Sentencing and Doing Time
Sentencing is the judicial process of imposing a punishment for a crime committed. In the United States, the punishment for a crime can range from fines, community service, probation, or imprisonment. Once the punishment is imposed, the person must serve the sentence, commonly known as “doing time.”
Prison administration is governed by federal and state laws that dictate the rights of inmates, who are protected against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Inmates have the right to access the judicial process, retain legal documents, and receive legal services, healthcare services, and access to court proceedings.
Prison officers are not allowed to use excessive force and must follow the minimum use of force policy. Prisons are also required to have a minimum of one qualified medical practitioner and provide special accommodation for women.
On the other hand, offenders serving under community supervision have more freedom and access to substances, increasing their risk of relapse. They are required to have a job or be actively engaged in a productive activity to prevent them from engaging in criminal activities. Community supervision is seen as a better form of correction for reentry into society compared to prisons.
Both prisons and community supervision are designed to rehabilitate offenders, but community supervision is considered more favorable. Regardless of the form of correction, prisoners are still protected by the constitution, and their entitled rights should never be violated.
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Sentencing and Doing Time
The management of the prison is governed by both federal and state legislation, which dictate the inmates’ rights. The prisoners do not have full constitutional rights, but they are protected from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
One of the most important rights a prisoner has is access to a meaningful and cost-free judicial proceeding. The sixth amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees, among other rights, the right to a fair jury, the right to a quick trial, and the right to an attorney. Therefore, while being jailed, inmates are entitled to a fair and expeditious legal process (White et al., 2017). In some circumstances, institutional security concerns and scheduling plans may impact the inmate’s access to the judicial system. Prisoners have the right to keep their legal documents, which may be subject to restrictions for health and safety reasons. Inmates have the right to legal services, including legal counseling and guidance. They have the right to contest correctional treatment and supervision in court procedures. Inmates have the right access legal documents, and correctional officials must ensure prisoners are educated on their rights. Prisoners should have access to printed documents such as handbooks outlining their rights and other resources. Inmates are entitled to routine and emergency healthcare services, and if the service is unavailable in the facility, the inmate must be transported to a hospital that offers the service.
No prison guard may provide excessive punishment to a prisoner. It is unlawful for officers to use force, such as the use of firearms, to prevent prisoners from escaping prison. When the situation is so out of control that less harsh measures are ineffective, the cops may use force. Prisons are required by law to include at least one competent medical professional for reasons of safety and respect for the legal rights of inmates. For female inmates, prisons should provide particular accommodations for both prenatal and postnatal care (Coyle & Fair 2018).
Contrary to prisoners, offenders under community supervision have greater access to and freedom with substances. Community supervision makes it easier for offenders to obtain drugs and alcohol, which increases their risk of relapse and recidivism compared to incarceration. For a criminal to be eligible for community service, he or she must have committed a crime punishable by incarceration but not pose a threat to the community (O’Hara & Rogan, 2015). In order to prevent them from engaging in criminal acts, probationers are obliged to hold a job or be actively engaged in a productive activity while on probation. When it comes to reintegration into society, many believe that community monitoring is a vastly superior type of punishment to imprisonment, as it is connected with less shame.
In spite of the fact that they pose a threat to the community, inmates are constitutionally protected, and their rights must never be compromised. Under no circumstances should a Prion officer use force to supervise detainees, unless the situation is really dire. The purpose of both prisons and community supervision is to rehabilitate offenders, yet community supervision is more profitable than prison.
References
Coyle, A., & Fair, H. (2018). A human rights approach to prison management: Handbook for prison staff. Institute for Criminal Policy Research Birkbeck, University of London.
Li, P., Zhang, P., Wang, T., & Xiao, H. (2023). Time–frequency recurrent transformer with diversity constraint for dense video captioning. Information Processing & Management, 60(2), 103204.
O’Hara, K., & Rogan, M. (2015). Examining the use of Community Service Orders as alternatives to short prison sentences in Ireland.
White, R., Haines, F., & Asquith, N. L. (2017). Crime & criminology.
Sagarra, N. (2023). Sentence processing: cognitive approaches to second language morphosyntactic and morphological processing. The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and psycholinguistics, 229-241.
