor managers often carried with them the same tools of discipline being used on slave plantations, equipping themselves with whips, shotguns, bloodhounds, and sweat boxes. Workers were literally worked to death within the convict leasing system—in Mississippi, no convict lived long enough to serve a sentence of at least ten years, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, while in Texas the average lifespan of a convict was seven years.
Meanwhile, companies involved in convict leasing saw enormous economic gains from the system, where widespread convict death typically equated to extremely high rates of productivity. Contemporary prison labor, while still arguably inhumane on some levels prisoner abuse notwithstandingis much tamer in comparison to its nineteenth and early twentieth century incarnations. Furthermore, init was reported that about 31 percent of state and federal correctional facilities employ inmates in a prison industry—since not every inmate at every one of these facilities is employed in a prison-work job, the actual number of inmates who engage in prison labor is actually quite low in comparison to the total number of inmates in the American penal system.
Actually, for some inmates across the United States, prison labor can be more a privilege than a punishment, as some in-prison jobs can offer vocational experience, work locations outside of prison walls, and a chance to reconcile their past mistakes.
Besides the job-specific benefits that some present-day forms of prison labor offer, many why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, correctional officials, and prison administrators believe prison labor can alleviate feelings of idleness and boredom, while also instilling a sense of schedule and work ethic in inmates who failed to achieve this outside of prison. Commodity production labor is, however, a highly sought after and regarded prison job, often having higher wages and more benefits in terms of applicable work experience post-release.
If accepted into the program, inmates are usually tasked with doing manual grade labor which can include golf course maintenance, roadside trash pickup, public park landscaping, and installing specialized nets at a fish hatchery. Surprisingly, a number of inmates actually reported satisfaction with their jobs at the fire camps. Some inmates, however, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, report dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the fire camps.
Andre alluded to mental and possible physical abuse from correctional officers, specifically noting how this abuse is meant to trigger a reaction from inmates which could lead to them being kicked out of the program. In a similar example, female inmates at an all-women fire camps reported prejudice from non-incarcerated firefighters, who refused to share their coffee with the prisoner firefighters because of their status as prisoners. This hostile behavior towards fire camp inmates has actually been reported to be a fairly common occurrence.
It must be noted, however, that all of the positive experiences that were attributed to fire camp labor had to do with the actual work being done at the camp, while the negative experiences were all along the lines of interpersonal communication and having to reconcile with the stigma of being inmates. Pennsylvania Correctional Industries PCI is a unique program within the Bureau of the PA Department of Corrections and operates as an independent business whose main goal is to rehabilitate inmates through employment, vocational training, and work experience.
This program emphasizes ensuring a successful transition from prison to free society through employment and offers a variety of different jobs catered to increasing work experience in a specialized and non-specialized field. There are thirty-five PCI factories across nineteen prisons, which employ about 1, inmates as of May When accepted into the program, inmates have the option of working within either non-specialized or specialized fields of work.
The specialized forms of prison labor range from optical services—a women-only job which requires a six-month intensive course that enables one to take the American Board of Opticianry certification test—to woodworking and furniture upholstery, while non-specialized labor mostly refers to working in the garment factory. Because most of the commodities produced through PCI are used in prisons and general corrections infrastructures, PCI falls along the lines of both prison household and commodity production, inmates producing commodities which directly benefit inmates, but also state officials and correctional officers.
Regardless of which field an inmate decides to work in, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, the hourly wages are far less than the wages offered for firefighting, possibly because these jobs pose less of a physical threat to why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high. Inmates also held the PCI staff in high regard, somewhat surprising considering the comments regarding correctional officers at the fire camps.
Staff members were reported as being highly knowledgeable about the field they were overseeing and genuinely supportive of inmates, which transitively motivates inmates to work even harder. Most responses from inmates about PCI were positive, if not completely supportive of their employment, though opinions on prison labor varied slightly between men and women.
In the context of prison, men felt as though prison labor allowed inmates to be self-sufficient, their jobs granting them the ability to spend their money buying personal items from the commissary instead of having to ask a family member, send money home to their families, or simply save for their future release.
Since working in optical services is only available to female inmates, and this form of labor is the one which promotes the most opportunities for steady employment post-prison, women took much pride in their work and saw it as a responsibility that held great meaning for them. Comparatively, women working in non-specialized work like garment production did not report their job as having the same meaning to them as women in optical services did.
The only potentially negative aspect of PCI in contrast to the fire camps is the fact that PCI work happens within the prison walls, while the camps afford inmates a rare opportunity to live amongst the outside world. The Special Needs Program for Inmate-Patients with Dementia or SNIPD is an interesting form of prison labor, almost every aspect of the program standing in stark contrast to the fire camps and PCI.
The eligibility standards for work opportunities in SNIPD are noticeably stricter and more rigid than the other aforementioned forms of labor, requiring inmates to have a life or generally long sentence, at least a decade without disciplinary violations, no history of mental, emotional, or cognitive issues and impairments, and a clear history of commitment to in-prison community service.
The two graphs below provide a comparison of between wages earned in two California prison labor programs: the prison fire camps or CPC and the Special Needs Program for Inmate-Patients with Dementia or SNIPD. For the purposes of highlighting the stark differences in wages an inmate worker can earn based off the type of job they have, the graphs will compare CPC wages with and without the bonuses earned from wildfire fighting, to the steady wages earned through SNIPD.
Because wildfires in California typically occur during the summer months, the wage increases in CPC will affect the months of July, August, and September. This seemingly meager amount of monthly income seems unequal to the work the SNIPD requires of its inmates, since these workers are tasked with the daily care of potentially mentally disabled elderly persons. During the daily life of an inmate working in SNIPD, they can expect to be tasked with sanitary duties like the showering and shaving, in addition to applying deodorant and changing adult diapers.
They also assist elderly inmates with everyday tasks such as eating, writing service requests, and bringing them to group meetings and appointments with their nurses. Still, if SNIPD pays higher than most other prison labor jobs offered at this specific prison, then work at PCI and the fire camps work may actually occupy a very small percentage of high paying jobs in the wider scope of prison labor.
Financial incentives aside, the few inmates working in SNIPD did report positive feelings about the work they do as inmate caregivers. These men have all received rather lengthy sentences, for which they have spent many years serving time in prison already—Burdick and Montgomery having been in prison for over half their lives. Despite their life sentences, Barnhill and Montgomery were relatively new to the program, having worked in SNIPD for five years, while Burdick has spent eighteen years, or about half his sentence, working as a gold coat.
While the study does not reveal what their crimes were, one can assume their life sentences might have been the consequence of some rather violent or highly illegal activity. It is also possible, however, that these lengthy sentences could be drug crime-related, and potentially the result of corrupt sentencing practices—because the study does not provide any specific information about the inmate caregivers outside of their sentences it is hard to make an educated guess.
All three men indicate, to some extent, that the reason they joined SNIPD was to make amends for past crimes and unlearn some of the negative mentalities that landed them in prison. They all reported massive shifts in mental and emotional maturity, believing that SNIPD has taught them to practice empathy, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, sensitivity, and compassion rather than self-centeredness and selfishness. While all three men report positive changes on an individual level, Burdick strongly believes that not every inmate will discover, or even desire to see, the same changes they experienced as inmate caregivers.
Though the jobs offered at the California fire camps, through PCI, and SNIPD three jobs are relatively rare and specialized within the wider scope of prison labor, it is clear that the prison labor of the twenty-first century is far more humane and conducive to inmate satisfaction, self-sufficiency, and rehabilitation than its historical precedents. Nonetheless, it must be repeated that the jobs in these various studies are not reflective of the wider market of prison labor work. In fact, it is much more likely that an inmate will end up working in prison household production, which is available to all penitentiaries that offer prison labor work since there will always be a need for people to clean laundry, cook meals, why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, clean facilities, and oversee general prison maintenance.
Despite drastic increases in the humane treatment of inmate laborers, there were still sentiments of inmate exploitation, even among the highest paying jobs. Other complaints regarding inmate exploitation at the fire camps reference low wages. Thus, wages at the prison fire camps are actually set to be equal why are crime rates in the united states comparatively high, if not lower than, the lowest wages being offered in PCI. Perhaps the low wages are justified by the fact that fire camp work allows inmates to work in nature among forests, clean air, and wildlife, as opposed to the barren metal and concrete infrastructure of prison.
This aspect of the fire camps could be perceived as an added privilege, though when it comes time to actually fight fires, inmates do not seek their work as being all that glamorous. Many of the inmates interviewed across the three studies report their jobs as having beneficial effects on their work experience, work ethic, and overall sense of confidence in the workplace.
These benefits, however, are offset by the fact that not every one of these jobs will be useful in the job market post-release, and that these jobs can just as easily go to someone who does not have a criminal record. A study on the effects of prison labor on recidivism found a positive correlation between prison labor and lowering recidivism among seven thousand inmates who were released from incarceration over the course of several years.
The study found that there could be a 20 percent increase in survival time for those who worked in prison labor while serving their sentence. In reality, this marginal increase in time spent not in prison does not mean an ex-offender will not end up committing another offense, but that they may end up spending longer periods of time not in prison before eventually returning.
Another report, conducted instudied prisoner recidivism in seven max-security New York penitentiaries among offenders, having participated in prison industries and being nonparticipants. What the study found was that prison labor participation was not statistically significant in prisoner recidivism. Prison labor in the United States has seen an intriguing trajectory over the past few centuries. What began as a disciplinary aspect of prison akin to legalized slavery, has now become a somewhat useful tool for promoting a more stable, more productive prison environment.
Prison labor conditions of the nineteenth century were so deplorable that one could actually be killed by their work, their overseers, or the physical environment itself.
Today, prison labor seems to promote more of a rehabilitative, rather than disciplinary, mission, though the likelihood for rehabilitation is relative to the job an inmate is able to work. However, the selectivity inherent in prison labor programs, as well as the fact that not all prisons offer work opportunities, means that only a very small percentage of the total prison population is employed, and an even smaller percentage of prisoners will find success and self-sufficiency post-release.
The vast majority of inmates, on the other hand, will not attain even a modicum of the benefits—in and outside of prison—that those in the labor system receive. It is hard to truly say whether or not prison labor promotes independence or further instills dependence on a system which suggests a false sense of independence for prisoners.
Skip to content. Search Hide Search.
Is Crime In America On The Rise — Or Just In The Spotlight? - Sunday TODAY
, time: 4:41United States v. Lopez :: U.S. () :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Apr 09, · Last year, the United States tallied more than 20, murders — the highest total since and 4, more than in Preliminary FBI data for points to a 25% surge in murders — the I like discounts and holidays sales, it always helps to save a great deal of money. I am a student working part-time so the service is still quite expensive for Why Are Crime Rates In The United States Comparatively High me, but I need time to work and study, so if I have funds and there are discounts, I will sure order more Why Are Crime Rates In The United States Comparatively High? — englisch aufsatz schreiben | Writing persuasive essays Our writers online and writing service because their instructions. While almost any other risks even without a paper composing a
No comments:
Post a Comment