Prison:
Punishment or Party?
4As
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.
