California Prison System Essay

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

One of the most recent significant changes to California corrections is the passing of Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109) by Governor Jerry Brown in April of 2011. The realignment is a program that was created as a result of overcrowding in state prisons, and it served to redirect non-violent offenders to county jails and put them under the supervision of county probation officers instead of sending them to state prisons. It “…shifted responsibility for people convicted of certain non-serious, nonviolent or non-sex felony offenses from state prisons and parole, to county jails and probation…” as an alternative (CalRealignment.ORG). AB 109 was primarily the result of a U.S. Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s ruling in Brown V. Plata. The court mandated California to reduce state prison overcrowding because the conditions in these prisons were so bad. The conditions were so terrible, especially when it came to certain

However, the mandated reductions, the prison inmate’s population would still be 137.5 % over its allowed capacity (Liptak 2014). In opposition, the State of California submitted an appeal for the federal order to the Supreme Court seeking protections under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (Newsman and Scott 2012). In 2011, the Supreme Court 5-4 decision upheld three-judge panel’s federal order requiring California state prisons to reduce its population by 30,000 inmates (Liptak 2014).The Supreme Court judges emphasized the notion that overcrowding inflicted pain on prisoners, and, therefore, violated inmate’s constitutional rights (Newsman and Scott 2012). After the Supreme Court’s decision, Jerry Brown advocated realignment in the state prisons that would transfer non-violent, non-serous, and non-sexual offenders to county jails (Ravi 2014). Likewise, to comply with the federal order Brown allocated 6 billion in state funds to be transferred to counties aiding the realignment reforms (Ravi

Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S

America has a major problem with overcrowding in its prisons, and action needs to be taken. Since 1970, the inmate population in the United States has increased over 700%, far greater than the general population as a whole. This has led to declining quality of life within the prison system including 8th Amendment violations and it represents a needless drain on state finances. There is simply no value in keeping non-violent convicts in the prison system, sometimes for years. The costs are high, and there is very little benefit to America. The justice system needs to be overhauled to relieve the massive crowding in US prisons.

In society today there are more criminals in the boundaries of the state prison system than there are in the federal prison system. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics (2009) the United States state prison system has 1,405,622 within their jurisdiction; whereas, the United States federal prison system has 208,118 within their jurisdiction. The reason that the federal prison system has only 208,118 within their jurisdiction is that this system only deals with “the body of law consisting

The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops

Today, more than 2 million Americans are incarcerated in either a state facility, federal correctional facility or a local installation (Batey,2002). Due to longer sentences, incorporating harsh sentencing guidelines, and mandatory minimum punishments (NeSmith,2015). With each inmate costing taxpayers an average of $30,000 annually. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 were increased sentences for a broad range of offenses, as well as establishing federal penalties for most murders and a large number of other crimes already subject to state law (Batey,2002). In addition to reducing the discretion of state judicial systems; as well as 85 percent of sentence satisfaction and establishing a mandatory life sentence for those convicted of three serious violent crimes or drug offenses (NeSmith,2015). .

The United States Supreme Court ruled that prison overcrowding in California was equivalent to cruel and unusual punishment. This decision recharged a long-standing disagreement among scholars and politicians as to whether or not courts should intervene to protect make changes. Some believe this is a matter or the well-being of those unable to make decisions for themselves. Others believe this is not a top priority and by forcing states to improve state institutions, the already costly industry will have cost increase. The journal also discusses the economic effects reform has had. Concluding that they have made positive changes at a slightly higher expense. The changes made by the state made the facilities closer to “humane” by court standards. (7)

Congress has steadily expanded the size and scope of the federal criminal code since the 1980’s. During this time, the federal prison population has explored and caused serious strains on federal finances and resources. Since the 1980’s, the federal government added approximately 2,000 new crimes to the criminal code. The federal imprisonment rate has grown by 500 percent and annual spending on the federal prison system increased almost 600 percent. During the 1980’s, the federal prison system cost around $970 million to operate, but today costs billions of dollars. Similarly, most states recorded drastic imprisonment and associated cost increases over the past 30 years. However, most states have reduced their prison rates through

Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.

The idea of sympathetic release of ill and elderly prisoners is not new. In 1994, Professor Russell published consideration of medical parole and compassionate release programs of district and fifty states of Columbia. Only three

The prison violence has brought about more conduct issue for prisoners, Rather than help with how society manages the issue of brutal detainees. Our nation's judicial system is overcrowded, costly, and inadequate and also wasteful. According to the statistical report 4,443 people were incarcerated in California state prison reducing to 3,878.yet, New York state prison population had 19,984 occupied beds in 2006; reducing the amount of inmates incarcerated in 2012/13 to 54,235 overall decreasing by

California has the largest prison population in the United States. Some of the questions asked about reducing the population are will this alter rates of incarceration, probation, supervision, and community programs. The state was giving a grant totaling $650.000 dollars from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the James Irvine Foundation, and the Public Welfare Foundation; this grant funded the Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC) to conduct the research. The SCJC was asked to effectively help California undertake and assess the realignment. This research this grant will provide will not only

Due to budget crises in states across the United States of America, state governments must cut funding to their punishment facilities causing overcrowding in prisons to increase every day. Overcrowded prisons pose a potential breeding ground for crime as hundreds of inmates are squeezed into small accommodations. Thousands of low-level offenders receive jail sentences each day, these criminals make up about a third of the inmates in the United States. In the words of Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of India, in the conservative National Review magazine, “We are imprisoning, in our most expensive spaces, more people for relatively minor, nonviolent offenses, like low-level property and drug violations. Some of our guests are not with the state corrections system long enough for any rehabilitation, substance-abuse counseling or job training to take place” (Katel). Evidently attention and change to this neglected criminal punishment system need to be addressed. This issue remains a troubling problem in our country, state governments offer the best possible solutions to prison overcrowding such as directing local officials to perform and improve prison construction, rethinking criminal law and responding to budgetary concerns.