Punishme

nt or
Rehavilita
tion

Leonardo Rodrguez
2 A
 Punishment or Rehavilitation

The United States criminal justice system is locking up more criminals each
day causing overcrowding in prisons and a high recidivism rate. Recidivism
means the returning of an offender to corrections because of new
offenses. The criminal justice system focuses too much on punishing
offenders rather than rehabilitating them.

TOUGH ON CRIME

American has gotten tough on crime since the 1970's. Society believes criminals
should be punished harshly for their criminal actions. As a result prisons have been
overcrowded due to harsher sentencing of offenders. Government officials believe
that incapacitation and deterrence will prevent inmates from reoffending.
Incapacitation and deterrence are both punishment philosophies of the criminal
justice system. Incapacitation is denying an offender to commit crimes by
incarceration. This idea says "Lock 'em and throw away the key."

Deterrence has two types: General and Specific Deterrence. General Deterrence
prevents individuals from offending by a cost benefits approach. For example, no
one wants to come to a complete stop at the stop signs, but we do because of the
risk and fear of receiving a fine. Specific Deterrence is the punishment inflicted on
criminals to prevent them from reoffending. Incapacitation and Deterrence have
been heavily used in our criminal justice system as a result of tough on crime.
Deterrence and incapacitation are responsible for the high recidivism rate in
America.

PROBLEM
Tough on crime has led to criminalization effects of prisons. Criminologists have
determined that prisons create more crime. Criminals learn how to become
better criminals in prison. Prisoners have access to other criminals, better
criminal skills, and antisocial attitudes. Eventually, inmates get out of prison.
Inmates tend to be more dangerous when they get out of prison, than when
they came into prison. Deterrence is meant to prevent crime by the fear of
punishment. Prisoners become more accustomed to punishment as a result
prisoners no longer fear punishment. The criminal justice system lacks
rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is another punishment philosophy in which the goal
is to restore the offender to a constructive place in society through treatment
programs and educational training. Rehabilitation focuses on identifying and
treating the cause of the offender's criminal behavior. Rehabilitation will lower
the recidivism rate because offenders will be receive proper treatment or
education that will lower the chances of criminal behavior. The majority of
people in society believe that rehabilitation is not punishing offenders. These
people believe that inmates should suffer in prison and they should not pay for
inmates to receive educational and treatment.

The Kelly Thomas incident is an example of the criminal justice system lacking proper
rehabilitation. Kelly Thomas was homeless and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Kelly
Thomas was accused of breaking into cars and was killed by the police for resisting arrest. Kelly
Thomas actions was caused by his mental illness. Kelly Thomas was encounter by the police
multiple times with no attempt to help rehabilitate him.

WHY REHABILITATION WOULD BE BETTER

Rehabilitation Should be a main goal of the criminal justice system instead of
incapacitation and deterrence. Rehabilitation will close the revolving door of "low
level offenders." Rehabilitation will lower the arrest of drug abuse, domestic
violence, DUI's, and more with treatment programs that focus primarily on helping
individuals. As a result of this the prison population and crime right will decrease.
Less people reoffending will lead to lower prison population and crime rate. The
Annual cost to house an inmate in prison in about $40,000 a year. Rehabilitation
will save money from incarcerating individuals. With the money saved society can
create more rehabilitation programs to help more people. Rehabilitation will save
society money and from harm. Inmates will also benefit from rehabilitation
becoming law-abiding taxpayers in society. In the long run rehabilitation pays for
itself and more.

Rehabilitation Versus Punishment in the Adult

Justice System
Rehabilitation versus Punishment Table. Punishment within the Adult
Justice will be referred to as incarceration in order to keep the topic
spectrum narrow.

I believe that society does have at least some responsibility to fix the
broken person. The reason for this is the mentality of a lot of
American people, which is to pass the buck down. Well, if one is to
think about it, where does this passing of the buck stop? Its usually
prison and its usually too late. Some may say: Its not my
responsibility; I live in a good neighborhood; I am a law abiding citizen,
and so on. Crime affects everyone, no matter the level of involvement,
neighborhood you live in, or your ability to leave jaywalking to the
jaywalkers. One must not forget that this world of ours is unpredictable
at best, and that crime can happen even to the best of us. If society
chips in to help in rehabilitation programs and other alternatives to
prison we may see less crime on our streets, with safer
neighborhoods, more law abiding citizens, and a sense of
responsibility thats emitted by all, not just few.

Punishment is not the only thing offenders understand, but a lot of us,
regular people, dont see it this way. We may feel like warehousing
(incarceration without rehabilitation) is the only way. However, I think
that when a crime in consciously committed incarceration without
rehabilitation is a viable option. It is understandable to not fully
comprehend the mindset of a criminal, but criminals, like us, are
people, too. Their outbursts of crime may be heavily influenced by
psychological deficiencies, by inability to provide for themselves and
their families, or by pure choice. Some of the offenders should have
the ability to use resources like rehabilitation and early release
programs with monitoring/rehabilitation. Not many have the chance to
do so.

References

Lombardo D. L. & Levy R. N. (2005). Alternatives to Prisons: Prison

alternatives can cut costs and improve public safety. Farmington Hills,
MI: Greenhaven Press.
Smith, S. (2006). The Price of Punishment. Retrieved on June 26,
2007, from Recordnet Website:
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20060129/NEWS01/60129 0307/1001/ARCHIVE
No Author. (2007). Rehabilitation (penology). Retrieved on June 28,
2007, from Wikipedia Website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_%28penology%29
The world
speak one
language

Leonardo Rodrguez
2 A
A World That Speaks The Same Language

There are approximately 7.5 billion people on the third rock from the Sun.
Thats 7,500,000,000 individual names, 15,000,000,000 ears,
and 150,000,000,000 phalanges (give or take a couple hundredmillion?).
Earth has 148,326,000 kilometers squared of land above sea level and is
divvied up into 7 continents that house 196 different countries. These 196
countries, with their 7.5 billion citizens, utilize approximately 7,000
languages.

About 6% of these languages account for the native tongue of 94% of the
population 50% of the languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people
and 25% are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. Given the vast complexity
of human life spread around the globe, we are actually quite linguistically
united. But as we move forward into the 21st century, are we moving closer
towards linguistic solidarity? What would it mean if there was one language
that every human could understand?

According to the Bible, this has already happened. Long ago, post-Great
Flood, humanity was united under a single, common language. Apparently
this lead to a huge upshot in productivity, the result of which was to be so
magnificent that God himself intervened:

And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in
the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over
the face of the whole earth.
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men
had built.

And the Lord said, Indeed the people are one and they all have one language,
and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be
withheld from them.

Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not
understand one anothers speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and
they ceased building the city.

Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the
language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over
the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:49

Without getting caught up in Gods rationale, its clear that this story alludes
to the possibilities that open up when language is no longer a barrier to
communication: Modern man may not want to build a giant, flood-proof
tower, but a space elevator might not be out of the question. The idea of a
single language allows for the idea of united human collaboration. Without
it, not only is getting the work done harder, but so is deciding on the work
to do and how to do it.

Its predicted that by 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages
spoken on Earth may die out. Along with these languages will disappear
unique history, culture, perspective, and identity. There is certainly a price
to be paid for a more global society.

However, while these languages fade, the population will not. A recent
study estimated that by 2100 the world population could reach as high as
12.3 billion a 64% increase within the century. All of these people will need
a language to speak, whether its one that already exists or perhaps a new,
secondary tongue created for the future global citizen of Earth.

Lets break down what the world might look like if we all spoke one
language.
Economics
According to The Guardian, in one study by Professor James Foreman-Peck
of the UKs Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, poor language
skills cost the economy a 48 billion ($75.6B) a year, or 3.5% of GDP. The
inability to communicate globally is particularly damaging to small and
medium size exporters who are unable to afford the linguistic specialists
that larger firms employ.

A separate survey by the British Chambers of Commerce supports

Foreman-Pecks research, revealing that 62% of non-exporting companies
looking for international opportunities saw languages as a significant
barrier while 70% of exporters had no foreign-language ability in the
countries in which they operate.

Time wasted is another way to consider the economic cost of

miscommunication. For instance, in the United States, last years GDP
was 17.41 trillion dollars.

Going by the previous finding that poor language skills cost 3.5% of the GPD
on average, that means the US wasted approximately 600 billion dollars
worth of time in 2014 alone. Wow. That is a lot of money. In fact, its roughly
the same amount of money the US government spends on its military each
year: 16% of the national budget.

Language and Identity

One big question is how a common language would affect our diversity as a
species. Language is not only how we express ourselves, but it also affects
how we view the world.

Economist Keith Chen studied how differences in future tense affected how
the speaker thought about the future. He found that languages with a weak
future tense were more responsible about planning for the future they
spend less, smoke less, and work out more. An example of how future
tense can differ: in Mandarin you might say I go to the movies this
weekend, (weak future tense) whereas in English you would say I will go to
the movies this weekend (strong future tense).
As the Atlantic put it in an article about Chens paper, He wondered
whether languages with weak future tenses would be more thoughtful
about the future because they consider it, grammatically, equivalent to the
present.

eBay Deals created a really cool video summing up the paper:

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Of course, no one knows whether people think this way because of their
language, or if their language is that way simply because its reflecting how
people think. But regardless, Chens paper shows that language is deeply
intertwined with how people view the world, which brings up the question
if we all spoke the same language, would we sacrifice diversity of
thought? Would we all begin to see the world in the same way?

Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran once said, When I changed my

language, I annihilated my past. I changed my entire life. This New York
Times article digs into that idea, saying:

For a writers language, far from being a mere means of expression, is above all
a mode of subjective existence and a way of experiencing the world. She needs
the language not just to describe things, but to see them. The world reveals itself
in a certain manner to the Japanese writer, and in quite another to the one who
writes in Finnish. A writers language is not just something she uses, but a
constitutive part of what she is. This is why to abandon your native tongue and
to adopt another is to dismantle yourself, piece by piece, and then to put
yourself together again, in a different form.

The article goes on to say, To begin with, when changing languages you
descend to a zero-point of your existence. There must be even a moment,
however brief, when you cease to be. This is a bit dramatic, but theres
some truth in there. After we learn to talk, language becomes a major
aspect of who we are. Its how we relate to the world, and its how we were
able to leave the caves and build civilizations. Its a huge part of our
collective identity and our individual identity, and has a very powerful effect
on how we think.
When we learn a new language, we are leaving the comfort zone of our
native language. Recently, I was in Ecuador visiting family. My Spanish is
bad. Very bad. And when communicating with someone who has equally
bad English, I noticed that communicating in broken speech strips away a
part of who I am. I cannot joke, nor express complex thoughts. I do not
sound smart. I say things like, I go store now. My personality is largely
absent from the conversation.

Something we take for granted basic communication ends up causing

nervousness, embarrassment, and strips away the confidence that is a part
of who we are. When communicating in broken speech, Ive stripped away
everything that makes me, me. Communication is driven by a distinct
purpose and nothing more.

References

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