The Criminal Justice System and Reform

The Criminal Justice System and Reform

Throughout history penalties have been imposed by societies upon those who violate the norms and rules of those societies. In the United States laws are made by both Federal and State authorities and those who violate those laws are subject to civil and/or criminal sanctions. There are three goals intertwined with the laws that are enacted, and at times more emphasis is placed on just one of those goals. The three goals are punishment to the offender, societal protection, and rehabilitation and reformation of the offender.

The definitions of crime are complex and are impacted by the historical information on crime. Social, political and religious conceptions of crime determine when an act becomes a crime. The tracking of this information gives us insight into the problems of crime. In the eighteen and early nineteenth centuries the definitions of crime were established in two different areas. The first was between the competing notions of state and community. The second was the created by the differences in crime and sin.

What began with local communities controlling crime or moral issues took on more dramatic laws imposed by the state to label crimes and to impose punishments. The laws that were created resulted in the Bloody Code, a harsh capital punishment. This could be considered as a form of class oppression. Public executions were common. The open to the public way to deter crime and it also became a cultural event. But crime continued to rise and more organized ways of handling trials and convictions were established. But often, the punishments were harsh and uneven to the crime.

Society changes and some behaviors previously considered criminal are no longer viewed as such. Interracial marriage has only been legal in the United States since 1967. (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1) A married couple Richard and Mildred Loving had been sentenced to a year in jail for being married. Gay sex was a criminal act in all states prior to 1962, but it wasn’t until 2003 that gay sex was made legal in all states do to a supreme court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. Also throughout history criminal sanctions for the use and cultivation of marijuana and hemp have changed from legal to illegal, and the equivalent of heroin back to legal in many states. Its use no longer view by most societies as a reason for incarceration.

Also as societies and change, so also do the way societies deal with those who break the laws and rules of society. Corporal punishment may be a thing of the past, but mandatory minimum sentences and the privatization of many of the institutions of incarceration have resulted in a huge increase of incarcerated prisoners in the United States. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 724 people per 100,000. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm)

The American prison system is the largest in the world. Many people are thrown in prison and forgotten. Ninety-four percent of prisoners are male and almost 50 percent are African American. These people are considered just statistics. It costs about $ 30,000 a year to house an inmate in Oregon. (http://www.safetyandjustice.org/) Inmates have little ability to get things done on the outside while incarcerated. Serving time in prison with a felony conviction on record marks one for life. When an inmates released from prison it is very hard to find a place to live, work and return to society as a normal person. As a result, local communities face a difficult social problem. Because of insufficient funding for housing, counseling and employment services, many prisoners re-offend.

Educational opportunities in prison have been denied prisoners since U.S Congress banned Pell grants to prisoners in 1994. This was a result of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill which expanded the death penalty, encouraged states to lengthen prison sentences and eliminated federal funding for inmate education. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison helped to effectively shut down college-in-prison programs all over the country by successfully pushing the Clinton administration to make inmates ineligible for federal Pell Grants. These grants, which were previously available to anyone who wanted to go to college but could not afford it, had been the lifeblood of postsecondary correctional education in America.

Before 1995, when the new rule was passed, the country was home to roughly 350 college degree programs for prisoners; 10 years later, that number had dwindled to just 12. “Some convicts have figured out that Pell Grants are a great scam,” Hutchison said at the time, “‘Rob a store, go to jail, and get your degree.’” President Clinton continued the “tough on crime” that began with Ronald Reagan and his get tough on drug offenders by making marijuana a schedule 1 substance the same as heroin. As a result, the incarceration rates increased substantial and the private prison contractors were needed who had little incentive to reduce recidivism.

The exploding incarceration rates under Bill Clinton’s version of the “War on Drugs” is impossible to dispute. The total prison population rose by 673,000 people under Clinton’s tenure — or by 235,000 more than it did under President Ronald Reagan, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute. “Under President Bill Clinton, the number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction doubled, and grew more than it did under the previous 12-years of Republican rule combined,” states the JPI report (italics theirs). The federal incarceration rate in 1999, the last year of the Democrat’s term, was 42 per 100,000 — more than double the federal incarceration rate at the end of President Reagan’s term (17 per 100,000), and 61 percent higher than at the end of President George Bush’s term (25 per 100,000), according to JPI. (http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/19/news/mn-27373)

Only recently, President Obama has proposed to restore Educational Pell grants to prisoners in an attempt lower recidivism rates by allowing prisoners to take advantage of educational opportunities. (http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/29/news/inmates-pell-grants-obama/) Drug offenses both felony and misdemeanor can effect financial aid for those not incarcerated depending on the circumstances. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/recovery/fafsa.pdf)

Four out of five inmates enter prison with alcohol, drug, and emotional problems. They are not getting the treatment they need being in prison. Many people especially minorities, have been affected by these policies.