Osnovne karakteristike američkog zatvorskog sistema
Basic Characteristics of American Prison System

Author(s): Zoran Stevanović, Biljana Simeunović-Patić
Subject(s): Criminal Law, Criminology, Penology
Published by: Institut za uporedno pravo
Keywords: American prison system; types of correction institutions; the structure of prison population; prison system’s organization
Summary/Abstract: American prison system is organizationally complex, with several jurisdictions and many penitentiary institutions. Divided jurisdiction between federal, state and local authorities from one side, and many kinds and types of prisons from another, make this prison system complicated and disunited. Thus there are inexplicable differences in conditions, standards and many other issues from state to state. American penologists look toward the future of state control of crime with much of anxiety. Enormous rise of a number of prisoners, an inefficacy of correction system and lack of really efficient corrective programs capable of correcting prisoners’ behavior strengthen a dark foreboding of the future in this field. The construction of prisons primarily for isolation of prisoners, not for ther behavior correction gets more and more frequent. At the end of 2006 there were 2.333.331 persons in prisons or jails in the USA or one-in-98 residents, presenting the biggest prison population rate in the world. From one year to another the number of prisoners rises by an average of 3.7 per cent. In recent years there has been noticed a tendency of increasing of number of prisoners in federal and state prisons while the numbers of prisoners in local prisons have been decreasing because of lack of resurces at the level of local community. As a reaction to permanent growth of prison population and more and more distinct danger to the safety of citizens, it has been developing the idea of super-maximum custody or ’supermax’. These prisons are described as “prisons of the future“ that should serve a purpose of harsher sentencing of those who are too violent, or for settling of those prisoners who must not be placed together with usual prison population.

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