In many countries, policy makers still argue to increase prison sentence duration in order to combact crime. This essay will provide a detailed analysis on its merits and demerits, and will justify why it is necessary to pass this law.
Criminal activities are always on the higher side in many developing countries. This results in an added pressure on its judicial system. While doing so sometimes it takes longer for justice to be served, thus reducing in the prison time. Keeping fellonies longer in their cell helps in minimising criminal activities on the ground. This also comes out as a statement for others to not do the same mistakes in future. Increased hours also helps in making the cell inmates a better person. For example, prisons in Switzerland conducts proper counselling sessions for criminals and help in their personality development. Their aim focuses more on finding a livelihood after their sentence years.
On the other hand the increased duration will also have some disadvantages. Firstly, people would be judged on the basis of their time served and would find difficult to adapt to new normal. Longer cell duration would lead to increase rate of harassments by senior cellmates in jails. Thus, leading to mental distress among ex-convicts. Additionally, these former prisoners would be too old to come out of this trauma and live a peaceful life. Most importantly, still the ratio of jails to convicts is very less. If we increase the duration of existing guilty people, we would end up keeping other criminals freely on the roads, resulting in higher criminal rates.
In conclusion, there are upsides and downsides of this decision. Considering the sincerity of this debate, it is important to make necessary ammendmants in the judicial system of the country followed by strict guidelines of penalties. Only then, we would be able to serve justice to the innocents and make criminals suffer for their actions.