Jails

This week in class we watched a show and read an article about jails in the US. Almost everything we learned about the jails shocked me. I had the picture of jails in my head as a bed in a tiny space with bars and a guy being locked up inside the bars all day. It was completely different in the movie. There were tiny rooms with an actual door and 3 or 4 guys in a room. It was also shocking to me that most of the jails in the US don't have programs to help the criminals. They just lock them up and treat them badly, then let them back out onto the streets with nothing to help them improve. One jail in the show did have a program that tried to teach the criminals how to live their lives and not commit crimes, however, jails like that are fairly new and very rare. I think jail only worsens the problems of the criminals. Sitting all day and having nothing to do but think promotes them to want to do more illegal things. They have no brain stimulation whats so ever so they aren't motivated to change themselves. Our jail system is like a revolving door. Prisoners go to jail, spend their time thinking or more ways to break the laws, get out of jail, break more laws and go back into jail and start all over again. We need to fix the problem in jails by making all jails be required to provide help for the criminals. By helping them, we help ourselves because the more they follow the laws, the more we have to worry about them harming us.