30 Days Deviance

Today in class we watched the show 30 Days where Morgan Spurlock went to a local penitentiary for 30 days. I found this extremely interesting because I have always wondered what its really like to live in jail. After seeing this show I realized how terrible it is to be stripped of all your basic freedoms basically overnight. The fact that a fourth of all the prisoners in the world are from the U.S. and 1% of the U.S. adult population is in jail is extremely alarming to me. Its also shocking that 50% of the people in jail are there for drug related reasons. I think that our society needs to change these statistics by sending more people to rehabilitation centers or institutions to help them change their lives and learn from the mistakes that got them in trouble in the first place. Before the War on Drugs, drug abuse was seen as a problem that people needed to get help for. However, since then certain drugs and drug abuse in general has become deviant and seen as a crime rather than a health issue. Therefore, people involved with these deviant drugs are getting punished by serving jail time instead of having the chance to get help and turn their lives around like they should.