Prison Violence

             The prisons in America seem to cause more problems than assistance in today's society. The country's penal system is overcrowded, expensive, and some argue that is ineffective as well as inefficient. The costs to staff and support these facilities increase dramatically every year. Prisons, which are supposed to be correctional facilities, are currently filled with violence and hostility. These institutions are created to control crime by deterrence, incapacitating criminals, which protects society from potentially dangerous criminals, but it is hard to tell if this is being accomplished. The first problem that is constantly plaguing the penal system is the financial burden attached to the building, maintaining, and staffing of prisons. In the late 1960's, New York built prisons at a price of $2 million each. Since then, prices have risen dramatically. In 1990, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that each prisoner requires $15,496 to support. A prison containing 2,000 inmates costs over $31 million to operate on an annual basis. A new prison model, scheduled to be completed in the summer of 1996, was introduced in Niagara County. The new facility would cost less, be more durable than current prisons and more flexible to the fluctuating rates of prisoners. The extremely low cost to erect this new building would be $24.6 million. The state of the art facility would hold 224 inmates but only require five officers to supervise the entire facility, which would save approximately $164,000 compared to other standard prisons. Violence is a very big problem within the prison walls that is also a one sided problem. In 1992, federal and state prisons reported 66 murders and 10,181 inmate-inmate attacks according to Angela S. Maitland and Richard D. Sluder. The constant fear of attack can lead a prisoner to have serious mental problems. Inmates can suffer from indigestion, constipation, and headaches as some of the psychophisological effect...

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Prison Violence. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 01:39, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/34731.html