Prison Reforms and Alternatives
Proposals for prison reform and proposed alternatives to prisons differ significantly depending on the political beliefs behind them. Proposals and tactics often include:
- Penal system reforms:
- Substituting incarceration with supervised release, probation, restitution to victims, or community work.
- Decreasing terms of imprisonment by abolishing mandatory minimum sentencing
- Decreasing ethnic disparity in prison populations
- Prison condition reforms
- Crime prevention rather than punishment
- Abolition of specific programs which increase prison population, such as the prohibition of drugs (e.g. War on Drugs), gun control, prohibition of prostitution, and alcohol restrictions.
- Education programs to inform people who have never been in prison about the problems
- Fighting individual cases of wrongful conviction
Read more about this topic: Prison Abolition Movement
Famous quotes containing the words prison, reforms and/or alternatives:
“If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The literal alternatives to [abortion] are suicide, motherhood, and, some would add, madness. Consequently, there is some confusion, discomfort, and cynicism greeting efforts to “find” or “emphasize” or “identify” alternatives to abortion.”
—Connie J. Downey (b. 1934)