Sunday, May 19, 2019
Mass Incarceration in the United Kingdom
our land site SOCIAL SCIENCE DISSERTATION CUSTOM ESSAY WRITING IntroductionThe linked Kingdom has tardily witnessed an increase in the number of prisoners incarcerated. The first surge occurred during Prime Minister Thatchers reign. Running a prison became a business, when the first privately run institution opened in the United Kingdom, in 1992 (Panchamia 2012). The increased need for spaces due to higher rate of imprisonment led to the emergence of the prison-industrial coordination compound, whereby spate were incarcerated without a mechanism for reintegrating them back to the society. Prisons became contracted out, and the influence of the government was reduced. As Panchamia (2012) concludes, ten percent of the prisons in the United Kingdom and Wales atomic number 18 currently contracted out. Davis (1998 3) states bandage government-run prisons are often in gross colza of international human rights standards, private prisons are even less accountable.The emergence o f these prison-industrial complexes is attributed to the criminological theory, hinged on the conflict theory, arguing that t there is a struggle mingled with different groups (Akers 1979 527).Crime is perceived as a function of the conflict indoors any society based on Marxist theory, calmingthat loving and economic situations facilitate criminal activities. This paper argues that the emergence of the prison-industrial complex in England and Wales was attributed to green goddess imprisonment, the lack of effectual social policy, and early interventions. atomic reactor imprisonmentMass incarceration is characterized by the removal of people from communities and taking them to prisons. (Newburn 2002 165). Sparks and McNeill (2009) define mass incarceration as restricting the freedom of a group of people, subjecting them to surveillance and regulation, while increasing their dependency. According to a recent publication by Wacquant (2001), the plain aim of prison complexes and mass incarceration is to segregate people. The beginning goes further, and compares prisons with Ghettos. Focusing in the American context, the article highlights the impact of track separatism on the demographics of prison population. The above argument is sinewy, as both prisons and ghettos are considered to be places extremely seriously to escape from. The main aim of mass incarceration is to remove the criminal from the neighbourhood to ensure that they are detained. Often this priority means that prisoners are denied rehabilitative facilities (Harnett 2011 7). As an implication, prisons become areas for correctional segregation, for the criminals who must be removed from the society. Therefore, most of these prisons are detention centres where people enter a perpetual cycle of incarceration for crimes committed because of their economic need.Davis (1998) states that prisons are not providing adequate solution for crime or social issues. The author goes further, clai ming that prisons reflect that racial bias and social blemish of the society. Studying American prison population, the author states that the governmental economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children and on anti-Semite(a) practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns (Davis 1998 2). The defining features of mass incarceration are that it is characterized by comparatively high number of people in prisons. In Reagans United States prosecution patterns and conviction rates increased the proportionate pattern of African Americans and Hispanics, as well as those from lower socio-economic statuses (Wacquant 2010, p. 74). This was during the New Deal and Great Society, which contributed a mountain towards the increasing trend of mass incarcerations, and the adoption of the prison-industrial complex system that emphasized governance through punitive acts (Downes 2001, p. 62).At the advent of economic reforms introduced by Britains Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the rising rate of unemployment hit the running(a) class the most. With the labour market in crisis,urban areas had to bear the burden of the high proportion of lower class and unemployed population. As social issues increased, the government resorted to the creation of a prison-industrial complex, to deal with the people that suffered most (Wehr 2015, p. 6). The new created prison-industrial complex that emphasized mass incarceration was based on cultural bias and social injustice (Sparks and McNeill, 2009). These institutions symbolised thee societys thoughts and prejudice, suggesting that the degradation of a person may be a way to compute the social conflict. As a result, the British society started to increasingly rely on criminological theories to documentation mass incarceration of the lower classes, whereby the prison-industrial complexes become a large enterprise for the stat e.Democracy, Inclusion and Social insurance policyIt is worth noting that mass incarceration in England and Wales led to the economic and social exclusion of people within the prisons. This segregation and incarceration endangered majority rule (Sparks and McNeill, 2009). In line with the conflict criminological theory, mass incarceration of offenders who mostly belong to a particular race or class enhanced the structures of oppression and permit (Van 2007, p. 189). This occurred when mass incarceration gave undue advantage to one group as opposed to another. Today, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is unornamented that people of colour or lower classes are disproportionally overrepresented within the prison-industrial complex. turn the mass prison complex created privilege to higher classes, it created a situation whereby the victims were stigmatized, criminalized, and did not enjoy the privileges of democracy and inclusion. The economic and social drivers of mass incarceration are explained by Downes (2006), who confirms that there is an inverse relationship between a states spend on welfare and imprisonment rates.Mass incarceration too hindered democracy by preventing means through which people could share ideas or communication (Young 2000, p. 208). An incarcerated person experience political disempowerment and a lack of influence, power, while he became extremely dependent on the prison complex (Travis 2002, p. 19). Despite several attempts of inclusion, provision for rehabilitation, training, and work opportunities, current social policies have not been successful in reinstating the equal representation of lower classes, and the mass incarceration continues. (Reiman 2004, p. 5).ConclusionThe above review of publications and research studies, it is evident that the conflict theory accurately explains the emergence of mass incarceration during the reign of Thatcher in the United Kingdom, and Reagan in the United States. Histo rically, the upper class, that was more advantaged socially, economically and politically created laws and policies that increasingly criminalized the less powerful, creating a policy of segregation. increase incarceration within the prison-industrial complex removed people who were not wanted. Apart from enhancing exclusion and stifling democracy, it helped the powerful class to maintain its influence, wealth and position within the society.BibliographyAkers, R.L., 1979. Theory and ideology in Marxist criminology. Criminology, 16(4), pp.527-Davis, A. (1998). draped racism Reflections on the prison industrial complex. Color Lines, 1(2), 11-13.Downes, D., 2001. The Macho Penal Economy Mass Incarceration in the United States-AEuropean Perspective. Punishment & Society, 3(1), pp.61-80.Downes, D. (2006). Welfare and punishment The relationship between welfare spending and imprisonment.Hartnett, S. J. 2011. Challenging the prison-industrial complex activism, arts, andeducational alte rnatives. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.Newburn, T. 2002. Atlantic crossings Policy transfer and crime control in the the States andBritain. Punishment & Society, 4(2), pp. 165-194.Panchamia, N., 2012. Competition in prisons. Institute for Government, http//www. Instituteforgovernment. org. uk/sites/default/files/publications/Prisons, 2.Reiman, J. H. 2004. The rich get richer and the poor get prison ideology, class, and criminal justice. Boston, Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.Sparks, R. and McNeill, F., 2009. Incarceration, social control and human rights. THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY Project on SocialControl and Human RightsTravis, J. 2002. Invisible Punishment An Instrument of Social Exclusion (From InvisiblePunishment The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, P 15-36, 2002, Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds.).Van der Linden, H. 2007. Democracy, racism and prisons. Charlottesville, Va, PhilosophyDocumentation Center.Wacquant, L., 2010. Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchistAmerica. Daedalus, 139(3), pp.74-90.Wacquant, L., 2001. Deadly symbiosis When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society, 3(1), pp.95-133.Wehr, K. 2015. Beyond the prison industrial complex crime and incarceration in the twenty-firstcentury. Place of publication not identified, Routledge.Young, I. M. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
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