U.S. Prison Myth vs. Mayhem

There has always been this myth that the best solution to handling and dealing with gangsters and criminals is to put them in jail and have them do the time they deserve for the crime they have committed. This has been a myth, and according to our society today that is the best way to handle this situation. The reality is that we are running out of jail space and the only solution we all see is to build more prisons for the new people that are committing crimes. In the Article U.S Prison Myth vs. Mayhem by Frank Trippett he talks about how the American society is so set in the prison system and how it works that they ignore all other solutions to handling and dealing with criminals. The US government spends so much money housing the inmates each year they spent about 50,000 a year per cell in each prison and since the prisons are running out of space the solution they have come up with was to build more prisons with is going to cost us billions of dollars. Trippett talks about instead of building more prisons to hold more inmates there are a couple of alternatives. For example the inmates who are not dangerous who are not a threat to society can work on rebuilding or cleaning the society to pay them back instead of having them locked up in prison and having them serve time. offenders like these who have committed petite crimes by having them locked up in prison while serving there time it actually feeds their ego and makes them antisocial. so when they do manage to get out they become recidivists and keep repeating the same crimes over and over because they know once they go back to jail they can survive and just do their time. I believe that this is not the best solution to dealing with criminals or gangsters especially because once a gangsters goes into prison instead of rehabilitation they become stronger and meaner so when they do come out they might commit worse crimes than what they did to get them in jail in the first place. I believe that they should have centers of rehabilitation like Trippett said that some states have actually started to do. This way instead of having them locked up they are actually getting some help and are paying of there time by working while being closely supervised by government officials. This idea sounds like it would actually work better than the prison system because they are able to get a sense that by committing that crime they actually have to work it off instead of being locked up in jail and serving their time and getting three meals a day without doing anything in return. What I found interesting about this article is how much money the government actually spends on all of these prisons and according to this article some of the prisons are actually being controlled by the inmates themselves because the government actually has not control over them. this got me thinking because they are investing all these money for noting when they can be using it for greater things like build institutions where inmates can get psychological help and try to help them change their ways. What I found confusing about this article was that it didn't give us more detailed on what was the procedure that the prisons took when the inmates attacked the officials and what happen to those inmates. besides all of the negative stuff I believe we should come up with better ways to address this problem because if we keep continuing to throw everyone in jail that commits a crime we are actually contributing to the problem.