Essay on Life Behind Bars Text

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shakespeare behind bars is a documentary film shot at the luther luckett correctional center, a prison in kentucky. The project director curt tofteland had gone for shakespeare’s the tempest. And it was very applicable since the prison was a totally suitable place for such a play hagopian. The shooting went pretty good and i admire the way the inmates cooperated with everything in spite of what they were that is, criminals.

They had been arrested for several different crimes some soft like robbery and others quite terrible like raping minors. I feel that the reason why these inmates helped out each other was due to their situation at that time. They must have been leading a totally boring life, cut off from the world and people, and something new made them rise and look forward. Another reason i would say is that they must have been treated with respect by the director and other professionals. Since he expected something of them they were willing to put in their efforts and give something back to him. One does not have to really take classes on acting in order to be able to go on stage. We know what it feels like when we lose someone, or become happy, and thus just reproducing such feelings is not really difficult.

The inmates had also admitted to their crime and i think this might have been a consequence of the professionalism they had gone through. The different characters that they had to play must also have had an effect upon them. These are model essays please place an order for custom essays, research papers, term papers, thesis, dissertation, case studies and book reports.

The rate of women being incarcerated in prisons has dramatically risen over the last decade. While these women are being locked up for crimes ranging from drug possession to murder, they often come into the prison system with children or pregnant. A recent report from the bureau of justice statistics found that the number of minors with mothers in prison increased by more than 100 percent in the last 15 years schwartzapfel, 2008 . While some women must give up their children before or after they enter prison, a handful of women get to keep their children. These women serve their sentences at one of nine prisons that have prison nurseries. However, not all women are afforded this privilege which comes with strict qualifications. A prison nursery is a program that allows a child born to an incarcerated women to remain in the care of its mother for a restricted amount of time within a correctional facility mothers, infants and imprisonment: a national look at prison nurseries and community based alternative, 2009 .

Prison nurseries in the united states are only open to mothers who give birth to their children while they are serving their sentence. In the 1950s, many women's prisons had nurseries in which infants could stay with their mothers from several weeks to two years, depending on the institution. The nurseries were deemed too expensive, the mothers too ruined and the babies too precious for such an environment kauffman, 2001 . The only program left operating was at the bedford hills correctional facility for women in bedford hills, new york.

The bedford hills correctional facility, which is a maximum security facility, has the oldest prison nursery in the united states. Opening its doors in 1901, the program is also the largest, having space for 29 mother/infant pairs. Women live with their babies in bright rooms stuffed with donated toys and clothes.

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During the day, while the women attend doc mandated drug counseling, anger management, vocational training and parenting classes, their children attend a day care staffed by inmates who have graduated from an intensive two year early childhood associate vocational training program schwartzapfel, 2008. Several aspects of a woman’s past are examined before she can participate in the nursery. This includes determining who is going to have custody of the child, if the mother has a history of involvement with the child welfare system, the length of her sentence, past episodes of incarceration, and the nature of her crime. Women who have committed arson or who have a history of child abuse are not eligible for the nursery. At bedford hills the infant can stay for up to 18 months if the mother will be paroled by then, otherwise the child must leave the facility at 12 months of age mothers, infants and imprisonment: a national look at prison nurseries and community based alternative, 2009.

There are currently prison nursery programs in nine states: california, illinois, new york, nebraska, washington, ohio, indiana, south dakota, and west virginia. These programs are relatively rare and focus on the concept of the bond formed between mother and child within the first two years of life. Taconic correctional facility, also located in bedford hills, new york, was the second facility to host a prison nursery program.

Opening in 1990, it models the first program the qualifications and length of stay for infants are similar. Capital punishment, better known as the death penalty, is a sentence for many of todayвўв¦s murderers. The death penalty is the most effective way to punish a murderer spite the contradictions of life without parole. It is sometimes less expensive, and does not give the killer a second chance to be back out on the streets.

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On the down side there are also morality and christianity factor involved with the penalty. When we think of women in prison as of lately, we think of orange is the new black, a television show centered on a woman whom after ten years of living a relatively quiet and normal life, is sentenced to prison for transporting a suitcase full of drug money for her former girlfriend. What we fail to see is the real prison facilities that women are sentenced to for nonviolent drug and property offenses. There are two sides of women behind bars, the female offender and the female correctional officer. First, the vast majority of female prisoners are likely coerced into committing crimes for their partners and as a result have ended up behind bars. Many female offenders are incarcerated as a result of the too strict laws and policies adopted at the height of the war on drugs. Majority of women incarcerated in prisons and jails come from poverty ridden surroundings, where there is a lack of support from family have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse, some having happened while as young children and suffer from physical and mental health problems as well as substance abuse issues.

The majority of women serving time who have suffered from abuse, poverty, lack of educational and vocational skills are mothers, with a vast majority of them being the sole support and caregivers for their children. Second, the female correctional officer is sometimes viewed as infiltrating a male dominated field. They are questioned on whether they can defend themselves against attack from inmates, and earn respect from fellow male counterparts. Jeremy hodge i stood handcuffed in the prosecutor’s office in cairo’s dokki district, looking down at a three ring binder notebook that had been seized from my apartment and lay strewn across the table. Citizen, i had been arrested by the egyptian security services two days earlier, on jan.

22, along with my egyptian roommate, hossam meneai, a local filmmaker, on the suspicion that we were members of a foreign spy ring. Recently removed from its ziploc bag casing, my notebook, which consisted mostly of arabic language practice drills taken from instruction books, was now exhibit a in a case being brought against me. The prosecutor tasked with handling the case was fairly young considering his position, appearing to be only a few years older than i am. His office was adorned with paintings, small replicas of gold qurans and what appeared to be imported sub saharan african masks and sculptures. It was significantly nicer than the rest of the grimy, cockroach infested building in which it was located. The interrogation focused on selected writings from the notebook that the prosecutor found incriminating.

After having scoured its contents, he was able to identify several pages that contained content that could be considered vaguely political. He was particularly concerned with a half page mini essay i had written discussing egypt’s high unemployment rates and its effect on the country’s youth. Other writings that attracted his interest included a page that discussed the government’s recent crackdown on journalists, in addition to anything that mentioned the muslim brotherhood, israel and, at one point, even morocco. During breaks the prosecutor sent text messages to his friends and cracked off color jokes to his subordinates most all of whom were five to 10 years his senior his mood often swung from relatively jovial to plainly irrational. He explained to me that as a result of my writings, i was officially being charged with spreading false news that threatens egypt’s national security. It soon became clear, however, that his main concern was not so much whether what i had written was accurate, but rather how i, a foreigner, had come to learn about egypt’s internal political affairs, which, according to him, were secret. Which governments are you sending them to? if this had happened anywhere else, i would have chalked up such a ridiculous question as have many people with whom i have since spoken to a poorly constructed yet premeditated interrogation technique, a feeble attempt to inspire fear based on trumped up charges that the interrogator himself didn’t even believe to be true, as a means of eliciting information.