America leads the world in incarceration rates and ratios per population. “As of mid-2006, approximately 2.2 million Americans were incarcerated in local, state, and federal prisons.” In the 1970s, the incarceration rate was 165 per 100,000; in the 1980s, the proportion increased to 200 per 100,000 (Abramsky, 2008). In classical Greek mythology, the Furies are a trinity of goddesses who avenge all crimes and deviations in society with terrible sentences such as insanity, harassment, and other merciless punishments that lasted a lifetime. The American Furies: Crime, Punishment and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment reveals America's escalating incarceration rates, the plight of incarcerated people, discrimination within the justice system against minorities and Other implications of the skyrocketing prison population. . Although prisons are traditionally viewed as rehabilitative units intended to correct and deter crime, these penal institutions do the opposite: produce confirmed criminals incapable of integrating into mainstream society. Prison conditions, prison populations, and detention rates speak to the tragic terror of the public being unable to reform criminals. The private prison system is a growing industry that thrives on taxpayer dollars. Petty criminals are incarcerated with tough, hardened criminals. This situation has the consequence that violence recurs both among younger prisoners and among inexperienced prisoners. Deplorable prison conditions are justified. Gross human rights violations take place in the cells. Prisoners are beaten, fed unhealthy foods, subjected to unsanitary rooms and sometimes confined and transported to prison wards far from their home states, far from family support but far from their criminal networks. The imbalance of races represented in prison only reflects the bias of the justice system where judges sentence criminals based on their ethnicity or nationality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Incarceration rates describe the ratio of the number of prisoners per population of 100,000 who are incarcerated in correctional facilities. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world: 753 per 100,000 people in 2008. This ratio represents a 240% increase since 1980. This ratio means that 3.5% of the American adult population is behind the bars. Compared to the United States, the rest of the world has much lower incarceration rates. For example, Russia is in second place with 629 per 100,000; Rwanda with 593 per 100,000 and Cuba with 531 per 100,000. Compare these figures with Australia 134, Canada 116, England 153 and Japan 63 (Schmitt 2010). The United States tops the list in terms of incarceration rates due to its privatized prison system. Federal and state penitentiaries use privately owned facilities; therefore making imprisonment a lucrative activity. In 2008, federal, state, and local correctional facilities requested $75 billion to continue supporting their inmate populations. Criminologists observe that if prisoners convicted of nonviolent crimes were not incarcerated, prison costs would be reduced to $16.9 billion per year. Another reason for mass imprisonment in the United States is sentencingdiscriminates against prisoners of certain races, particularly blacks and Hispanics, who together make up about three-quarters of the prison population. The trend toward longer prison sentences for minor offenses is also a contributing factor to mass incarceration. The prison system is one that systematically disenfranchises inmates, thereby depriving poor minorities of an essential right. Result: part of the population remains speechless. The implications here become more political since in inner-city constituencies, residents cannot vote and decide on the government or even stand for election. Exploitation in prison also enriches the owners of prison establishments who profit unfairly from the labor of prisoners. Inmates are typically paid about 23 cents an hour. The minimum wage law does not apply and is not enforced in prisons. Prisoners typically work for railroad companies, clothing companies and other manufacturers. Although the United States practices mass imprisonment, the number of prisoners by race and gender varies widely, reflecting stark inequalities in the justice system. Among African Americans, the incarceration rate is 3,138 per 100,000, among Hispanics it is 1,259 per 100,000, and among whites it is 481 per 100,000. This staggering information reveals that a portion of the population is suffering the full force of the law while another obtains lighter sentences. The disproportionate disparity between incarcerated minorities and the white majority speaks to the one-sided justice system and its propensity to impose harsher penalties on people of color. When it comes to gender, women make up 7 percent of the prison population. 29 percent of inmates are African American women. The incarceration rate for American women is 150 per 100,000. For Hispanic women, 17 percent of women's prisons are made up of them, with an incarceration rate of 79 per 100,000. On the other hand, White women make up 48 percent of the prison population, but with an incarceration rate of 50 per 100,000 (Dignity for Schools 2008, Pettit 2004). Conditions of detention depend on and impact, to a large extent, health and well-being. -be prisoners. The harsh prison conditions lead to the proliferation of diseases in the camp and death. (Abramsky 2008) also attests to the “inedible-looking and poor quality” food served in prisons. Limited access to health facilities for detainees is the cause of detainee illness. Mob prison violence in which violent prisoners are confronted by nonviolent offenders who have committed minor offenses also (1) escalates violence among other inmates and (2) endangers the lives and general well-being of others detainees. The situation of prison overcrowding is not new. Due to high incarceration rates, which continue to increase every year, prison facilities can barely accommodate any more occupants. Competition for rooms and other amenities such as toilets, bathrooms and dormitories is high. Some justify unfavorable prison conditions because the prison is designed to make criminals uncomfortable and deter repeat offenders. Others protest inhumane treatment that violates the basic human rights of detainees (Drago 2008). This strategic exploitation keeps the prisoner class continually in debt and insolvent, trapped in a cycle of poverty. At the same time, prisoners cannotmissed out on much-needed programs such as education, drug rehabilitation and counseling due to increasing government budget cuts. The composition of the prison population is hardly diverse. Inmate representation consists of a cross-section of minority and economically disadvantaged males in the 20-40 age range. Additionally, prison populations house more foreign-born or immigrant populations than native-born Americans. Some criminologists conclude that immigrants are responsible for crime and that, therefore, sanctions against immigrants tend to be more severe under the threat of deportation (Moehling 2009). The American justice system has naturally been wary of immigrants or foreign nationals who commit more serious crimes. The response to the release of this data spawns “anti-immigration” legislation aimed at discouraging more flexible U.S. immigration and homeland security policies. Immigrants are also more likely to settle in disadvantaged neighborhoods where crime rates are highest. The imposition of long sentences for relatively minor offenses is behind the population explosion in American prisons. Southern states in the United States since the 1970s and 1980s have reportedly implemented harsher sentences for minority criminals. Longer detention of criminals in prisons, however, results in higher costs of providing housing, food, facilities and programs to miscreants. Furthermore, the recidivist tendencies of criminals continually attract them back to the cells they left. Repeat offenders do not cultivate any skills to act as contributing citizens of society. Frequent sex with other hardened criminals inspires them to adopt worse behaviors, join criminal networks and return to prison. Other penal policies, such as parole, have indirectly contributed to an increase in the prison population. In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. lawmakers eliminated opportunities for early parole and undermined education, job training and drug treatment programs. Policies have been calculated to remove certain incentives that encourage good behavior in penitentiaries, such as visits. Because local and state facilities cannot accommodate an ever-increasing inmate population, the migration of prisoners to out-of-state private penitentiaries has emerged. Transferring juvenile offenders to adult correctional facilities inflates incarceration rates. Zero tolerance rules, under which minors are not given a second chance, also perpetuate the increase in the number of inmates in prisons. Although juvenile courts and juvenile justice systems deal specifically with juvenile criminals, the current trend is seeing younger and younger criminals in adult prisons with indelible criminal records and educated for the life of crime, modeled on their prison colleagues. Adult prisoners are increasingly populated by juvenile offenders ages 15, 16, and 17 because some states are passing laws that decree that juvenile offenders who commit certain crimes be tried as adults and therefore punished as adults. The implications of juvenile correctional treatment are devastating since juveniles become accustomed to prison culture more quickly and are therefore more likely to engage in worse behaviors and.