Prisons During Americ Rehabilitation Or Retribution

Prisons in America: Rehabilitation or Retribution Katarina H. Forgy Volunteer State Community College: Sociology 1010 It has been about six years since I last saw my cousin, who will remain anonymous, and unfortunately, the last time I saw him, it was through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, talking over a telephone, in the county jail where he was being held during sentencing. I regret to say that this was not the first time I had seen him â€Å"behind bars†. As a matter of fact, I cannot even remember the last time I saw him when he was not wearing an orange jumpsuit. I know that when I was young, I always got picked on in school and he was the only person who stood up for me. He protected me and loved me the way only your favorite†¦show more content†¦His first conviction was when he was seventeen years old. No one has ever told me why he was incarcerated, but he was released after three years and seemed to be doing good for the first two months after his release. Then on Thanksgiving Day in 2007, he and three of his friends ca me in to eat, they left, and no one heard from him for almost two weeks. It turns out that he and his friends robbed a man and my cousin who I had looked up to when I was just a child, had knocked the man out with the butt of a gun. He is now serving fourteen years for his stupidity and his brutality. The whole family was devastated when we all heard what had happened, devastated, but not surprised. I have always wondered how he wound up in this life of crime. He was such a nice kid, very loving and compassionate and smart, too. What made him choose this path? Was it the absence of a father figure or perhaps the example his mother set for him? Was it the drugs or the money? Was it the people he socialized with or was it just in his genes? The United States of America has the highest prison population in the world. Despite the fact that the United States holds only 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for about 25% of the world’s prison population (Deady, 2014, p. 1). Statistics also show that the United States has a recidivism rate of over 75% (Cooper, Durose, Snyder, 2014, p. 1). Because of this, billions of tax dollar are spent on state and federal prison incarceration every