Incarceration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Incarceration - Essay Example Although prisons traditionally are deemed as rehabilitative units to correct and deter criminality, these penal institutions are doing the reverse: producing confirmed criminals incompetent to integrate into mainstream society. Prison conditions, prison populations and prison rates display the tragic terror of the public unable to reform felons. The private prison system is a growing industry which is nourished by tax payers dollars. Petty criminals are incarcerated with the tough and hardened criminals. This situation results in the violence being reproduced in both younger and inexperienced inmates. The deplorable conditions of the prisons are justified. Gross human rights abuses take place within the cells. Prisoners are beaten, fed unhealthy food, subjected to unsanitary rooms and sometimes, confined, and transported to prison quarters away from their home states, away from family support but far from their criminal networks. The imbalance in the races represented in prison only reflects the partiality of the justice system where judges sentence criminals based on their ethnicity or nationality. Incarceration rates describe the ratio of how many prisoners per population of 100,000 are committed to penitentiary institutions. The United States boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world: 753 per 100,000 people as at 2008. This ratio represents a 240 percent increase since 1980. This ratio means that 3.5% of the U.S. adult population is behind bars. Compared to the U.S, the rest of the world have much lower incarceration rates for example, Russia holds the second place with 629 per 100,000; Rwanda with 593 per 100,000 and Cuba with 531 per 100,000. Compare these numbers with Australia 134, Canada 116, England 153 and Japan 63 (Schmitt 2010).    The United States leads the list in incarceration rates because of the privatized prison system. The federal and state penitentiaries employ the facilities of private owners; therefore making imprisonment a mon ey-making business. In 2008, federal, state, and local prison institutions demanded $75 billion to keep supporting its inmate population. Criminologists observe that if  prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes were not incarcerated, prison costs would be reduced to $16.9 billion per year. Another reason for America's mass imprisonment is the discriminatory conviction of prisoners belonging to certain races, particularly Blacks and Hispanics which together make up about three-quarters of the prison population. The trend of longer prison terms for minor crimes also is a factor contributing to mass imprisonment.   The prison system is a system which systematically disenfranchises inmates, stripping from poor minorities a key right. As a result, a section of the population remains voiceless. The implications here become more political since in inner city constituents the residents cannot cast their vote and decide on government or even run for office. The exploitation in prison al so enriches the prison institution owners who take unfair advantage of the labor of inmates. Inmates are usually paid about 23 cents per hour-minimum wage law does not apply and is not enforced in prisons.

Micro Economy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Micro Economy - Research Paper Example Choosing one alternative requires giving up a number of other alternatives. There is an opportunity cost involved in making choices. Opportunity cost is considered to be the most important concept in economics. It is the value of the best alternative that is given up in order to make a choice (Rittenberg and Tregarthen 2011). It is on these ideas that the theory of comparative advantage is based. A country is deemed to have a comparative advantage in producing a good if it has a low opportunity cost n producing that good. Firms as well as countries have a comparative advantage in producing one good or offering one service over another. It therefore means that since resources – labor, capital are land are scarce they need to make a choice. The production possibility curve (PPC) is a graphical representation of the different combinations of goods and or services that can be produced in an economy with the resources and technology available. It brings together the three concepts of scarcity, choice and opportunity cost. The choice of producing one good instead of another or a particular combination of goods reflects scarcity of resources, making a choice between alternative options, and highlights the concept of opportunity cost. The slope of the PPC represents the opportunity cost of giving up one good or service for another – in the case of a simple two good/service model. It is this opportunity cost that is used to determine whether a comparative advantage exists. An economy is deemed to have a comparative advantage in the production of a good or service if the opportunity cost of doing so is lower for that economy than any other. Deardorff in his article entitled The General Validity of the Law of Comparative Advantage though making the point that the law does not hold in multi-commodity world indicates that the comparative advantage determines the form that international trade exhibits (941). This proposition, Deardorff indicates