Free Custom «Correctional Center» Essay Paper

A correctional center is a place, where persons found guilty of committing crimes are confined and denied their freedom. It is also known as the penal system. The objective of confining these individuals in correctional centers is to punish them for the crimes committed, protect people in the society, and rehabilitate them. Over the years, the United States correctional system has faced various challenges in trying to improve the system. However, it is unclear how the system works since the money spent on ensuring of this process is not well utilized. This paper seeks to highlight the problems and challenges, facing correctional systems in the United States and its effectiveness in rehabilitating inmates.

The challenges, faced by these centers are such as the high cost of incarnating inmates, lack of effectiveness in the prisons/penitentiaries, overpopulation of inmates, high cost of treating the inmates, when there is an outbreak of infectious diseases, and the whole procedure of managing convicted criminals. Legal and social structures have established means of responding to inconsistency in both legal and cultural frameworks. This is to ensure integrity is comprehensively upheld, and particular course of action is promoted in the society. To discourage inconstant action, both legal and cultural structures subject the culprits to punishments (Clear, 2012). The type of punishments, given to the culprits, should correspond with the degree of the crime committed. Investigations should be done in order to ensure that a person suspected to have committed a particular crime is really guilty, and deserves the prescribed punishment. Consequently, minor crimes entail capital and minor crimes, and are resolved by capital punishment.

 

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Women’s prisons are also faced with challenges just like those of men. Pregnancies in women have been the major challenges, faced by the correctional system. The prisons management has to cater for the expenses of the special treatment, needed for the pregnant women. After the babies are born, prisons have the responsibility of schooling, feeding, and providing shelter for the babies. Although their mothers contribute to their children upbringing by working, the management of the prison has a bigger role in bringing up these kids.

Challenges such as overpopulation have called for drastic measure such as terminating the lives of individuals of first degree crimes. Virginia is among the states in the United States that legalized capital punishments. However, death penalty does not apply to people under the age of 18 and people with mental illness. Frank Coppola was the first person to be executed in Virginia under the state’s law in 1982. The use of electric chair and lethal injection are the common methods, used to terminate the lives of individuals, sentenced to death (Siegel & Bartollas, 2011). Unlike other states that practice execution, Virginia has a specified location, where criminals with the death penalty are executed. This is at Greensville correctional center in Jarratt. The law states that there must be at least six citizens who are not employed by the correctional department to witness the executions.

The idea of capital punishment, involving termination of life of persons who have committed crimes, has lowered the commitment of condemning suspects on both social and legal structures. Capital punishment has its merits and demerits. Capital punishment is a cheap notion of dealing with capital crimes in the society, compared to life imprisonment (Clear, Cole & Reisig, 2011). Life imprisonment gives the government an obligation to meet the demands of the prisoners, and this raises the economic constrains to the government, caused by responsibility to keep the prisoners. In addition, capital punishment makes criminals withdraw criminal activities as well as criminal operations, related to capital crimes and, hence, reducing crimes. This is because the other criminals are able to witness the execution of their colleagues, facing death in great pain. On the other hand, capital punishment drawbacks are varied and have factors, related to individual’s capacity to terminate the life of a human being. Since capital punishment involves putting to death the convict within a specific time frame, thorough findings of the facts can fail to be established. This lack of direct association with the criminal can lead to inaccuracy, while passing the judgment. Therefore, in case later on the criminal is found innocent, it is difficult to reverse capital punishment.