Prison:
Punishment or Party?
As the number of prisoners increases yearly and
the number of new prisons does not increase to meet the overflow of
prisoners in the United States criminal justice system,
more and more individuals are placed into potentially explosive
places. Prisoners' rights are sometimes
abused in this fragile system. At the same time, prisoners
are known to abuse the system themselves by filing ludicrous
lawsuits and demanding unreasonable accommodations for
someone who has committed a crime. Some people believe that
prison life is too easy and thus not a deterrent to crime. Others
point to the resent case in Jasper, Texas, where a man who did
not grow up to hold racist beliefs learned racial hatred in prison
and ended up brutally murdering a black man, causing an outraged
nation to wonder, "How bad is prison life that prisoners leave
more violent and prone to crime that when the entered the system?"
These are all valid, powerful viewpoints which deserve to be
explored and evaluated. Ultimately, some consensus must be
reached in for change to be made.
