The article “U.S
Prisons: Myth Vs. Mayhem” is about the truth about prison and how much money we
spend on each inmates and penal institutions. I’m amazed on how much money they
spend on each inmate because all that money shouldn’t go towards them it should
go to schools that are poorly funded. The government spends about $4 billion a
year just operating these penal institutions when education is far more
important than these criminals. All this money is going to waste because
inmates are killing each other everyday and it is recorded that 100 inmates are
killed each year. Prison should help all these criminals rehabilitate so they
wouldn’t come back, but instead it became an everyday war against inmates,
gangs, and guards. The best solution for dealing with gang members is not prison
because they’ll just learn more about gang life and other rival gang members
while they’re in prison. In my opinion the best solution for gang members is to
do something similar to what Father Greg is doing and helping them have another
chance at changing their life around. The most interesting thing I learned from
this article was that prison will only harden an inmates antisocial tendencies
and it will reinforce his motives to act on them. I just find it very confusing
that our government will spend around $4 billion on penal institutions and will
not spend that much money on our schools.
