Duties to Prisoners

Return to Ethics

Follow this pattern to post research results and links to this page:

Try to group your posts under topics, maybe using subheadings or putting posts near other related topics.

Focus on the death penalty.
Ask what, if any, duties we have to prisoners? Are we obligated to provide resources beyond basic legal rights, food, safety, and shelter?
Address the social justice issue of mass incarceration.

*Ask what, if any, duties we have to prisoners? Are we obligated to provide resources beyond basic legal rights, food, safety, and shelter?

Reasons for crimes
Funding for rehabilitation projects
Benefits of society in the long run based on the treatment of prisoners
Studies on rehabilitation projects and statistics on re-entry after rehabilitation

Life after prison - Prisoners need to be set up for success in society if they are to be released back into the real world. They need to be treated with respect, given opportunities to work or educate themselves, given some sort of therapy,and be set up with a social worker to plan for the next steps in life. [1] (Kelsey K. Smith)

Stanford prison experiment - Something that seems shocking at first, like putting paper bags over a prisoner's face or seeing people in cages, turned into something normal over time. Role playing turns into real life situations. [2] (Kelsey K. Smith)

TedTalk from Zimbardo on evil - Everyone is capable of becoming evil. It has to do with the situation, and this usually includes some sort of power control. This can tie into what people think of prisoners, as separate from us "good people". When really, they are just like us but who have succumbed to the evil. Treatment in prisons should be set to a certain level and controlled by those who aren't accustomed to seeing it on a daily basis. [3] (Kelsey K. Smith)

Prisoner re-entry and programs used to help reduce this - The high volumes of prisoners in the United States is due to re-entry of prisoners with three years of release. Thousands of prisoners are released everyday and two-third of them will re-enter prison. [4] and [5] (Kelsey K. Smith)

Reasons for imprisonment - a good pie chart showing the different reasons for imprisonment and the relative numbers. [7] (Kelsey K. Smith)

Incarceration facts and re-entry - information on length of incarceration between states, cost of prisoners in different states, re-entry facts within five years of release, blacks vs whites incarceration rate for the same crime... [8] (Kelsey K. Smith)

Mass Incarceration in the US- This gives some basic but useful information on how many people are incarcerated in the US, gives some insight into what may or may not be ethical. It sheds light on life after prison and poses questions about how we can fix our prison system. [9] (Emilee Phillips)

Statistics on World Prison Populations - A brief look at how the United States prisoner population compares to other countries [10] (Allison Hammer)

Facts about the Death Penalty-Regarding race, trends, innocence, cost, deterrence, arbitrariness, and mental illness [11] (Justin Wiens)

Healthcare treatment in US prisons. This study offers some insight about the physical and mental health of prisoners incarcerated in the United States, and how many of them lack the treatment they need. Could help support an argument that the United States could be doing more to rehabilitate the inmates rather than simply lock them up. [12] Another article from NPR talks about how prisoners still often have to pay copays while in prison [13] (Luke Schumm)

Norway has very low incarceration and recidivism rates. These articles are opinion pieces about positives about their prison system, and one that thinks it's not applicable to the United States. [14] [15] the con side: [16] (Sarah Blazevic)

Current trends in US corrections. This article talks about the major trends seen in incarceration in the United States with statistics on women, juveniles, etc. [17] (Allison Hammer)

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