Geriatric Prison Release Case Study

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.

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). .

Lawmakers have the biggest opportunity to make a change in the prison problem in our country today. By ending jail time as a consequence for low- level offenses, establishing drug courts nationally, and changing policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and three- strike laws would greatly reduce the number of people who would enter prison in the future. Such an action would require effective parole programs, which are necessary for proper rehabilitation of prisoners. Some believe inmates who are still serving sentences for crimes they committed decades

Within the last four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has continued to increase exponentially. The Bureau of Justice reports that the inmate population in 1971 was estimated at two hundred thousand, while the current number stands at roughly 1.5 million – nearly eight times more than the number of inmates in 1971. Because of the high costs associated with prison operations, their overcrowding, and wrongful convictions, California introduced legislative measures such as Propositions 36 and 47 as well as Assembly Bills 109 and 117, in order to lessen the number of incarcerations. Not only will implementing these reforms save the state millions in revenue, they will also rightfully place truly dangerous criminals in

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.

In the state of Texas, crime is a major policy issue that is taken seriously by government on all levels including policymaking. The most critical components of the criminal justice policymaking are public opinion, federal court ruling, and the budget. Even though the state’s general public opinion is in support of a “lock’em up and throw away the key” philosophy, past federal court decisions and the state budget have enacted constrains on policymakers in order to prevent this philosophy from being imposed. These constrains are formed

We live in a time that is obscenely tough on crime compared to years past. It is considered the “tough on crime era”. Most of the prisoners we have locked up in jail are drug offenders. Most people agree that people locked up because of drugs make up too much of our correctional system. Judges need to be able to have more discretion when it comes to these charges, so they can sentence these men and women more fairly, depending on the circumstances. A lot of these men become incarcerated for much too long, some even longer than violent offenses, which is outrageous. Many try to think of solutions to these problems but it is not an easy answer. Build a bigger facility or reduce the jails population is the question Oklahoma is facing right now.

Despite the large amount of criminals in prison, the crimes: murder, rape, and others has only “accounted for 10.6 percent of the total Crime Index” (Access Integrity Unit). The vast majority of criminals locked up are held on drug addiction or petty theft charges and not more serious offenses such as murder or assault. To put it simply, the cells that were built with taxpayers’ dollars holds 89.4 percent of criminals that are of no real threat to society. While the jail cells continue to fill up with occupants that has no business being behind bars, the general public will not feel any safer until new laws are passed to insure lesser offenders can get the help they so desperately need.

California has one of the nation’s highest recidivism rates, which has been a well-known problem for many years. The rate has been steadily dropping. However it is still about 15% higher than the national average of 43.3% (McDonald, “California’s Recidivism Problem”). The recidivism problem in California is caused by rehabilitation programs not being effective enough to keep ex-convicts out of prison. Keeping prisoners in the California prison system is an enormous waste of taxpayer money. Instead of spending more and more on prisons, the money could be used elsewhere such as lowering college tuition for students. The government could easily save money for other purposes such as this by changing rehabilitation to make it more effective. In order to reduce spending on prisons and recidivism, prisons need to have better rehabilitation programs to make ex-convicts into productive members of society.

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration. It spends more resources on its prison system than any other nation and has the largest prison population in the world. Between 1980 and 2016, the number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons increased from 320,000 to more than 1.5 million. This corresponds to a change in the incarceration rate from 139 to 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Most lawmakers tend to believe that incarceration is a necessary construct needed to reform criminals to properly incorporate them into society. They insist imprisonment reduces crime rates through incapacitation and deterrence. Thus, it is not surprising that expenditures on corrections increased as states built new prisons,

The United States prison population has expanded at an increasingly rapid rate over that past several decades. Each day, more and more criminal offenders are sent to prisons; most of which were designed to house fewer inmates but are now packed to their limits. This “mass- incarceration era” as many scholars and commentators of the Criminal Justice System call it, is a result of several key issues that have created an environment within the correctional system that forces many inmates to serve longer prison sentences while increasing recidivism rates. Current federal and state sentencing policies have resulted in historically high rates of offender recidivism and the highest incarceration rates in the world (Warren, 2007). As a result, prison population and overcrowding has rapidly increased and has become a serious issue across the country however, a reform in sentencing policies, more early-release incentives, and reintegration back into society through rehabilitation will help reduce recidivism and prevent the continuing rise of prison populations. (change once paper is complete)

Because the California prison system is severely overcrowded, it is unable to deliver adequate resources and services to its inmates. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the system—operating at 145% of its designed capacity—violates the 8th Amendment and mandated that the state significantly reduce its prison population by 2016 (Divito). Many of the state’s GOP legislators called for expansion of the state’s correctional facilities, claiming that criminals would be a threat to communities if the state relaxed enforcement or released some prisoners early (Wildermuth). While there is merit in this argument, spending money to expand jail capacities without reducing the number of people who are incarcerated only conceals the fundamental problem, rather than correcting it. Instead, a more effective alternative is to invest resources in “mental health courts, drug treatment, mental health treatment, vocational rehabilitation, evidence-based programs [in order to] reduce the population in a more sustained way” (Siders). Recently, in Los Angeles, community stakeholders have come to agree that many of the city’s offenders do not necessarily need incarceration, but instead education and outreach programs. As a result, the local justice system has begun to promote a system of restorative justice.

Incarceration rates in the United States, and closer to home – in Ohio, have been rising at astonishing rates over the last 20 years. Rising incarceration rates stem from increased sentencing of non-violent crimes, little attention to rehabilitation within most prison walls, and extremely high recidivism rates. The problem of the increasing prison population touches many areas of our society – from reduced workforce to increased state funding for prisons to the adverse effects on children growing up in single-parent households – but has received little public or political attention. Looking at this issue from a social capital standpoint it is important to understand that “social capital keeps bad things from happening to good kids” and then applying this to communities with many families affected by having a member in the penal system (Putnam 296). The rate of recidivism is also increasingly high and an area that must be addressed to move forward in a productive way to ending this problem. When looking at data provided by Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the current penal population is almost 50,000 individuals (49,789 as of 11/13/2012) (DRC). The average cost of keeping a non-violent offender in prison is approximately $26,000 per year (CEPR). Calculations based on these estimates show that incarceration is costing Ohio approximately $1.3 billion each year. With such a financial burden on Ohio, it is time that this issue was taken seriously and actively

The decision to release an inmate early has been a much debated topic for quite some time. Lately, Washington, State’s criminal-justice system, or lack of it has received much criticism from the public because of the tragic death of four Lakewood police officers who lost their lives when an inmate was let out of jail early. Today the question remains whether inmates should be released early or not. Some people believe courts are demonstrating a lack of judicial restraint when rendering a decision to free a violent criminal early from custody. On the other hand, others believe the overcrowding in prisons has put a tremendous financial strain on state budgets. Everyone is at liberty to an opinion, but the truth is there are detrimental

The court system, the corrections system and law enforcement authorities have to work as partners to make this a reality. Time in jail is appropriate for violent offenders; however, less serious offenders who commit non-violent crimes are better served by community based corrections program such as parole and probation. Money needs to be redirected as an investment into public safety by allocating enough dollars for both the prison system and the community-based corrections system. Community-corrections is guided by the viewpoint that it is a partnership between social services and law enforcement (The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2009). The “1 in 31” report by The Pew Charitable Trust set up this framework for an effective corrections system in the 21st century: 1) sort offenders by risk to public safety, 2) base intervention programs on science, 3) harness technology, 4) impose swift and certain sanctions, 5) create incentives for success and, 6) measure progress. States that have implemented policies that reflect these guidelines include Arizona, Kansas, Hawaii, Florida and many