Law

Prisons or corrections are an important arm of the criminal justice system in the United States. They are the legal facilities which serve s the custodians, and reform or rehabilitate the criminals in our society (James, 1997). It is owing to their role as reform institutions that prisons must be given adequate concern from the government as well as the courts themselves. To be noted here is the fact that the United States appreciates the corrective role played by both public and private prisons. It has however been a heated debate in the general public terming public prisons as a great failure of the federal governments respect for human rights (Kave, 1995). It is to be appreciated here that it is the role of our legal justice courts to define the type of punishment that should be given to an offender, and how such punishments will be administered. Still clear is the fact that owing to the diversity evident in crimes, it is justly right to claim different modes of correction for the different categories of crime (Segal, 2005). Such are also reflective of age. Crime has never been extinct in fact it is always changing both in gravity and approach. It is thus logically clear that our prisons should also be constantly changing to reflect both the human civilization and technological advancements. They act as custodians for human being whose rights should be recognized and thus respected.
The author of this paper gives a discussion on the history behind the establishment of correctionprison facilities in the United States. Secondly, the paper examines the nature of our prisons both public and privately owned as well as identifying the role they play in shaping the behavior of criminals. A discussion on the correctional options available in our legal justice system for dealing with Juvenile offenders is also given.
First is a look at the history of prisons in the American nation. The history of prison can be dated back to the history of the law. It is by the law that punishment comes to play. It should however be noted that the practice was first introduced to the Americans from the Britain nation during their colonization era (Kave, 1995). Nevertheless, it should be understood that the establishment of the American constitution as well as the many American involvement in wars marked the intensified use of prisons as a way of punishing victims of military convictions. Still to be noted is the fact that our American prisons have seen many improvements over the last few decades. This is mainly due to the many critics and calls for improvement of prison living conditions by human rights activists.  The fact that the crime rates are evidently increasing in our society is also another reason behind such expansions in the prisons. The increasing numbers of inmates have necessitated for the expansion of prison facilities in our nation. It is indeed due to the overcrowding problem that we are witnessing trend of privatizing the correction arm of our legal justice system.
Second is a comparison between public and private prison as legally recognized correctional institutions. Public prisons are run by the federal government in conjunction with the state government, while private prisons are run by individuals or contracted companies. A prison is a place for overseeing the reforming of the errand members of the society. It is thus due to this reason that both public and private prisons are same since they all serve the same purpose (Segal, 2005). However, it is to be realized that the methods used and their effectiveness in ensuring sustainable corrections are quite different. It has be a common claim that public prisons lack the capacity to ensure sustainable reforms on individuals. This has greatly associated with the lacking infrastructural and human resource availability to service such duties of correcting the offenders. Statistical evidence has proved that most of the public prisons are marked with overcrowding problem (James, 1997). It is due to this fact that such prisons are seen as a major risk to outbreak of diseases, causing deaths of inmates. This is the main cause for the poor living condition that is associated with public prisons.
Still on overcrowding is the claim of rape and violence against inmates by their colleagues. Statistical data has evidently proved that over 21 percent of the public prison inmates have fallen victims of rape (McDonald, Fournier, Einhourn, Crawford, 1998). Such acts have been greatly attributed to both overcrowding and failure of socialization. It is reasonably unfair to deny a human being of his conjugal rights as such could easily result into morally unacceptable actions of satisfying ones body desires. The element of overcrowding as a contributor to rape cases in public is clear based on the sharing of facilities reason. This is unlike the case in private prisons were the facilities are enough for serving the available inmates. on the aspect of eminent acts of violence among the inmates, it is clear that changing of ones gangster way of living is quite had regardless of whether in prison or not. It has thus been established that putting inmates in the same and otherwise overcrowded prison facility will greatly increase the chances of increased violence on some of the victims. This problem is easily solved by the fact that private prisons have enough facilities and thus can afford to separate such victims for the rest.
It has also been evidently noted that the correction ability of public prison are low below the expectations of the society. This has greatly been attributed with the fact that such facilities tend to conduct their correction activities in a collective rather than on individual basis (Crews, Gillespie, Stanko, 2004). It is worth noting here that the failure by any correction center to understand, and thus correct individual problem will never yield any reasonable results. Still to be appreciated here is the fact that most of the criminals are grouped in the cells depending on the gravity of their crimes. Just to be noted is the fact that having like minded members in the society together proves hard to change their ways of reasoning. It is in fact due to this reason that most of the serious felonies offenders end up become worse upon their release from prison due to the poor additional influence they acquired from their fellow prisoners.
The other difference between public and private prisons is the health question. Private prisons have proved highly effective in providing quality health care to their inmates as compared to their public counterpart (Sigal, 2005). It has also been evidently claimed that most mentally impaired criminals are rarely assisted in public prisons. This is a great negation of the actual purpose of the prisons as correction centers. Health care is a basic human right that should never be denied.
However, both public and private prison have to a large extend succeeded in rehabilitation inmates. Apart from behavioral modifications, they have equipped inmates with skill and knowledge through vocational training and educational programs.
Third is a discussion on the correction of Juvenile offenders. It has been clearly established that most of our law courts tend to apply the law in-discriminatively to all members of the community. It is in fact due to such a reason that we have evidently witnessed an increasing number of youths in our prisons. This has been seen to be the reason behind the escalation of insecurity in our community. It is to be recognized that many youths commit crimes out of experiment of by the influence of other members of the society. Therefore, it is generally just to provide for a psychological correction rather than using the legal punishments provided by the law (James, 1997).
However, it is to be realized that our legal justice systems do have structures to ensure justice for Juvenile offenders. The first is the availability of Juvenile courts in our nation. It should also be noted that most states have put in place Juvenile prisons, all with the aim of increasing the chances of realizing sustainable reforms of the offenders. Still to be noted her is the fact that laws like capital punishment and the three strikes law have been banned for use in cases involve persons under the age of 18 years. Such a move seeks to eliminate the element of unfairness in judgment since such criminals are largely referred to as lacking the reasoning and judgment maturity in their actions.
In conclusion, it has been evidently noted that there are poor living conditions in public prisons. Still clear is the fact that our prisons are experiencing increasing population of criminal mostly the youth. This calls for the need to device other methods of correcting the youth in the community to ensure sustainable rehabilitation of such offenders.