Incarceration And Prison Overpopulation

Prison Overcrowding Prison overcrowding is a current issue that the United States is trying to resolve since prison population has dramatically increased starting from the 1980s. Prison overcrowding is when the prison population exceeds the prison’s capacity which then can create many problems for the prisoners and the society. Some of the problems related to the overcrowding can be related to the inmate’s health, reentry, and control. Only felons with sentences longer than a year are the ones serving time in prisons. Some of the felons are being released earlier than their mandatory time because there is not sufficient space in prison for them to serve their time.

violent or nonviolent (1). It is hard to figure out who is a violent criminal due to the way they were charged under the justice system. There is no way of showing whether or not violence was used while they were dealing or drug using. These statistics prove that by focusing on other resolutions for non-violent crimes, the incarceration rates could be reduced. Along with rehabilitation for drug offenders, there is also a need for proper rehabilitation of mentally ill patients and prisoners to keep them from relapsing and ending up back in the system. Brooks states in his article that in the early 70s, a large majority of people were released from mental institutions. This caused an issue because a lot of these inmates released were not mentally

An Evaluation of the Restorative Justice Model In Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Karmen (2015) outlines the restorative justice model of confronting perpetrators of criminal acts. Restorative justice is an alternative to the more traditional legal system of retributive justice; this model strives to increase communication between victim and offender and moves the focus away from offender punishment or other state-centered actions (Karmen, 2015). The restorative justice model has several benefits, including a greater level of focus on crime victims and an emphasis on making peace after a criminal event, such that an offender may reintegrate into society at large (Karmen, 2015). Restorative justice also allows for crime victims

Overcrowding Prisons In 1980, almost 200 years after prisons were first used as a criminal sanction, there were only 316,000 sentenced prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction. In only thirty years, from 1980 to 2010, the number of prisoners increased by almost 500 percent, to more than 1.6 million inmates. (Seiter, 2014, p. 130) Most of our prisons are filled with offenders that have not actually committed violent crimes.

Some benefits reduce crime victims’ post-traumatic stress systems and it reduces crime victims’ desire for violent rage against their offenders. It also reduces repeat offending for some offenders although not all. Circle Justice has many benefits but It also has lots of weaknesses such as how its inability to prevent potential for uneven or discriminating outcomes for sentencing and restitution, it encourages perpetrators of crimes to restore the harm they created. In US Criminal

Overcrowding in prisons should not be considered cruel and unusual because they are not being harmfully affected enough for it to violate the legal standard of cruel and unusual punishment. It should not be considered cruel and unusual, because being in prison is a punishment and “Punishment is justice for the unjust.”-Saint Augustine

Restorative justice is a sentencing model that builds on restitution and community participation in an attempt to make a victim “whole again” (Schmalleger, 2010). Restorative justice can be explained as a form of punishment, which everyone involved or affected by a crime gets a feeling of peace after all if finalized. Both the victim and the offender have to agree to participate in restorative justice. There are needs that have to be met through restorative justice, which are the victim must be

Only 18.3% (337,882) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug” (p. 23). Therefore, the individuals who are likely to enter the already overcrowded prisons may be users and the actual not distributors themselves. Thus, prison space that is intended to be reserved for murders and sexual predators is instead being occupied by substance

There are over 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States. Research by the International Centre for Prison Studies has shown that incarceration percentages increased by more than 500% over the last 40 years. As statistics show increases in incarceration, prison overcrowding has become more of an ever-growing situation in the United States. Prison overcrowding occurs when the rate of people incarcerated exceeds the rate of prisoners released. There are over 17 states that the prison population is higher than the capacity of the facilities designed to hold them. A majority of those states are still recovering from a recession that minimalized budgets. The facilities have to decide to whether spend more taxpayer money to expand rooms,

First, offenders are to take responsibility and accountability for their actions and responds to the damage they’ve caused the victim(s). The offender must then act to ‘repair the damage’ this may include letters of apology, restitution, or community service. Next, victim-offender mediation programs involve the competency of the offender. This means the offender’s ability to function as a dynamic and fully capable citizen – this is related to inducing empathy in offenders, teaching them both communication and conflict resolution skills. Lastly, public safety includes having new relationships between the community, offender, and the victim.

As of September 26, 2015, there is a total of 93,821 inmates in prison for drug offenses, which is equivalent to 48.4 percent of the prison population. The use of illegal narcotics has been an issue within the country for decades; however, is incarceration the way to solve this problem? I think not. During the late 1960’s, poverty was a substantial issue within urban cities and secluded rural areas. On the other hand, recreational drug usage promoted by fashionable young, white Americans as a symbol of social upheaval and youthful rebellion coincided with the deprivation within many of these areas.

Lastly, mass incarceration is spillover from the war on drugs that we can see right in our own backyards. In a speech to the NAACP in July of 2015, President Obama insisted that “the real reason our prison population is so high” is that “over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before.” The War on Drugs has disproportionately harmed minorities, which creates a class of people that are unable to participate in the democratic republic: only causing more crime and making a full circle. Therefore, with all these externalities combined, if most resources are going toward fixing these problems, there are none left to allocate toward

The drug war in the United States has been waged on all civil fronts for over four decades. 1971 marked the beginning of the infamous “war on drugs” that was first signed into law by President Nixon, and then further escalated by president Ragen. The drug war has led to a massive increase in the country’s prison population. The United States currently has less than 5% of the world’s total population and nearly 25% of the world’s total prison population. That is a shocking number that is unnecessarily increased due to the drug war propaganda.

The drug war in the United States has been waged on all civil fronts for over four decades. 1971 marked the beginning of the infamous “war on drugs” that was first signed into law by President Nixon, and then further escalated by president Ragen. The drug war has led to a massive increase in the country’s prison population. The United States currently has less than 5% of the world’s total population and nearly 25% of the world’s total prison population. That is a shocking number that is unnecessarily increased due to the drug war propaganda.

4 Criticism and Challenges The first point of criticism against victim participation in restorative justice processes arises from scepticism about an apology to the victim as a way of dealing with criminal matters. The perception sometimes exists as to it simply being a way to get away with the crime.106 Members of the public should thus be educated to understand that restorative justice is more than a mere saying sorry, but in the context of victim offender mediation or family group conferences it rather affords the victim the opportunity to confront the child offender with the real and human cost of his or her criminal actions. Another concern deals with the possible secondary victimisation of the victim in the case where the offender pretends