We Are Spending Too Much On Prisons Essay -- Persuasive Argumentative

We Are Spending Too Much On Prisons    Would you believe that America has spent around five hundred billion dollars on prisons.(Butterfield) Why are the tax payers of America spending so much money on prisons and not other effective solutions to stopping crime? The American legislation is closed minded about reducing crime. They believe that prison is the one and only solution. Since crime keeps occurring, more and more prisons need to be built and kept running for the increasing numbers of inmates that are pouring into prisons. Prison may be part of the solution, but there are other alternatives to help criminals. If we were to incorporate facilities like drug rehabilitation and job training into the criminal justice system then crime would be greatly reduced. Prisoners would commit fewer crimes after the experience of these facilities, therefore reducing the cost of building and maintaining prisons. The end result will be that the American tax payer's dollars will be available to go to more productive things than prison s.    Prisons require an abundance of money to be run properly and effectively. By using taxes to pay for prisons the American public pays to support the lives of inmates and all of their needs. Prisoners require food, drink, beds, supplies for doing other activities and all of the overlooked things in normal life that go along with these necessities. Inmates have special needs like all of us do. Inmates reguire medical care, for example some have AIDS or other diseases that require medicine which cumulate large bills over time.(Luzadder) Imagine the money amassed over a life sentence of paying for medicine. The American public pays for all of these expenses added to the actual building of the prison f... ...imes which would inevitably send him back to prison. While making perfect sense this solution drastically changes the concept of prison. The effects of social programs integrated with prisons start with helping direct the taxpayers money to more prolific uses, and expand to making people in America smarter, more educated less dangerous people.    Works Cited Federal Bureau of Prisons : http://www.bop.gov/ Inciardi, Dr. James A., A Corrections-Based Continuum of Effective Drug Abuse Treatment. National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Avialable: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/contdrug.txt Butterfield, Fox. "Prison: Where the Money Is." N.Y. Times, June 1, 1996 Luzadder, Dan. "House gets Bill That Pours Funds Into Prisons, Colleges." Rocky Mountain News Capitol Bureau. Avialable: http://insidedenver.com/extra/legislature/0325budg0.html   

Edmund Emil Kemper III: A Case Study

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948, in Burbank, California to Clarnell and Ed Kemper Jr. He was the only son of the family. Edmund's childhood was anything but normal. While most other little boys were playing games pretending they were super heroes, Edmund was pretending he was in a gas chamber and his sister was throwing the switch. Once the switch was thrown he would wiggle around on the floor as if he were dying of asphyxiation. Edmund also enjoyed cutting the heads and hands off of his sisters' new dolls. He had trouble relating to his peers because he was afraid of them, afraid of any intimate contact between himself and another. During his childhood years, Edmund also found it amusing to torture the family cats. He buried the first cat up to its neck then kept the severed head as a trophy. His mother replaced the cat. With the new cat Edmund decided to continue his torturing spree by cutting it with a machete, exposing its brains and dissecting the body. These ants resulted in numerous pieces of trophies for him to keep. Until his mother discovered them in his closet. From this point on is when his mother truly began to express her opinions of him as having a â€Å"weirdo† personality. lf his home life was not weird enough, Edmund had a crush on his second grade teacher, Whom his sisters teased him about relentlessly. With this crush developed fantasies of killing his second grade teacher. Edmund's reply to his sister's teasing was, â€Å"If I kiss her, l'd have to kill her first. † On numerous occasions Edmund visited her house with his father's bayonet and his fantasies. With Edmund's home life already a rough one and the fantasies of killing already in his head, the news of his parents divorce did not sit well. His parents fought constantly leaving Edmund, now age 9, to bounce back and forth between them. After his mother became fed up with him she sent him to live with his father, Ed Jr. , and his stepmother. However, this did not last long before he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at the age of thirteen in rural North Folk, Ca. Edmund did not get along with his grandparents any better than he did with his mother or father. In fact, Edmund lasted with them until August 27, 1964, at age fourteen, when he shot his grandmother in the back of the head with a . 2 caliber rifle after an argument. He later stabbed her lifeless body numerous times with a kitchen knife, and then he shot his grandfather as he returned home. He called his mother and told her what had happened and waited patiently for her and the police to arrive. Once the police arrived and they questioned him about what had happened, Edmund's only response was, â€Å"I just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma. † Edmund later explained that grandpa was shot out of mercy, a way to spare him from the discovery of his wife. As a punishment for the murder of his grandparents, the courts sentenced Edmund to Atascadero State Hospital where he was placed in the criminally insane unit. Atascadero State Hospital is an all-male, maximum security, forensic facility serving the entire state of California. Upon entering the facility the psychiatrists there examined and tested Edmund's level of intelligence and came up with the findings that he had an IQ of about 145 and possessed the personality disordered titled personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type. While in ASH Edmund became such a model inmate that the doctors trained Edmund in how to administer the tests. Knowing how the tests worked allowed Edmund to learn ways in which to provide the doctors with appropriate responses that would pave the way for him to be later deemed no longer a danger to society. Once Edmund passed the tests, he was released back into the world under his mother's care. Now age twenty-one, Edmund returned to his mother's house and fell right back into the tormented ways. Edmund's mother blamed him for everything. She would repeatedly yell at him that it was his fault she had not been with a man for a number of years. With Edmund's new found way of life, he decided he would try to find work. His mother saw how intent he was on getting a job so she tried to have his juvenile records sealed. He first worked at a Green Giant canning plant as a laborer before he applied with the State Division of Highways in 1971; a job that would allow Edmund to hang out with law enforcement. He tried hard to get a job in law enforcement but was rejected due to his large size, of six foot nine inches, and weighing almost 300 pounds. But his new found friends supplied him with handcuffs, a training badge and gun. Part of Edmund's release agreement was to visit with a psychologist regularly. Edmund did this, however as he began to get close with the police officers, and attend his weekly sessions, he began training himself for his next kill. That is he would pick up hitchhikers and provide them with the necessary ride, putting on the â€Å"gentle giant† charade so as to provide a sense of genuine sincerity for those whom he picked up. This manipulation and control over the situation are primary talents of this psychopathic serial killer. Edmund's first kill did not happen until May of 1972, in which he picked up two college women, Mary Anne Pesce and Anita Luchessa, on a freeway ramp. Edmund knew the area so well that he was able to get the car turned around without the girls having any clue that their direction had changed. Edmund then drove to a remote area he learned about from his interaction with the highway department. Upon arriving to the area, Edmund handcuffed Pesce in the backseat and placed Luchessa in the trunk of the car. Edmund returned to Pesce and placed a plastic bag over head, and tied it on with the belt of a bathrobe. However, the belt broke and Pesce had managed to bite through the bag, so Edmund drew his knife and began stabbing her inthe back. These stabbings did not seem to have any effect on her because she was still wiggling around and fighting back. Then Edmund grabbed her by the chin, pulled back her head, and slit her throat. After killing Pesce, Edmund went back to the trunk and began stabbing Luchessa repeatedly in the throat, eyes, heart and forearms. Now that these women were dead, he took them back to his apartment where he dissected their bodies, took Polaroid pictures, and cut off their heads. I remember there was actually a sexual thrill. You hear that little â€Å"pop' and pull their heads off and hold their heads up by the hair. Whipping their heads off their body sitting there. That'd get me off† (Vronsky). Edmund took the remainder of the two women and put them into plastic bags, of which he buried in the Santa Cruz hills, their torsos and limbs in one area, their hands in another. All the while disguising the burial ground with techniques he had learned as a Boy Scout. With the excitement of the killing behind him, Edmund began to return to his normal routine of attending bars filled with law enforcement personnel. All the while he was attending these local gatherings; he was remaining one step ahead of all clues about the cases. In September 1972, Edmund struck again, only this time it was a fifteen year old girl, Aiko Koo, on her way to dance class in San Francisco. Edmund took her to a remote location where he strangled her into unconsciousness, raped her, and then placed her body in the trunk of his car. On his way home however, he stopped off for a beer. When he returned to his car he opened the trunk and, admiring my catch like a fisherman's looked in at the little girl. The next day Edmund buried the body in his typical fashion, but kept her head. With the head of Koo in the trunk of his car he drove to the psychiatrist's office for his regularly scheduled appointment. While at the appointment, the psychiatrist is quoted as saying, â€Å"If I were seeing this patient without any history available or without getting the history from him, I would think that we're dealing with a very well adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence and who was free of any psychiatric illness†¦ In effect, we are dealing with two different people when we talk of the 15 year old boy who committed the murder and of the 23 year old man we see before us now. . . it is my opinion that he has made a very excellent response to the years of treatment and rehabilitation. . . † (Vronsky). No one knows for sure what the psychiatrists would have said that day if they had known of the head in Edmund's trunk. After living on his own for a while, Edmund decided to move back home with his domineering mother. Since the last killing in September Edmund was doing well, that is until he picked up college student Cindy Schall. Edmund shot Schall in the head and brought her body back to his mother's house, and when she wasn't looking he carried her up to his room and put her in his closet. The next day while his mother was at work Edmund took the corpse to bed and had sex with it. After this he drained the body of blood in his mother's bathtub, cut the body into pieces, bagged them and threw them off of a cliff. He kept the head, this time repeatedly having sex with it. When he grew tired of the head Edmund buried it in the backyard facing up towards his mother's bedroom window. The local university at this time had gotten word of a string of unsolved murders and warned its students not to take rides from strangers. Lucky for Edmund his mother worked at the university and frequently needed him to pick her up, so he ended up with a decal for the university to allow for his easy access. His mother was well liked, respected, and known for her kindness at the university. Edmund used the decal on his car to pick up two more unsuspecting college women. He then took these women back to his mother's house where he decapitated one of them in the trunk of his car. Later that night while his mother was sleeping he carried the headless body up to his room. Edmund has been quoted as saying, in â€Å"†¦ the head is where everything is at, the brain, eyes, mouth. That's the person. I remember being told as a kid, you cut off the head and the body dies†¦. that's not quite true. With a girl, there is a lot left in the girl's body without the head. Of course, the personality is gone (Vronsky). Edmund went from the kill of the two college women until one fatal Easter weekend in 1973. On this weekend Edmund had finally conquered what had driven his hatred all these years, Edmund killed his mother. While his mother lay sleeping in her bed the night before Easter Sunday, Edmund went in with a claw hammer and smashed his mother's head in. Edmund then decided, what's good for my victims was good for my mother's He then proceeded to decapitate her, and raped her headless corpse. He then removed her larynx and tried to run it through the garbage disposal only to have it jam and spit the larynx back at him. Edmund later recalled to police as saying, â€Å"even when she was dead, she was still bitching at me. I couldn't get her to shut up. † This same evening Edmund called and invited his mother's best friend over for a â€Å"surprise† dinner party. Upon her arrival however, Edmund punched her, strangled her, and again cut off the head which he placed in his bed. He then slept in his mothers bed. The next day Edmund got in his car and began to drive aimlessly. He drove all the way from Santa Cruz, Ca. to Colorado. A11 the while listening to the radio hoping for some sort of news flash to come out of the killing he had just committed. But since no such thing happened, and he had grown tired of waiting, Edmund called the Santa Cruz police confessing to all of the crimes. They however, knowing Edmund as friend, did not believe him, forcing him to call several times before they took his word. Which then lead local authorities to his destination where he surrendered willingly. While awaiting trial, Edmund attempted twice to commit suicide by slashing his mists, and was soon transferred to a solitary cell. The trial itself was rather short – the evidence was there, and it showed clear premeditation. A1l of the psychiatrists asked, testified that Edmund was sane at the times he committed his crimes. Edmund was put into prison, where he calmed down and became a well-behaved inmate. At the trial he was asked what he thought would be an appropriate punishment for his actions, his response was â€Å"death by torture. † He was sentences to response was death by torturers He was sentenced to eight concurrent life-prison terms with possibility of parole. Edmund has been up for parole since 1980, but has been denied every time he's applied. Edmund Kemper is said to have been a egotistic lust killer. That is these people set out not with the interest to kill or hurt anyone, but with the intention of wearing your skin or eating your liver, or in the case of Edmund to have sex with your severed head and decapitated corpse. lts just that your life gets in the way of their fanta sy. In Edmund's instance he explained that the actual killing of each victim had little to do with his fantasies, he goes on to say, â€Å"but what I needed to have was a particular experience with person, and to possess them in the way I wanted to: I had to evict them from their human bodies. (Vronsky). When it comes to classifying Edmund as a psychopath, it can be done but in the broadest sense of a definition. A psychopath derives their tendencies from biological predispositions. Including, but not limited to faulty family enviro ends, aloof parents, and inconsistent rewards and punishments. In Edmund's life his parents w re never really there for him, they just shuffled him back and forth before finally sending him to live with extended family. The punishments were inconsistent because his mother locked him in his basement â€Å"bedroom† due to the fear felt by his sister even though he did nothing to provoke the fear. I believe more appropriately Edmund Kemper fits the definition of having a Homicidal Pattern Disorder. Which according to the future volume of the DSM will be defined as deliberate and purposeful murder or attempt at murder of strangers on more than one occasion; tension or affective arousal at some time before the arts; and pleasure, gratification, or relief in commission or reflection of the ants. In the end, I believe that all Edmund truly wanted was a woman's love. Something he wished for greatly, but was always an illusion, never attainable. It is clear what Edmund's purpose for killing these women was, the need to feel a close intimate connection with a member of the opposite sex, more specifically a connection between himself and his mother. Once this conquest was fulfilled, the intimate connection between him and his mother, Edmund willingly turned himself in because his mission was over.

The Planet World Will Be More Than 11 Billion People

Abstract By the end of this century, the planet world will be home to more than 11 billion people. Feeding all of them in a truly sustainable way remains undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of this generation. The population boom is sometimes feared as one of the major leading problems to the food security and malnutrition issue; this essay analysis shows that the reasons many suspects are not entirely true; it’s not the number, nor is it about enough land. The world has already what’s required to produce enough food, but doing it at an acceptable cost to the planet will depend on dramatic changes from how we eat, what we grow and how we do it. There is a need driven by the global political will to adopt and incorporate best ideas and strategies from successful existing and previous practices; green revolution, small-large agriculture, organic and local agriculture all combined with new innovations systems that focus on sustainable food production. 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Kachowism Is A Religion Based Off Of Lightning - 1333 Words

Kachowism is a religion based off of lightning. The religion is found wherever there is thunder forecasts all year round in villages, on mountaintops, but mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, especially in Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand. Contrary to where Kachowism is practiced, the religion originated from Italy. The story goes that a man named Giovanni was stuck in a freak thunderstorm in Central Italy. The storm lasted four days for five nights. Giovanni blunders about in the storm for these days, and before dawn on the fifth day a figure appeared to him. The figure was tall and broad, and wore a coat of pure white. He introduced himself as The Divine God. He spoke to Giovanni telling him that he shall be the founder of a new religion. One that would be the most pure and sacred on Earth. He asked Giovanni that in twelve day’s time he was to take a boat and head south at sunset, and he will guide them to the place they are meant to be. The next morning the storm ended. Giovanni went into the city of Venice to spread the good news. His followers were mostly poor and middle aged. but twelve days he set out south just as he was instructed. Then Giovanni and his followers spent twenty days and twenty nights fol lowing the thunder clouds that was sent by The Divine God. On the twenty-first day they landed in a cloudy tundra at dawn. As the days went by Giovanni had been getting visions on how to start his new religion. The rules and duties of the community were carved into a

Essay on Nazisms Effect on the German Society - 1680 Words

Nazisms Effect on the German Society When the Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor on 30th January 1933, he immediately starting using his position to make the changes that he had wanted to see implemented for over a decade. With Von Papen as Vice Chancellor and Gobbles and Goering as ministers, the Third Reich was able to bring massive political, social and economic change to the lives of German people. The Reichstag became a forum for Hitler to expound his views and policies with a total lack of criticism and under Article 48 of the German constitution, Hitler was allowed to rule by decree without the support of the Reichstag. Utilising this power, he saw to it that all other political†¦show more content†¦Membership was only open to pure Germans. Various methods of propaganda were used to mould the publics attitude to end class divisions and conflict. As part of the effort to achieve social conformity, everyone was expected to attend parades and speeches, which became a feature of new public rituals celebrating events in the Nazi calendar. A number of welfare measures were introduced to give people the opportunity to show the Volksgemeinschaft at work. The winter help scheme was organised, in which money was collected to help the unemployed. Even after full employment had been achieved by 1936 the system continued to encourage self-sacrifice. Women played a vital role in Adolf Hitlers plan to create an ideal German community. The attitude of Nazis toward women were summed up with the slogan Kinder, Kuche und Kirche (children, kitchen and church). Women at home producing healthy Aryan babies were a central image in Nazi ideology, as Hitler believed a larger, racially purer population would enhance Germanys military strength and provide settlers to colonise conquered territory in Eastern Europe. The Third Reichs policy encouraged racially pure women to bear as many Aryan children as possible. Nazi organisations for women, such as the National Socialist Womanhood entailed that women should stay at home and have babies. They used propaganda to encourage women

The Philosophy of Morality Free Essays

There is restriction on freedom everywhere. This is a derived idea from the argument of Immanuel Kant in his work, An Answer to the Question: â€Å"What is Enlightenment?† This restriction is the reason why humans behave as they are: they need a harmonious environment within themselves as a pursuit of individual community of well-being, freedom and safety. Humans are not ultimately free as they could be because their actions have consequences. We will write a custom essay sample on The Philosophy of Morality or any similar topic only for you Order Now We may call these consequences, according to Kant, â€Å"imperatives for actions†. The reason â€Å"why certain acts ought to be done is because they ought to be done† (Stratton-Lake, 2000). Generally, a rational human being would do an action consciously for practical reasons, which is considered as hypothetically imperative. It demands that a person does such action for the sake of a purpose that he has in mind. Why Man should not   break promises, why should not tell lies, why and should not commit suicide? This is because Man ought not do these acts.   According to Kant, the reason why Man should keep his promises because of his â€Å"obligation to be consistent and the injunction against using others (i.e., against treating them only as means)† (Nasr, 2008). This is a concrete example of Kant’s Ought priciple of ethics. â€Å"Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only†(Kant, 1785). A true ethical person would not use people to further his own end and he treats other   people with respect to a value of dignity and not a value of price because a person with a value of dignity cannot be replaced and their value is priceless. An object with a value of price, as what the hypothetically imperative person believes, can be exchanged and used as a means to achieve an end. To Kant,   this principle of humanity â€Å"is the supreme limiting condition on the freedom of action of each man,† and argues that the principle is not founded on experience but rather seated in the footholds of a priori reasoning, reasoning that comes before experience. Indeed, Man’s actions are limited and the â€Å" theoretical Ought of our judgments about facts, like the practical Ought of Ethics, is after all definable only in terms of what Kant called the Autonomy of Will† (Royce, 1901). In fact, not only Kant recognized the limitations of the freedom of human Will and the actions that their will impose upon them and why Man obeys. Another philosopher who made a discourse on this ethical issue is Jonathan Edwards. He noted that there are â€Å"ethics or the rules† (Tappan 1839), which are, in fact, not compelled to be obeyed by everyone but impose a strong power upon the conscience of the majority, especially those who believes in an Almighty being and those who do not want to feel the uneasiness of the evil and the persecuting nature of the Man. Disobedience to these manly imposed rules are considered as a â€Å"state of sinfulness† (Tappan 1839) or the corruption of human sensitivity disposed to violate the harmony and fitness of the spiritual constitution. This is another binding factor that makes man perform the hypothetically imperative actions. Does morality purely exist? Morality is something that is not strongly defined, yet it is considered as the ultimate commandment of reason and this is the guiding source for Man’s duties and obligations. Even Kant   argues   in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals that â€Å"it is only a pure philosophy that we can look for the moral law in its purity and genuineness.† Human beings have moral obligations to each other, and, as previously mentioned, because of reasons that they need and not because of their pure will to do such obligations. Man, to be good to each other without qualification would be a conceived as having a â€Å"good will† (Kant, 1785) and it must be understood, however, that humans do not have the autonomous will. They have the morally good will to attain the practical ends that they wish to have. Moral philosophies follow the â€Å"laws of human will† as affected by nature and when applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being. Moral laws require human judgment that has been sharpened through time and experience in order for them to be properly applied and for these laws to access the will of the man and â€Å"effectual influence on conduct†(Kant, 1785). The virtuous person does not only conform and obeys the moral law. He also act for the sake of the moral law itself. Man’s actions are morally right as determined by the virtue of their motives, derived not from Man’s inclinations but from Man’s duty. A virtuous person, who makes a morally right action, is determined to act in accordance with his duty and this duty overcomes that person’s self-interests and hidden desires. And for Kant, the Ought of Ethics is the defining factor for morality: â€Å" the sense in which the conduct of moral aget is to be judged as   good or evil according as it does or does not conform to the standard of the Ought† (Royce, 1901) As Kant have further argued in his philosophies, the ultimate moral law principle was abstractly conceived to guide man to the right action in life’s circumstances. However, if man is immature enough to acknowledge this guidance, enlightenment would never be achieved. Moreover, it is not only the lack of maturity that deter man and give him obstacles from being enlightened but also laziness, superstitious and dogmatic beliefs or fanaticism. â€Å"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remain immature for life† (Kant, 1784). Enlightenment would result to freedom, and, if man is still of prejudices and dogmatic beliefs, Man would be nothing but an unthinking and leashed controlled being. Dogmas â€Å"are the ball and chain of His permanent immaturity.† (Kant, 1784) If Man stays immature and an obedient being without reason, he would be an object without dignity, a mere machine. Works Cited Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed. Royce, Josiah. The World and the Individual: Gifford Lectures Delivered before the University of Aberdeen. 2d Series: Nature, Man, and the Moral Order. New York: Macmillan, 1901. Stratton-Lake, Philip. Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth. London: Routledge, 2000. Tappan, Henry Philip.   A Review of Edwards’s â€Å"Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will. New York: J.S Taylor, 1839. How to cite The Philosophy of Morality, Essay examples

Gill Disenchantment Response free essay sample

A Religious Abduction by Sam Gill discusses the Hopi Kachina initiation. Gill hopes to achieve a clear grasp of the initiation and possibly â€Å"suggest an alternative interpretation based on the point of view that the ritual does what is does which is to initiate the children into their religious lives by revealing to them the nature of the Kachinas. † (Gill 74) The initiation is for children near eight to ten years of age. The children, through this initiation, are allowed to enter the Kachina society or Powamu society. The celebration of the Powamu society is the first ceremony of the year where the Kachina appears and takes place once every few years. The important part of the ritual begins while the children are in the Kachina. The initiated are comforted by their mothers. The fathers enact the tale and return of the Kachina to the human world of the Hopi, as well as whip the initiated with â€Å"Tungwup Kachinas. We will write a custom essay sample on Gill Disenchantment Response or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page (Gill 75) These rites of passage are created to teach the children that the Kachinas no longer visit the villages, but are tales and impersonations of the fathers behind these Kachinas. Once the children have endured these rites of passage they may begin to help perform these initiations unto other children. One of the earliest authors that wrote a book on this topic referred to the whipping of the initiate’s as â€Å"a kind of payment for the secret knowledge the initiates gain in the rites. † (Gill 75) These whippings occurred on the sixth day of the nine day initiation. During which, the initiates are not allowed at any cost to see their fathers faces in the Kachina masks. The initiates are then forced not to eat salt or flesh for four days. After enduring the initiation which is the ninth night, the newly made members are allowed to see their families participating in the Bean Dance. The villagers and family members are witnessed by the new members of their participation. One of the spectators was shocked that none of the children responded with anything different than â€Å"passive acceptance.