Do Prisons Teach People to Become Worse Criminals?

Criminals

Do prisons teach people to become worse criminals? Many people think that a prisoner is taught how to be a better criminal while in prison. Prisoners are integrated with people that have committed worse crimes than the ones that they have committed. The bigger and better criminals teach the others what they need to learn to survive prison life. There are many other aspects of prison that can make a prisoner worse than when he or she went in. Are prisons helping to stop the crime wave? For starters, prisons around the United States are extremely overcrowded. Wyoming is a good example of overcrowding in prisons. We have had to send a number of prisoners to Colorado because we have run out of room to keep them in Wyoming. The number of people sent to prisons were for drug offences more than violent crimes(). Some people are saying that making some drugs legal, such as marijuana, would decrease the number of prisoners drastically. There are also evidence that even though they are in prison, they can still buy and sell drugs. It has been found that 80% of drug offenders that have received sentences in New York have never been convicted of a violent felony or committed a violent crime. It was found that one in four drug offenders in prison was convicted of simple possession (Human Rights Watch). Are prisoners learning prejudice in prisons? There is evidence of this. Some civil rights organizations are calling for renewed scrutiny of the segregation policies of many state and federal prisons, charging that they inadvertently promotes growth of hatred and serve as recruiting grounds for supremacist groups. David Novak, a man who spent a year in a federal prison camp, said that it left an imprint of racial intolerance on him. He said he felt compassion for the three white murder suspects in the killing of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, TX. Two of the three allegedly have made ties with white-supremacist gangs while they were behind bars. Novak said, "In prison it is easy to fall into such groups (Prejudice in Prisons). Prison officials acknowledge that cell-blocks are often segregated by race. Putting members of rival gangs together not only endangers the prisoners, but also the lives of the guards and the very security of the institution. Texas is the nation's most integrated prison. In 1987, a federal district court ruled to ban cell-block segregation in the state. Since the ruling went into effect, prison murders have dropped by half to an average of five per year (Prejudice in Prisons). There is argument that life in prison isn't actually all that hard. It's more like a paid vacation than a punishment. While in prison, everything you have is paid for by the government. The food is free, the cable is free, the clothes are free, and you even get to lift weights and work for money. If you want, you can even get an education while in prison. Many prisons offer a chance to get your GED or even a college education. Prisons are equipped with library's that have computers that the inmates can use. There are many issues concerning weightlifting in prison. These are things such as inmates using size and strength gained from weightlifting as a weapon against guards, other inmates, or the public upon their release. People do not want their tax dollars being used to provide gymnasiums and new weight rooms for felons. Weightlifting equipment could be used as a weapon against guards or other inmates. Weightlifting equipment could be used as a tool to escape. And most of all, prison is not supposed to be a "nice place." We do not want them to come back again and again (Strengthtech). Some incidents have occurred from weight lifting in prison. Such as, in a Ohio prison riot, inmates used weightlifting bars to batter down a concrete wall protecting guards. One of the guards was killed. In a New York prison, fifteen correctional officers and ten inmates were injured in a gymnasium when a fight broke out between two inmates (Strengthtec). It seems that by allowing prisoners to have these luxuries, they are only making themselves stronger and making it easier for them to escape. It may also be telling them that it is okay to go to prison. Another bad thing about prisons is there is no segregation between HIV/Aids victims and non HIV/Aids victims. Prisons around the world have grossly disproportionate rates of HIV infection and of confirmed Aids cases. For example, in the United States in 1994, there were 5.2 cases of Aids per 1,000 prisoners. This is nearly six times the incidence found in the general adult population (Human Rights Watch). Not only do people entering prison tend to have a relatively high incidence of HIV, prisons provide a perfect breeding ground for transmission of the virus. High