Reflection essay

In the book, "Addicted to Incarceration," the author Pratt tends to highlight sources of the issue that result to the continuous overuse of incarceration as the source of punishment in the US. Pratt provides an in-depth argument against the beliefs regarding the effectiveness of incarceration and evidence to reevaluate the idea that incarceration is the appropriate means of crime control. In the book, the author examines how the citizen opinions, misinformation, and social control are driving the correction policy to the current form of incarceration.

Pratt does provide an excellent explanation of how misinformation has played a role in fueling the get tough policies. In his book, Pratt provides three sections that include popular opinion, crime, and crime control through the corrections (Pratt, 2009). I agree will his claim considering that the manipulation of crime aspect in the US by the media and the policy makers has contributed to the technique that depends on incarceration as the main approach to fixing the problem of crime. The way the media focus on crime has resulted to fear of crime, that the policy makers are using in implementing incarceration as the method of controlling crime. The misinformation is also evident in the case of public opinions whereby politicians tend to remain accountable through the use of the public opinion polls. Such technique does have a problem with the attitude of the people towards crime is being used by the politicians in gauging the opinion of the public (Pratt, 2009). As the politicians continue using the public opinion, they tend to increase their chances of being reelected, which is an aspect that has greatly continued to the idea of incarceration as being the only method of reducing crime.

Pratt claims that there is also the misconception that the prison expansion helps in reducing crimes. I tend to support these perceptions that the prison expansion does not help to reduce crimes. In my understanding, to reduce the rate of crimes in the society, it is important first to understand what is causing crimes to happen. Most people believe that incarceration does reduce crime but it only incapacitates the offenders for some time, and it does not address the cause of crime.

As Pratt consider incarceration as not being the best method of keeping people out of crime, I think that educating people can work to help reduce the rate of crime. Providing education to the criminals helps in reducing the taxpayers’ money and also provides the criminals with the ability to develop marketable skills that they can use when out in the business world. From reading the book, I do not believe that incarceration does help to reduce the crime rates. However, regarding crime reduction, the politicians needs to focus on policies that will help to increase the rate of high school complete or even improve the quality of schools and the learning opportunities.

The book is fascinating that provides a great insight into our criminal systems. The book offers enlightenment on the views presented by the media to correlate punishment and crime in our system. The most important fact about the book is that the arguments by the author are correct as they are supported by multiple research studies.

Reference

Pratt, C. (2009). Addicted to incarceration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, Inc.

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