Downsizing Of The American Penal System

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

In any given year now, incarceration rates has tripled with approximately 13 million people introduced to American jails in any given year. This increase in the prison population far outpaced the crime rate and the US population growth. Today, America has around 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

The criminal justice system focuses more on criminalization and incarceration than it does on rehabilitation. The United States of America wins the award for the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 2.3 million people in correctional facilities. America itself contains only about five percent of the world population, but accounts for twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners (American Civil Liberties Union). With a longstanding history of mass incarceration and

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). .

No matter how you look at it, the prison system within the US holds too many people without valid reason. The last decade has seen a lot of states cut down on crime while also cutting down on their prison populations. In the years between 1999 and 2012, for example, both New York and New Jersey cut their prison populations by 30%, and crime rates fell “faster than they did nationally.”

Incarceration rates have increased from 400,000 people in 1975 to 2.1 million in 2003; a fivefold increase, making the United States a leader in rates compared to other nations (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). These numbers bear a great burden on individuals, families, and communities in various ways. First, with 700,000 individuals being released from prison annually comes difficulty in reentering society both socially and economically; difficulty finding work, education, strained relationships, and social stigma (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). Second, the increasing rates of incarceration are disproportionately and unfairly impacting minorities, specifically African-Americans, and poor urban communities (Morenoff & Harding, 2014). A New York Times article by Furman and Holtz-Eakin (2016) states that $80 billion dollars--$600 per household--is spent on corrections annually, or a 1,700 percent increase in the federal prison budget in just thirty years. These increases have a deep historical background, many complex and interweaving factors, and require urgent reform.

In the past four decades, there has been a staggering increase in the United States prison population at the local and state level. Currently there are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails that has added up to a 500% increase over 40 years (The sentencing project). The cause of this prison growth is a variety of laws and punitive sentencing policies that were initiated starting in the early 1970’s. Policies such as harsh drug penalties for non-violent crimes, Mandatory Minimum Maximum sentences and the Three Strikes law have all contributed to America’s current problem of mass incarceration.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, surpassing countries like China, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Though the United States is home to roughly a small percent of the global population, it holds at least a quarter of prison inmates. And the decreasing rate of incarceration appears to be underwhelming in the circumstances of the last few decades. In his book, Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and The Future of Prisons in America, Jonathan Simon, who is a professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, explores the policies that led to the mass imprisonments rates through the stories of prison conditions in California. Simon examines California court decisions by using Brown vs

“Beginning in the 1970s, the prison population began swelling, climbing steadily through 2009. Now, this nation imprisons more of its residents, 2.2 million, than any other.The United States jails a quarter of the world 's prisoners, although it contains only 5 percent of the world 's population. The statistics are sobering for a republic that celebrates justice, fairness and equality as the granite pillars of its democracy. (Walsh, 2016).” The underlying foundations of America 's mass-imprisonment arrangements are tangled ever, legislative issues, social clash and imbalance. It 's a pretzel-rationale maze, and to fathom it or even disentangle it, investigators say, will require clearing, head-on changes. However, those early endeavors in the long run exploded backward, Hinton said, throwing “ "low-income youth — whose families are on welfare, who live in public housing projects, who attend urban public schools, and who have family members with arrest records — as potentially delinquent." ( Walsh, 2016). With regards to the criminal equity framework, examiners say that lessening imbalance essentially would require an update of the country 's sentencing framework, better preoccupation and avoidance programs, jail changes, more successful policing arrangements and preparing, and complete support for previous detainees attempting to shape stable lives. The prison system is unfair because of the mass incarceration of blacks, the war on drugs, the population and the prison

The United States Criminal Justice System has been what most citizens ask for a reform, but we’ve seen little to no change through the years. Currently, our country has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but almost 25 percent of the total prison population, meaning that we have the highest incarceration rates in the world and it’s been increasing through the past years. The United States of America in 1974 had 100 out of every 100,000 people incarcerated; today, roughly 700 out of the 100,000 people are prison (Madden, 2015, p,14). Mass incarceration has been one of the biggest problems in our Criminal Justice System and one of the biggest issues to be solved. American citizens have has several

Mass incarceration has grown and developed so much, that it’s come to define and create fear in America’s minority communities. “America contains approximately 5% of the world’s population, but has 25% of the world’s incarcerated.” (DeVernay, 2016) There’s always been an underlying tension between minorities and authorities, and that’s due to the unjust discrimination they face in the eyes of the law.

From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people.For decades, the United States had a relatively stable prison population. That changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some factors included a rise in crime from the 1960s to 1980s; 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. What's more, the movement toward broad, punitive crime control and prison policies wasn't based on any scientific rationale, says Haney, who studies

Name: Lecturer: Course: Date of Submission: Mass incarceration in American Prisons Introduction More than 2.3 million Americans today are prisoners, a population that represents more than a quarter of the number of prisoners in the world. This means that 760 Americans in one hundred thousand are prisoners in America (Detotto and Pulina). The rise in prisoners’ numbers has sharply risen since 1980 with the cost of maintaining the prison going to over four hundred percent within the same period.

In America’s tough economic society, over population has become an exceedingly hot topic issue. However, overcrowding in America’s prison system has been a severe problem since the 1970's. The majority of the changes have come from different policies on what demographic to imprison and for what reason. The perspective of locking up criminals because they are "evil" is what spawned this (Allen, 2008). Because of this perspective the prison system in America is in need of serious reorganization. Since 1980, most states have one or more of their prisons or the entire system under orders from the federal courts to maintain minimum constitutional standards (Stewart, 2006).