Are Prisons Obsolete?
Prisons have played an essential part in the development justice system but have remained an ineffective strategy for preventing crime, evidence that the US government has failed to notice. It is confusing that most research on criminal justice, crime, and deviance is in the United States, but the findings have not been implemented. There must be a reason for this problem and the use of prison as a racist institution. Davis (2003, p. 6) eloquently reveals this issue as the biggest problem within the criminal justice system, which is why it has become obsolete and unable to prevent crime.
I partially agree with Davis (2003, p. 11) that the prison system is obsolete but can become effective when used as part of the multi-strategic approach to addressing crime. The criminal justice system is clogged with a history of racism, which is still evident in our current society, and still negatively affects minorities. Prison and racism relate in the sense that race has always played a central role in constructing the presumption of criminality. For example, although they abolished slavery, they omitted specific Black Codes, which convicted only black people.
Prisons have become business for corporations in the punishment industry, which Davis (2003) argues has become a black hole in which detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited (p. 36). The author reveals a surprising relationship between deindustrialization policy and the rise of industrial prison complexes. Prisons were introduced with a promise to revitalize local economies by providing jobs to local people when the deindustrialization policy took effect. But the strategy failed, leaving people unemployed, thus leading to crime. Therefore, reducing crime means also addressing unemployment.
I found it also confusing that the criminal justice system believes one strategy, the use of punishment, can deter crime. Numerous studies show that biological, economic, psychological, and social theories reveal that crime results from the interplay of different factors (Alikperov, 2022, p. 88), and incarceration alone cannot reduce crime in society. Evidence from numerous studies of theories of criminal justice highlights punishment as an effective strategy to deter crime; they also reveal that it is not effective alone to prevent crime in society.
Criminal and justice theories argue that committing a crime is a rational process where the criminal weighs the benefits and perceived costs of the crime. But economic and social factors influence the likelihood of choosing whether to commit or not to commit a crime. As a result, they argue that the long-term solution to crime is not punishment alone but also addressing the economic and social part of the crime, which is what the government has neglected. Incarceration alone only leads to poor social wealth leading to more incarcerations. Attempts to reduce crime have failed because of the naturalization of prisons, and proposed solutions only suggest helping the prisoners rather than addressing social and economic factors.
