The Overcrowding Of Prisons In America

In America, 2.3 million people are in prison. American has the highest prison population in the world. This is due to “tough on crime laws” that have been enforced since the 1960’s. Although these laws do help keep crime off the street, they have done more harm than good for our country. Mass incarceration is a major issues in America, it leads to poverty, broken families, money wasted, and many other problems. Although everyone can recognize mass incarceration is a problem, they are different ways people think it should be dealt with.

The documentary the “13th” had shocking statistics on how many people are incarcerated in the United States. The 1970’s was the beginning of the “mass incarceration era,” which started with 357,292 people incarcerated. From there, the prison population has continuously increased and reached a population of 2,306,200 in 2014. Many of these people incarcerated are African-Americans because the criminal justice system has always worked against them. African-Americans in the United States account for 6.5% of the population, meanwhile they account for 42% of the prison population.

Amidst the ever-occurring tragedies that now seem to be part of our daily routine lies an ongoing affliction that tends to go unnoticed. Although it has been increasing drastically in the last few decades, substance abuse continues to fly under the radar of the average American citizen. Yet, for many of us, it is an unavoidable sight. As citizens of Seattle, we need to find a way to reach out to those that need our help.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, outstripping Cuba, Rwanda, Thailand, Costa Rica and Ukraine. The United States is the world’s leader incarceration. There are currently five-thousand prison facility, which in habit over 2 million prisoner. There has been a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These numbers include, federal and state prison, and local jails. . For decades the United States had a pretty stable prison population, but that changed in the 1970's from the rising concerns over crack cocaine and other drugs, resulting in huge increases in drug penalties; a move to mandatory minimum sentences; and the implementation of other tough-on-crime policies, such as "three-strikes" laws and policies to ensure prisoners served at least 85 percent of their sentences. These harsher sentencing law coupled with dramatic increase and drug penalties in the fear of crime, of and wanting to keep these menace to society in prison forever. Added up to a state and federal prison population of 1.5 million, up from 200,000 in 1973. These are some of the factors that lead up to mass

The policy has created a large inequality gap in today’s western society, seen in wealth, race and the mass incarceration of the minority group such as the African-Americans, the Aboriginal and people that have mental health issues. This out-dated policy has allowed racial disadvantage to happen where the government shows little interest in dealing with this injustice due to making them look being soft on crime (3,54). This policy has kept the minorities poor, depress earnings by 30–40%, break up families, make men unattractive marriage partners, and increase social disorder (3,54). The result of this policy is creating mass incarceration where prison are overcrowded with minorities groups and as stated in my introductory assignment where resources are being stretched to the max, where things such as social programs in prison are being canceled to give the basic material for each prison.

One of the hardest challenges for the United States, in terms of the criminal justice system, is the overcrowding of prisons. In fact, the problem has become so big that the U.S. has more people in jail than any other country on earth – about 2.2 million people, to be exact. To deal with this growing issue, governments and correctional administrations began to invent creative alternatives and policies to handle the overcrowding and to reduce the cost. One of these alternatives has been the use of private prisons, where the individuals in charge of the ownership, operation, and responsibility shifts from the public sector (the government) to the private sector (a third party contracted by a government agency). In order to make profits, private

The war on drugs is increasing the population rate in our prison system, leaving the states to increase government spending and to decrease spending in other areas such as the educational system. But this mass incarceration cannot and will not change if we do not change the inequality of race. Punitive laws and mandatory minimums can no longer be a law of the future, we can no longer afford to keep offenders in prisons for long periods of times for non-violent charges. Better yet we need to take the money we are spending on these offenders and put it to better use such rehabilitation programs, school systems by keeping these children off the streets and by giving these minority communities more opportunity by offering more employment. These

In comparison to other countries around the world, America has the highest incarceration rate (Class Discussion). Yet still, crime remains at a constant state. Other countries, such as Germany and Norway, have low incarceration rates, low crimes rates, and prefer rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration (Class Discussion). The irony of America, is that for decades evidence has indicated a crime decrease, incarceration increase, and defects in the criminal justice systems effort to prevent reoffending. A benefiting factor of high incarceration rates is the increase of free labor from prisoners. However, for the type of punishments such as the death penalty, it is unclear what is the beneficial factor and government intentions. The death penalty program is a greater burden to incarceration. The death penalty program involves longterm imprisonment, prior to and following the imposition of a death row sentence, high cost to supply prison staff, court staff, lawyers, and the prison system. However, there is lack of benefit to society considering the evidence

Since the War on drugs began American has had a prison problem. The goal of this era and the tough on crime era that proceeded it the goal was to be tough on crime in order to stop it. This meant mass incarceration and hard time for offenses such as drug use (drug policy: facts). The 1990’s saw the biggest increase of the prison population with federal policies such as three strikes. Today these polices has made America the number incarcerated group in the planet despite having only 5% of the world’s population (ACLU: Prison Facts).

Prisons in the United States of America are housing inmates for profit Prisoners have become a commodity in order to profit from individuals labor instead of rehabilitation. The goal of the private corporations and federal prisons seems as if profit is the underlining aim of the prison industry. Keeping private prisons filled to capacity increases profits for invested parties and contributes to growing of the economy, but the growth of the economy should not be the determining factor of a person’s life and whether they are correctly rehabilitated. Just to reiterate there are three different ways that the privatized prison industry has become successful at the expense of our society’s men ages 18-24; Inmates and the economy with the prison industrial

In our country today, we account for roughly five percent of the world’s population, yet we hold over twenty-five percent of the globe’s inmate population. According to John Irwin, we currently imprison more people for lesser crimes than any other country in the world. In 1987 alone, our prison population rested steadily at just 500,000 incarcerated inmates in the U.S. Although in the past twenty-seven years, the American prison population has actually quadruped to almost 2.4 million (Pratt, 2009). With that being said, we as a nation hold the highest recidivism rates compared to any other country. Each year, state, federal and local penitentiary’s release more than 630,000 prison inmates back into the general

In this essay, we will discuss how prison have long been over crowned with non-violent offenders for decades. The cost of incarceration for non-violent offenders has cost this country nearly two billion dollars a year. In the United States the cost catalyst is estimated at 175 billion dollars spent in prisons on crimes committed by non-violent Offenders. We imprisons 1.3 million in state prison 767,600 in city and county jails, also 205,000 in federal jail (Katel. et al 2011). United States has the largest population of people incarcerated in the world, of non-violent offenders. Many Americans favor less prison for non-violent offenders. To reduce non-violent offender incarceration in our society there should be, community programs, job training and home follow-up program.

"Prisons are closed institutions. They are established and funded by governments to hold people against their will". This seems to be a known thought amongst society members based on personal beliefs. People often ask themselves if there is a need to reform prisons. The government, citizens, educators, and even prisoners are divided about the right answers. There is disagreement in society about how the purpose of the prison system should be considered. On one hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek deterrence, incapacitation, or retribution to avoid appearing too soft on inmates. On the other hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek to opportunities to re-socialize prisoners or to effect changes in the character, attitudes,

New data based on the Bureau of Justice Statistic states that number of inmates in America has exceeded 2 million. The current rate is if 702 persons per 100,000 population. Some of the issues are Federal Prison Growth, Federal Sentencing Policy and population Trends Affected by Large States like Texas and California. It is estimated that there has been a significant drop in size of their prison system. Texas and California have shift the parole policies this has help with overcrowding in their correction system. They have adopted an Emergency Release pattern and expanded drug treatment programs; this is due to the fact that drug offenders are one of the largest sources of growth in prisons.

The reasons for prison congestion are not restricted to the furthest reaches of criminal justice, but rather stretch out to different circles of state obligation.