Criminology essay
What is the role of the prison in contemporary US society?
Prison is intended for those people who refuse to submit to discipline and follow the instructions which are designed to ensure order. Therefore, the main role of the prison in contemporary US society is to isolate criminals from the society and to “normalize” deviant behavior of criminals. With the help of the prison, the state shows what standards all the citizens need to follow and “what is good and what is bad”. Moreover, prisons are often considered to be “the punishment” because the deprivation of human rights and liberty is the most severe punishment in contemporary secular society. Depriving a person of liberty, it is necessary does not forget that the prison – is not a place of torture in the literal and figurative sense, but a place that is intended to change a man and to force an individual to reconsider own mistakes.
Do prisons work?
Today, Western society is beginning to realize that the prison should not be a major institution of punishment because it does not work in its pure form, while it is quite costly and problematic means of “social correction.” There is an opinion that the prison seems to be a social experiment with unpredictable consequences, and maybe a prison carries destruction by its means of isolating people from society. And thus, society signs in its inability to be a society. The use of prisons as a way to struggle against criminality, which leads to constant imprisonment, outlived its usefulness many decades ago, and it is time to move on to more humane and civilized methods of punishment, promoting policies to prevent crime and reduce the harm to society.
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