Transcript Chapter 7

Chapter 7
Jails and Prisons
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Introduction
• Jails in the United States are one of the most
maligned and forgotten components of the
criminal justice system
• Typically, jails are city or county funded and
operated facilities designed to confine offenders
serving short sentences or those awaiting trial
• Prisons, are intended as long term custodial
facilities for more serious offenders
• Today, however, with prison overcrowding,
smaller jails are housing inmate overflow from
prisons
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• Jail is derived from the old English term
gaol which originated in 1166 A.D.
• In 2006, there were 16 million admissions to
and 14.9 million releases from U.S. jails
• Average daily population in the U.S. was
around 739, 000
• There are jail population increases and serious
overcrowding problems in most city or county
jails
• This overcrowding has been directly or
indirectly linked to numerous inmate deaths
and extensive violence
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• History
• Gaols in England were locally administered and
operated, and housed many of society’s misfits
• Since the church of England was powerful and
influential, many religious dissidents were also
housed in gaols
• Local administration of jails by shire-reeves was
continued by American colonists in later years
(Later term is the Sheriff)
• Today they are locally controlled and thus suffer
from much political influence
• In fact, changing jail conditions from year to year
are often linked to local political shifts
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• Workhouses
• Workhouses were established largely in
response to mercantile demands for cheap
labor
• The Bridewell workhouse was established in
1557 and housed many of the city’s vagrants
and general riffraff
• Jail and workhouse sheriffs and
administrators capitalized on the cheap labor
these facilities generated
• It became commonplace for sheriffs and
other officials to “hire out” their inmates to
various merchants
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• The Walnut Street Jail
• The Pennsylvania legislature authorized in 1790
the renovation of a facility originally constructed
on Walnut Street; this served as both a
workhouse and a jail
• The Walnut Street Jail was innovative for
several reasons:
• It separated the most serious prisoners from others
• It separated other prisoners according to offense
seriousness
• It separated prisoners according to gender
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• Subsequent jail developments
• Information about the early growth of jails in the
United States is sketchy
• There were a different array of facilities and the
number of jails depended on who was doing the
counting
• Another reason for inadequate statistics is that
there was little interest in jail populations
• Also records of inmates were rarely maintained
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• The number of jails in the United States
• No one knows the exact number of jails in the
United States at any given time
• One reason is that observers disagree about how
jails ought to be defined
• Some persons only count locally operated and
funded, short term incarceration facilities while
others include state operated jails
• The American Jail Association suggests that to
qualify as a jail, the facility must hold inmates
for 72 hours or longer
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• Functions of jails
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Jails hold indigents, vagrant, and the mentally ill
Jails hold pretrial detainees
Jails house witnesses in protective custody
Jails house convicted offenders awaiting sentencing
Jails house persons serving short term sentences
Jails house some juvenile offenders
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Jails and Jail
Characteristics
• Functions of jails (continued)
• Jails hold prisoners wanted by other states on
detainer warrants
• Jails hold probation and parole violators
• Jails hold contract prisoners from other
jurisdictions
• Jails operate community-based programs and jail
boot camps
• Jails hold mentally ill patients pending their
removal to mental health facilities
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A Profile of Jail Inmates
• According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 2006
• Approximately 90 percent of all jail inmates were male,
while 43 percent were white, non-Hispanic
• The number of female arrestees has climbed slowly since
1990 from 9.2 percent to 14.1 percent in 2006
• Some observers believe that selective law enforcement
and racial profiling have contributed to the
disproportionate number of jail inmates that are African
American who number about 46 percent
• Over half of all jail inmates were not convicted of any
crime
• At midyear about 94 percent of all jail space in the U.S.
was occupied
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A Profile of Jail Inmates
• Many sorts of persons are processed
through jails every day
• Drunks, vagrants, and juveniles
• Pretrial detainees and petty offenders
• Shock probationers and prison inmate
overflow
• Work releasees and the mentally ill
• Probationers and parolees
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison Characteristics
• Prisons defined
• State and federally funded and operated
institutions to house convicted offenders
under continuous custody on a long term basis
• Compared with jails, prisons are completely
self-contained and self-sufficient
• In 2005, there were over 2.4 million inmates
in state and federal penitentiaries
• Prisons were operating at 108 percent of their
capacity
• The Federal bureau of Prisons was operating
at 132 percent of capacity
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison
Characteristics
• The development and growth of U.S.
prisons
• Early English and Scottish penal methods were very
influential on the subsequent growth and development of
U.S. prisons
• John Howard, an influential English prison reformer
criticized the manner and circumstances under which prisons
were run, and he succeeded in convincing British authorities
that reforms were needed
• In 1779, the Penitentiary Act was passed where prisoners
could work productively
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison
Characteristics
• State prisons
• The first state prison was established in Simsbury,
Connecticut in 1773
• It was actually an underground copper mine
converted into a facility for felons
• Prisoners were shackled, worked long hours, and
received harsh punishments for minor offenses
• Walnut Street Jail was the first true American prison
that attempted to correct offenders
• The Walnut Street Jail, and the Pennsylvania
System became a model used by many other
jurisdictions
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison Characteristics
• Auburn State Penitentiary
• New York correctional authorities developed a
new type of prison in 1816, the Auburn State
Penitentiary
• It was designed according to tiers where
inmates were housed on different levels, this
tier system became a subsequent feature of
U.S. prison construction
• Penitentiary actually refers to a system that
segregates prisoners both from society and from
each other
• At Auburn prisoners were held in solitary cells
at night but allowed to work together during the
day, this was called the congregate system
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison Characteristics
• The American Correctional Association
• In 1870, the American Correctional
Association was established and Rutherford B.
Hayes was selected to head that organization
• The goals of the ACA were to establish a
correctional philosophy, to develop sound
correctional policies and standards, to offer
expertise in design and operation of facilities,
and to assist in training correctional officers
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Prisons, Prison History,
and Prison Characteristics
• The Elmira Reformatory
• Elmira Reformatory experimented with new
rehabilitative philosophies
• Its first superintendent Zebulon Brockway
envisioned better and more effective treatment
for prisoners
• Elmira was truly a reformatory and used the
military model similar to boot camps
• Prisoners did labor and participated in
educational and vocational activities
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The Functions of Prisons
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Prisons provide societal protection
Prisons punish offenders
Prisons rehabilitate offenders
Prisons reintegrate offenders
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Inmate Classification Systems
• Religious movements are credited with
early prisoner classification
• In 1790, the Walnut Street Jail attempted to classify
prisoners according to age, gender, and offense
seriousness
• No single scheme for classifying offenders is foolproof
• There are several risk instruments designed to predict
inmate behavior
• How inmates are classified and housed will directly
affect their parole chances
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Inmate Classification Systems
• Minimum-security classification
• These facilities are designed to house lo-risk,
nonviolent first-offenders
• Also established to accommodate offenders
serving short-term sentences
• Often of a dormitory-like quality, with grounds
and physical features resembling university
campuses
• Administrators place greater trust in inmates in
minimum-security institutions
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Inmate Classification Systems
• Medium-security classification
• Sixty percent of state and federal facilities are
medium- and minimum-security
• Forty percent are maximum-security, which
house the most dangerous offenders
• Visitation privileges are minimal
• Most often, no effort made to rehabilitate
offenders
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Inmate Classification Systems
• Maxi-maxi, admin max, and super max
prisons
• Prisoners with the highest levels of security and
inmate supervision are maxi-maxi
• Admin max facilities house inmates with
extensive criminal histories
• Sometimes referred to as super max
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A Profile of U.S. Prisoners
• Considerable diversity exists among prisoners
in state and federal institutions
• These include the nature and seriousness of
offenses, age, and psychological or medical
problems
• In 2005, seven percent of prison inmates were
female
• Between 1995 and 2005, the female inmate
population increased by 45 percent
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Some Jail and Prison Contrasts
• Jails are in poorer conditions with many under court
order to improve conditions
• Jails do not have programs associated with long term
incarceration
• Jails have greater diversity of inmates
• Jail inmate culture is less pronounced and persistent
• Quality of jail personnel is lower
• Jails are usually not divided into minimum-, medium-,
or maximum-security
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Some Jail and Prison Contrasts
• Jails are in poorer conditions with many under court order
to improve conditions
• Jails do not have programs associated with long term
incarceration
• Jails have greater diversity of inmates
• Jail inmate culture is less pronounced and persistent
• Quality of jail personnel is lower
• Jails are usually not divided into minimum-, medium-, or
maximum-security
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Selected Jail and Prison Issues
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Jail and prison overcrowding
Violence and inmate discipline
Jail and prison design and control
Vocational/technical and educational
programs in jails and prisons
• Jail and prison privatization
• Gangs… formation and perpetuation
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