A Flawed System

The criminal justice system in the United States is like a bee trap. Once you get in, you can get out. It is a revolving door, but the exit is nearly impossible to squeeze through. The way we currently treat criminals does nothing to help them and make them become better citizens. We simply get them off the streets. But once they return, most of them go back to doing exactly what they were doing before they were locked up. Then they get arrested again, and repeat the entire process, with each reoccurence resulting in a harsher, yet just as unproductive sentence. We have been socially constructed to think that criminals, even convicted of minor crimes, are bad people and should be put in jail. This leads to the kind of bee trap system we have. As we saw in the movie, 30 days in jail, the two criminals we saw released were both arrested within two months of attaining their freedom. In part, this is due to the expectations they are put forth for them. I have seen the same in school. Some students that are expected to be trouble makers live up to these expectations. I think because of these expectations, it makes is more normal for these specific kids to do what they do. It is not out of the ordinary because it is expected. We must try to lift these expectations in general and try to fix these bee trap models that we are stuck in.