CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Do you think that prisoners should have to pay for their food, board, medical care, and other services? Why or why not?
Prisoners should not pay because when they pay for food, they will start complaining that they deserve better food and services. Besides, if they can afford to pay for food and other services, then their families will be forced to cheap in money which will be making these families strain so much, causing a lot of problems for the families.
When prisoners pay for medical services for even small amounts, it will not only deter the prisoners from making requests for their care (Bartollas and Siegel, 2018, 23). Also, it will stop them from accessing necessary checkups or treatment of infectious diseases that spread quickly in crowded places. A large percentage of prisoners are poor (Al-Rousan et al., 2017, 342). Their commissioner accounts provide medical care copayments. And these accounts are funded by the families and the earning from manual prison jobs. Prisoners do not have money at all. Typically they receive about 20 dollars a month. If their accounts are depleted for medical care, then automatically these people will lack money to buy necessities such as soap. Therefore they should not pay.
Prisons should be given full support even if some of their rights have been revoked for not abiding the rule of law. They should be freely cared for while in prison and given psychological alteration drugs. The behavior of inmates should be controlled because if they are not medicated, then they could behave negatively, posing threats to other prisoners and guards (Bartollas and Siegel, 2018, 15). Prison officials should understand that prisoners are rational human beings, and it is their responsibility to rehabilitate the prisoners to become useful members of society (Al-Rousan et al., 2017, 342). Exploiting the prisoners by putting them work for long hours in prison industries and paying them small wages is unacceptable. Inmates should be given the requirements to sustain them in prison.
References
Al-Rousan, T., Rubenstein, L., Sieleni, B., Deol, H., and Wallace, R.B., 2017. Inside the nation’s largest mental health institution: a prevalence study in a state prison system. BMC Public Health, 17(1), p.342.
Bartollas, C., and Siegel, L.J., 2018. Corrections Today. Cengage Learning.