THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL AND STATE PRISONS
Introduction
The main mission of the US Federal and State prisons is to protect the society by confining offenders. The prisons are in controlled environments that are safe and also provide work and other self-improvement opportunities (O’connor,2017). The Federal prisons are of different categories some of them are the federal prison camps, administrative facilities, united states penitentiaries among others.
There are 1719 state prisons and 102 federal prisons which can hold more than 2.4 million people. Currently, there are 1.5 million prisoners in both the federal and state prisons. Out of the 1.5 million prisoners ,11500 are women (Dikotter,2018). There are about 4.5 million people on parole. Surprisingly, the number of people on parole is double the number of state local, federal prisons and jails combined. Consequently, there are more than 10.35 million prisoners world widely. This accounts for about 15% of the US prison population (Pfiffner ,2018).
America has the highest number of prisoners followed by china which has more than 1.65 million prisoners. However, 55% of the countries in the world have a prison population rate of below 150 people per 10,000 (Dikotter ,2018). The prison rates according to the United Nations estimates is 144 people per 10,000. It is a fact that the US has less than 5% of the world’s total population yet it has almost 20% of the world’s total prison population (O’connor,2017) From the statistic we see that the US has a very high incarceration rate, this is because it sends people for longer sentences compared to other advanced industrial nations. In as much as the US government imprisons people to lengthy sentences, it is a guarantee of a changed behavior. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
When the living standards of people is depressed, those individuals opt to commit crimes so as to meet their daily needs. In the early 1990’s, the Us government developed a set of rules that aimed at punishing the less fortunate for being poor. From recent statics we see that 10 million people which represents two -thirds of all the criminals owe the government about 50 billion. The mass incarceration of the poor and the victimization of people by color is a clear proof that the government has criminalized poverty.
Michele Alexander in her book Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, argues that the dramatic rise in the number of incarcerated persons in the 1980’s was a means of reversing the gains of the civil rights revolution of the 1960’s. This is because the 1960 ‘s civil rights revolution created an opportunity for the prisoners to air out their views about their condition in prison (O’connor ,2017). Many prisoners’ right lawyers had experience working for the black civil rights. The increase in the number of incarcerated person in the 1980’s meant that what was gained from the revolution was no longer important since the number of prisoners would be increasingly high.
The protests over the death of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray in New York and other US cities began after the decision of the grand Jury. The mayor of the New York city said that the police would be trained on how to communicate and they will also have cameras on their bodies. Later on the people started protesting saying that racism kills and it should end. This shows the victimization of people based on race which Michelle Alexander talked about in her book.
Conclusion
The American prison system has been overrated. Most people serve very long terms but that does not necessarily guarantee a change in behavior. People are victimized based on their skin color. This makes the black Americans less favored compared to the whites. In the recent years, the number of female prisoners started increasingly rapidly compared to the male prisoners.
Why did God invent war?
Introduction
The quote God created war so that Americans would learn geography was popularized in America by Mark Twain. He used humor to illustrate the absurdities in his time. God being merciful and loving, invented war and allowed the misery of war. However, Americans aggression towards other nations saw the rise of the axiom,’ war is god’s way of teaching geography (Clear, et.all,2018)
As ironical as it sounds, Americans can learn geography from wars. A lot of Americans associate wars with foreign countries, foreign nations are rarely mentioned unless there is a war going on in. In most instances when there is war, people become interested in where the war is occurring and they get out the maps (Pipes, 2017). This is especially true for the families with loved ones in those countries off to fight. For instance, from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, we were able to know that the cities are in japan. The united states have bombed many parts of the world at some point. Remarkably, the US has been bombing Iraq since the 1990’s. This made it possible to learn the geography of Iraq.
A biblical justification for this is that in the book of Mark 13:7, Jesus said that there must be war and rumors of war. Jesus speaks of war and does not make a point of condemning such behavior. Moreover, in the book of Mathew we see that Jesus stated that he did not come to bring peace to the world but a sword. More so the book of revelation chapter 16 states that God will destroy the wicked in a war during his second coming.
Conclusion
To sum up, it is right to say that in as much as war may seem to help people learn geography, it has several negative consequences.
References
Clear, T. R., Reisig, M. D., & Cole, G. F. (2018). American corrections. Cengage Learning.
O’connor, J. (2017). The fiscal crisis of the state. Routledge.
Pfiffner, J. P. (2018). Did President Bush mislead the country in his arguments for war with Iraq? In Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq. Manchester University Press.
Pipes, D. (2017). In the path of God: Islam and political power. Routledge.
Dikotter, F (2018) Culture of confinement: a history of the person in Africa, Asian and Latin America. Cornell University Press