speech given by Jeannie Alexander

speech given by Jeannie Alexander

Alexander, Jeannie. One Book One Community, 13 September 2017, Caudill Hall Wemyss Auditorium, Gallatin, TN. Guest Lecture.

I attended a speech given by Jeannie Alexander, Head Chaplin at Riverbend Maximum Security. Alexander first talked about her background and what got her where she is today. She then talked about some of her experiences with the prisoners at the prison she currently works at now and she also provided statistics to back up her points. She claimed that the current prison system is not fair to the inmates and that they would never get out because of the truth-in-sentencing laws. Alexander included a video that had pictures of actual prisoners with quotes from them to make the audience feel bad for them.

Alexander has the credentials to be discussing the topic as she has seen the prison system first hand. The video she included seemed to be manipulative because it had sad music and sad pictures of the prisoners. It was intended to make someone feel bad for these people without including what the prisoners did to get arrested and incarcerated. However, she made some good points about the laws and the effects that they had on prisoners. I had originally wanted to do my future papers on something in the criminal justice field, but she inspired me to where I wanted to narrow my focus down to which is the truth-in-sentencing laws. Therefore, her speech would be very useful to my topic as she explained exactly what they are and what damage they have done.

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I could use her statistics or her experiences to prove further a point about the problems associated with those laws.

Allen, George. “The Courage of our Convictions: The Abolition of Parole Will Save Lives and Money.” Policy Review, no. 72, 1995, p. 4+. Academic OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=tel_a_vscc&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA168 75638&it=r&asid=111172d423e93a655b0d69e3e2e1695b. Accessed 2 October 2017. George Allen, former governor of Virginia, claims that his policy which abolishes parole,

dramatically decreases good time, and significantly increases the amount of time violent offenders serve in prison will work the best in the prevention of violent crimes. Allen claims that his policy will keep offenders who would be repeat offenders from committing more crimes. He also claims that he can help with the over-flowing prison population by building separate low-cost work centers to house first time and non-violent offenders. He also addresses the money issue by saying that Virginia would have had to build more prison systems anyways. He overall claims that his policy will save lives and money.

His credentials are appropriate as he is discussing the laws that he created which did make it a little biased. However, he still addressed all the counter-arguments that he had received and appropriately refuted them by explaining how his the good of his plan outweighs the bad. His intention was to thoroughly explain his prison reform plan and to show that he had given thought to the oppositional arguments. He did this well by going through each problem in the system and how his plan would fix it. He then went through each counter-argument he may have heard and refuted it. This article would be useful for my upcoming problem analysis as I will be discussing the truth-in-sentencing laws which he implemented in his own state. I could use his arguments for my refutations or to back up my own argument.

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Glazer, Sarah. “Sentencing Reform.” CQ Researcher, 10 January 2014, pp. 25-48, library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2014011000. Accessed 5 October 2017.

Sarah Glazer, writer for CQ Researcher, provides facts and statistics that show whether or not alternatives to incarceration reduce recidivism in her report. She discusses the effects of drug treatment courts (courts that mandate rehabilitation programs rather than prison sentences) on recidivism and crime rates. She also provides a chart that shows the rise in life sentences from 1984 to 2012.

In this report, Glazer never seems to take a stance on the topic. She just simply reports the facts on sentencing reforms. The whole report is very thorough and provides facts that could support anyone’s views on the reforms. The charts are confusing to me because one graph showed a different time span than the other. Therefore, it was difficult for me to compare the two. I will mostly like not include the chart as an example in my discussion on the truth-in-sentencing laws. However, the rest of the report contained very useful information for any point of view I may choose to argue from.

Guerrero, Gene. “Criminal Justice at the Crossroads: Transforming Crime and Punishment.”

Wagadu, vol. 14, p. 196+. Academic OneFile,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=tel_a_vscc&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490

822013&it=r&asid=06d8946d2061d3946170cf6f9693a227. Accessed 4 October 2017.

Gene Guerrero is an independent scholar who wrote this review of Criminal Justice at the

Crossroads: Transforming Crime and Punishment by William R. Kelly. Guerrero states that mass incarceration is very high and the violent crime offenders need rehabilitation rather than incarceration. He also believes that the truth in sentencing laws take away discretion from

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judges. He claims that there does not need to be a set amount of time a criminal must serve.

Instead, he thinks that decision needs to be left up to judge.

This report is a very thorough summary and reiteration of Kelly’s work. Guerrero supports Kelly’s ideas and adds more information from other sources in this report to back up Kelly’s thoughts. This review provides a well supported point of view that could prove to be useful in my upcoming essays. I could use his points and evidence to back up my own future claims.

Mauer, Marc. “The Truth about Truth in Sentencing.” Corrections Today, vol. 58, no. 1, 1996, p.

S1+. Academic OneFile,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=tel_a_vscc&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA187

10752&it=r&asid=1bc53e498f3cd942468f48e7b1b237de. Accessed 5 October 2017.

Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project in Washington D.C., begins this article by explaining the goals of the truth-in-sentencing laws and the ideas behind them. Mauer then goes on to explain how these goals were not achieved. He does so discussing the impact they had on the prison systems and on American citizens. He shows that the costs for keeping prisoners longer because of these laws goes up substantially despite the grant received from the federal government. Mauer also provides a table that shows average prison release of violent offenders from 1988 to 1992 and the projected average after the laws were put into place.

Mauer has the credentials to be discussing this particular topic because he has real experience in the field of sentencing reform. This was written in 1994, so some of the information may not be useful to today’s laws. However, he provides a good explanation of the laws and their goals that I could use in my future essays. He also provides some good solutions to the problems that I could use to inspire my solutions. The table is not particularly useful

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because the information contained in it is outdated. Research has data that is more recent and can show current statistics rather than projected ones. All in all, he provides good insight into the impact of the laws.