Overcrowding Issues In Prison

Overcrowded prison has been a serious problem facing our correctional facilities for decades (Haney, 2006). By not having the adequate space and support to satisfy the detainees’ needs for rehabilitation will result in prisoners leaving the system unprepared for civilian life, guaranteeing that former law-breaker will fall back into the prison system increasing the overcrowding problem. Secondly, by squeezing such a large number of the detainees into a space intended to just hold a specific amount of people stretches the possibilities of prisoners lashing out on prison guards causing riots resulting in unsafe conditions for both inmates and prison staff. As agreed by Governor of the state of California Edmund G Brown Jr, “In the last year,

Besides detainees being directly affected by overcrowded prison, it has an adverse effect on society, due to detainees being victim of recidivism. As agreed by United States Sentencing Commission (2016), “nearly half (49.3%) of such offenders were rearrested within eight years for either a new crime or for some other violation of the condition of their probation or release conditions”. The study additionally states that “almost one-third (31.7%) of the offenders were also reconvicted, and one-quarter (24.6%) of the offenders were reincarcerated over the same study period”. This to imply that society is surrounded by former law-breaker who never got a chance to change their sinful habits. Some of the victim of recidivism, according to United States Sentencing Commission

This is ensuing to prisoners being sent to prisons that are a long way from their homes, henceforth upsetting the visits, one example of unofficial actors. According to Rebekah Stratton (2004), in 2011, Governor Jerry Brown introduced a plan that helped California prisons, reduction the prison population, by relocating prisoners with non-violent charges to county jails and probation center. Official actors, The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision such fellow Governor of California, Jerry Brown policy in order to tackle this overcrowding problem, the current policy are not effective, cause each year, “a large number of people wind up in prison without being prosecuted for a long periods of time” (Aborn & Cannon, 2013). In the event that the person can 't afford the cost of bail, the person may invest months in detention while his or her case is pending. As agreed by Aborn & Cannon (2013), “10 to 40 percent of the entire incarcerated population is behind bars without a conviction in most countries in the Americas”. The study also stated that “20 percent of detainees, in the end, had their case dismissed or were