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THE AMERICAN
INCARCERATION SYSTEM
Alysia Addison
Criminal Justice, Section 053
Professor Ellis
May 3rd, 2014
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The history of America’s prison system is just as vast as our country’s history. There are so many
practices that have changed, some have stayed the same. While most people think that jails and prisons
go hand in hand, they are actually quite different. What are these differences, how is our incarceration
system being run today, and why is the incarceration rate so high in the United States?
The United States of America was founded on July 4th, 1776. The incarceration system in
America began long before that, beginning with the discovery of the “New World” in the fifteenth
century. The American prison systems were hardly the first. The earliest records of a prison were dated
all the way back to 2050 – 1786 B.C. in Egypt. (Morris) Most of America’s prison system was modeled
from their European counterparts, where most of our founders had immigrated from.
America’s first jail was Philadelphia’s Walnut Street, opened in 1790. (Gaines) The penitentiary
thought that labor and silence were the way to rehabilitation. This seemed to prevent idleness until the
cost of running the penitentiary became too much. (Gaines) This was just the beginning of the American
incarceration system and they found that things were not going the way they had planned. There were
far too many prisoners and the costs that came with these prisoners were exponential.
The Walnut Street penitentiary eventually succumbed to these issues and two new prisons were
opened; The Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh and Eastern Penitentiary in New York. (Gaines) While
Walnut Street focused on labor and silence for rehabilitation, also known as the congregate system, the
new prisons focused on obedience. Leading us to today’s rehabilitation tactics, the medical model. The
medical model is “a model of corrections in which the psychological and biological roots of an inmate’s
criminal behavior are identified and treated.”
Daron Hall has defined jail as “a place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention.” For
the most part, people are taken to jail, where they can be detained and watched, while they wait to be
sentenced. 75% of people that are sent to jail are released with the first seventy-two hours. This is
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depicted in the graphic below. Some of these releases are due to overcrowding even though their
sentence was supposed to be from 60-90 days. (Gaines)
Fig. 1
Not only are people sent to jail to await trial, they are also there if they are serving time for a
misdemeanor, a juvenile waiting for transferred to a detention center, and for housing inmates that will
be transferred to prison. (Gaines) Unlike prison, jails do not have the resources for inmate rehabilitation.
Most people are there to do their time, and then are released back into the general population.
“Jails are operated on a county level by an elected Sheriff,” according to our text Criminal Justice
in Action. The jail population on any given day is approximately 760,000 people in over 3,000 facilities
across the United States. There are four different levels of jails classified as Mega, Large, Medium, and
small. Each jail, respectively, holding 1,000 plus, 999 – 250, 249 – 50, and 49 – 1 inmates at any given
time.
Prisons have been defined by Mr. Hall as “lawful detention. Prison is
a place convicted persons are confined.” People go to prison after
they have been sentenced for a crime they have committed. While a
majority of the jail population is released within 3 days, the prison
population has an average sentence time of over 18,000 days as
seen in the corresponding graph.
Fig. 2
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While jails are run on a county level, prisons are run on either a state or federal level, or
privately owned as a business. There is a large controversy surrounding the privately owned prisons.
These prisons are running as a business in order to make a profit. Not only do they cost less, but there is
also less bureaucracy and more freedom in the way they run things. A lot of people are concerned about
the safety and treatment of these prisoners. Privately owned prisons are only concerned about making
money and not about rehabilitating the prisoner when they are returned to the “outside” world.
(Gaines)
Also, similar to jails, there are different levels of prisons: medium security, maximum security,
and super-max security. Medium security prisons are definitely the most lenient. They house nonviolent offenders, people who have committed crimes such as embezzlement, and first time offenders.
(Types) Many people have compared minimum security prisons to a country club because of the relaxed
atmosphere and the lack of armed guards, also allowing the prisoners to leave the grounds for schooling
or employment. (Gaines) While all of this seems unusual behavior for a prisoner, it is done in hopes of
rehabilitating the prisoner. Thus, allowing them to make something of themselves when they are
eventually released instead of being caught in the system.
Medium security prisons are the next lenient type of prison facility. These facilities also have a
more relaxed atmosphere when compared to high security. While this prison type is still relaxed, they
implement numerous practices that prevent the inmate from escaping, such as high fences. They offer
numerous programs for the prisoners to rehabilitate themselves and prepare to be released back into
the outside world some day. They also allow the inmates to communicate and have friendships, instead
of completely closing them off. (Gaines)
Maximum security prisons are for people with repeat offenses and a history of violence. These
prisons are designed to prevent anyone from escaping. They have 20-30 foot concrete walls that are
burrowed deep in the ground to prevent tunneling. These types of prisons are run more like a military
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camp than the previous two. Everything they do is watched either by a security guard or on the
surveillance system. They perform head counts and have watch towers to keep a constant eye on these
violent offenders. (Gaines) These facilities offer very little in the rehabilitation department and their
main goal is to keep the offender locked up. I believe the lack of rehabilitation programs is due to the
fact that a majority of these prisoners will not be released any time soon.
Super-max prisons are defined by The Encyclopedia of American Prisons as “the desire to modify
the behavior of violent prisoners by what can only be entombing them in isolation cells for up to 23
hours a day – a practice instituted in the early 19th century in both the Pennsylvania and New York
systems.” These facilities hold inmates that are known to commit murder inside the prison and are a
complete danger to everyone. Super-max prisons are also home to convicted terrorists. They believe
that by keeping them locked away in complete isolation will prevent them from acting out in any way
until they are executed or pass away. Unlike other prison styles, there is no inmate contact whatsoever
and they do everything inside of their cells, with the
exception of an hour break. (Gaines) The cost of these
institutions is astronomical. There is a 1/1 prisoner to
guard ratio, sometimes even more guards than there are
prisoners, leading to highly increasing salaries due to all
the overtime that has to be paid.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics,
at least 2.5 million people have been incarcerated per
year, since 2011. This number keeps drastically increasing. Many people have attributed this to the
sharp incline in minor drug related charges and the high number of repeat offenders who can’t get out
of the system.
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“The number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased thirteen-fold since 1980”
according The Sentencing Project. Most of the people who are arrested for drug charges are only
carrying a small amount of drugs and have no history of criminal behavior or any violent behavior.
(Sentencing) These types of criminals are taking over our prison population, making their little or no
room for violent offenders who are an actual harm to society. The violent offenders are then released
because there is no room for them due to overcrowding. (Gaines)
In my opinion, we really need to reform our prison system. Keep the prisons open for violent
offenders and people who are a harm to society. In doing this, we need to have more systems for drug
offenders and addicts. If we have more services to help people get off of drugs and less harsher
sentences, we can dramatically decrease the prison population and leave room for people who actually
need to be there.
While America’s prison system is very organized, especially in contrast to other parts of the
world, there are still an abundant amount of issues that need to be fixed. The high cost of running the
prisons is astronomical and a new system needs to be put into place. After looking back at the prisons
and jails history, so many things have changed. If they keep implementing new changes, chances are
they will find a system that works.
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WORKS CITED
Broyles, Beth. "Tamms Supermax: Report Reveals More Guards Than Prisoners, Soaring Costs - Solitary
Watch." Solitary Watch. N.p., 4 Dec. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
<http://solitarywatch.com/2012/12/04/tamms-supermax-report-reveals-more-guards-thanprisoners-soaring-costs/>.
Fig. 1 Percent of Inmates Remaining in Jail by Days.
http://www.caselaw.org/Secondary%20Pages/AverageLengthOfStay.html 2007.
Fig. 2 Incarceration Trend Total Prison Days Sentenced.
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/division-update/2012/criminal-program.html
Gaines, Larry, and Roger Miller. “Prisons and Jails.” Criminal Justice in Action.
Mason: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Hall, Daron. "Jails vs. Prisons." Corrections Comendium (): 1. Print.
Morris, Norval. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.
Sifakis, Carl. The encyclopedia of American prisons. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Print.
"Statistics of Note." American Jail Association. N.p., 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
<https://members.aja.org/About/StatisticsOfNote.aspx>.
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"The Sentencing Project News - Drug Policy." The Sentencing Project News - Drug Policy. N.p., n.d.
Web. 28 Apr. 2014. <http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=128>.
"Types of Prisons." Crime Library. National Museum of Crime & Punishment, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/types-of-prisons>.