Response of 150 words for each question.
1. You make an excellent point about how a large prison population will see a greater majority of African American inmates than most any other nationality. This has, in many cases and for a myriad of reasons, been a significant sore spot on the cultures and communities across the continent.
However, I did find something very interesting in my reading as I was studying for our paper that is due this week. According to the statistics of those charged with sexual offenses, that is to say rape, aggravated assault, etc, that it is more likely to be a white male, age thirty-four, who has never been married than it is for any other type of person to commit these crimes. Does the media play a part in this statistic not being more widely known? Why?
2. In this chapter we begin to take a deeper look at the gradual shift that is taking place in our prisons and in our corrections systems. More and more females are being tried and convicted of crimes that carry with them a prison sentence.
Historically, as we all know, males typically are what will be seen in the prison system, as well as who will be believed to have committed a crime over a female. However, recent statistics are proving that women are also committing crimes. Why do you believe that this change has happened? Are we simply more enlightened now to the possibility of gender sameness than we were ten, twenty, or fifty years ago? What are your thoughts?
3. it is true that more women have been incarcerated. But, they still represent a small minority of the overall prison population. Moreover, women rarely commit violent crimes. Most of their offenses are for drugs or for property crimes to finance a drug habit. What are the implications of this for corrections regarding treatment programs for women?
4. Perhaps this is a problem for our society and government. Corrections does offer some education and job programs in prison. But, would it be smarter do invest in these programs for people in our communities, and not wait until they are in prison?
5. why are so many elderly people in prison? Is it that they went into the justice system as young adults or teenagers? I wonder how many people die of old age, in prison?
6. Advocates for elderly prisoners say that once these offenders no longer pose a threat to society, due to illness, disease, or lack of mobility, they should receive a compassionate release. What do you think?
7. Unfortunately, peer pressure is certainly something to take into account when considering why anyone commits a crime. Peer pressure comes in many forms, some of them from friends, family, or significant others, and others from people that we simply wish to impress. The nature of our actions is, I believe, a direct response to the type of show of influence we wish to have on others.
This could be a person stealing a lot of money to be able to afford expensive dates and jewelry for a significant other they wish to impress or to impress their other friends and hide the fact that they are poor. What other ways might peer pressure play into the crimes that people, and women in particular, might commit?
8. You make an interesting point about the diversity of needs among different groups of prisoners. I think that, for the males, there is a real fear of the stigma that goes along with prison of being raped, and that this fear feeds the ever present need to be protected by one faction or another.
Not only that, but being a part of a faction can help. However, is this need really and truly present, or does it become present because of the fears and circumstances created by the ideas that are present in each inmates heads? I am close with someone who spent many years in prison facilities as an inmate and never had such issues.
Indeed, his experience was that the truth of those issues was extremely rare, except in cases where people let their fear get the better of them. Is this simply a prison by prison case basis? Or are the fears more myth than fact? What do you think?