The general determining factor in whether a person gets sentenced to jail or to prison depends upon the offense they were convicted. Misdemeanor crimes are those punishable by a year or less in...

In your opinion, does the U.S. prison system enhance or decrease criminal activity? Why?
Prisons are often and popularly thought as devices to fight crime which exposes offenders
to the process of imprisonment and thereby, reduces their proneness towards committing crimes.
But this is not always the case. In U.S alone the number of prisons has increased in a fivefold
manner since 1970 and such increase proves the fact that there is a connection between increase
in crime and the prison system in the U.S. It is a fact that the increase in the size and number of
prisons in the U.S has failed to decrease the rate of crime in an equivalent manner. Moreover, the
failure of such overwhelming increase in confinement systems to produce a considerable degree
of reduction in crime has something to do with the approaches and policies adopted in the U.S
prison system. The effects of imprisonment policies in an unforeseen and subtle manner are
contradicting the positive effects of prisons across the country. There are some flaws in the
procedures of the U.S prison system which is limiting the scope of prisons to emerge as effective
crime-prevention centers. Furthermore, it is basically through several pivotal processes that the
prisons in the U.S enhance the crime proneness among prisoners. The primary process which can
be considered as crime-enhancing is the process of replacement of co-offenders which not only
render failures to the prisons’ efforts of minimizing crime but also results in “an earlier and...