Jails and Prisons Essay Example for Free

Jails and Prisons Essay Jails and prisons are both types of sanctions that are used for convicted offenders that have committed crimes, but there are many differences in the two. â€Å"Jails are locally operated short- term confinement facilities originally built to hold suspects following arrest and pending trail. Today’s jails also serve these purposes: * They receive individuals pending arraignment and hold them awaiting trail, conviction or sentencing. * They readmit probation, parole, and bail-bond violators and absconders. * They temporarily detain juveniles, the mentally ill, and others pending transfer to appropriate facilities. * They hold individuals for the military, for protective custody, for contempt, and for the courts as witnesses. * They release convicted inmates to the community upon completion of their sentence. * They transfer inmates to federal, state, or other authorities. * They house inmates for federal, state or other authorities because of overcrowding in their facilities. * They operate community-based programs with day reporting, home detention, electronic monitoring, or other types of supervision. * They hold inmates sentenced to short terms (generally less than one year)† (Schmalleger, 2009, p. 486). But when it comes down to giving a description of prisons on the other hand are not quite as detailed. â€Å"The primary function of prisons is to hold convicted felons, usually serving a sentence of one year or more, whereas convicted felons serving shorter sentences usually serve their time in local jails. Inmates consider jail sentences very â€Å"hard time,† since jails do not have the full range of education, vocational training, work, recreational, or other treatment programs that area available in prisons. Since prisons are designed to hold inmates for longer terms they need to provide a full range of programs, both for rehabilitative purposes and to keep inmates productively busy† (Seiter, 2011, p. 140). The funding for county jails come from the local county from which the jail is in, they charge the cities a fee for housing their inmates. For example the jail that is local to me here house inmates from surrounding cities which in turn pay them which helps to pay the county employees as well as the up keep of the county jail. State jails funding comes from the state in which it is in some state jails are contracted out to the prison to ease overcrowding in the prison systems. Therefore it leads to the state giving those funds that would have normally been given to the prisons. State prison funds also come from people paying their state taxes and when state taxes are charged on a purchase. Federal prisons are funded by the federal government and also by the federal taxes. There are more types of prisons than there are jails, because the offenders spend a little bit momore time more time here than at jails in some situations. Maximum security prisons are for the most dangerous offenders who are kept in their cells for approximately 23 hours a day and get only one hour a day out of their cell for recreation. Medium security prisons are mostly dormitories that have a double fence around the perimeter. They also have the group toilet and sink on the dormitory. Minimum security has mostly dormitories also which has either a single perimeter fence or no fence around them. These dormitories are equipped with showers, toilets, and sinks. There is usually one officer assigned to these dormitories that house about 150 or 160 offenders that are assigned here to live. The majority of the inmates that are assigned to these types of units usually have offenders that are getting ready to go home in less than a year or less. Prisons comes in all different shapes and sizes it all depends upon what types of inmates that they are housing in these particular units. If the prison house mostly maximum security offenders then it will be one of the larger units that have a lot of cellblocks on them because all of these inmates have to be single celled and placed in a single yard when it comes time for recreation. These units are usually the large ones that will hold anywhere from 2000 offenders up to 2500 offenders. Where on the other hand if the offenders that are placed on a unit are medium security offenders then the unit does not have to be so large it could be about 800 offenders all the way up to 1100 offenders because they are all on dorms. This is one of the units that will be set up to have nothing but dorms within the perimeter fence, there will be no cellblocks and not as many staff members would be needed as with the maximum security unit. Minimum security are basically where there are very few officers needed for security because most of these offenders are ones that are getting ready to go home in a year or less and just want to do their time and get out sooner or later. These units’ capacity levels are usually around 2000 offenders no more than about 2200 capacity being that they have a little bit more freedom than the maximum or medium security offenders. Reference Page Seiter, R., (2011) Corrections an introduction (3rd ed).Pearson Prentice- Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. May, D., Minor, K., Ruddell, R., and Matthews, B., (2008) Corrections and the Criminal Justice System. Jones and Barlett Publishers, Inc. Schmalleger, F., (2009) Criminal Justice Today(10th ed). Pearson Prentice- Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.