senior assignment

Violence in Prisons

Paula King

Strayer University

Criminal Justice Capstone (CJR 499)

Dr. Tamara Mangum

August 12, 2017

Violence in Prisons

Poor jail administration can be a contributing component to the violence in prisons. In penitentiaries that are ineffectively overseen, medications might be acquired. Detainees who access illicit substances may mishandle them, causing cases of brutality because of drug bargains turned out badly or a terrible response to the substances. In rarer cases, booty PDAs can take into consideration correspondence amongst detainees and people outside of the jail, some of which may wish to make hurt other prisoners. If an inmate supply projects with data about another inmate, he or she is known as a nark. Sometimes, narks can be attacked or cut by different inmates for their conduct, as it conflicts with 'jail code.'

Many prisoners in the United States are killed at a rate double the international average mostly the sex offenders and the high-profile criminal (Berman & Dar, 2013). Sex male offenders make up fifteen percent of their population in prison but makeup to forty percent of the killings in jail. The government is on the other hand concerned with the number of murders of these inmates, the vulnerable inmates, and the sex offenders thus introducing exclusive houses to protect these individuals. The government is yet to set laws that will reduce the prison population percentage established by the courts from 137.5% to 100%. Almost 200 inmates are killed in every four years in each state of America.

Overcrowding has been the root of violence and threat to both the offenders and the staff. The more the prison is overcrowded, the level of misconduct rises causing tension to the guards and the prisoners. Overcrowding had increased by two percent since 2004 when it was 41% and set to reach 45% by the year 2018 (Light & Ulmer, 2016)

The table above highlights physical victimization on both female and male including sexual harassment. Statistics are accurate and easy to comprehend thus essential in raising concern for the future of inmates and guards in prisons and what step the government will take to reduce the violence (Loyd et al., 2013)

References

Berman, G., & Dar, A. (2013). Prison population statistics. London: House of Commons Library.

Loyd, J. M., Mitchelson, M., & Burridge, A. (Eds.). (2013). Beyond walls and cages: Prisons, borders, and global crisis (Vol. 14). University of Georgia Press.

Light, M. T., & Ulmer, J. T. (2016). Explaining the gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic violence since 1990: Accounting for immigration, incarceration, and inequality. American Sociological Review, 81(2), 290-315.