How The Cuts Should Be Legal

The policy options that will be discussed are establishing efficient and beneficial rehabilitation systems in prisons, establishing educational systems in prisons, eliminating private prisons, and reducing mandatory sentencing laws. These are a few of the many ideas and solutions that the United States can take in order to reduce its high incarceration rate.

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.

To begin, the first step is to correct our lower offense laws and remove the jail sentencing on almost all of them. This will prevent overcrowding in jails, and in turn save each state money. Housed arrests, which would allow a cheaper solution to jail time, and community service time, which would allow the offender’s to aid their community/state. Then to solve the problem of several hundreds of people in jail over lower offenses, we begin a program to check the mental stability/instability of inmates, and assess to conclude if they are ready to rejoin society.

I personally do not think that any changes that have been made to reduce prison overcrowding are sufficient and more changes need to be made. First I would propose that the first step that is required in order to reduce the overcrowding of Americas prisons is to change the way the criminal justice system approaches the criminal offender. Instead of the focus being on retribution and making the criminal pay the focus needs to be on changing the perceptions, attitudes, and criminal behaviors through the offering of alternative sentencing practices and offering inmates comprehensive programs that will enable their successful reintegration into society. While victims need justice there also needs to be better response to criminal behavior other than the eye for an eye approach.

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

In 2011, California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed Assembly Bill (AB) 109 into law. The purpose of this historic legislation, was to enable California to finally close the revolving door policy for lower-level convicted felons coming in and out of the state’s 33 prisons. AB 109 was also the key piece of legislation for California’s solution to abide by a federal court order. The order mandated the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to reduce the amount of inmates in the state’s prisons system to 137.5 percent of capacity by 2013 (Caudill 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

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.”

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 order for this trend to be stopped, prisons should focus more on how to reform criminals so that they can go back to their communities and do good for the people and not bring harm to those around them. Prisons should work to reform prisoners because most of them can be rehabilitated.

Upon further research into the California budget cuts, Democratic state senators are pushing through an $811 million cut from the prisons’ healthcare budget. According to the article this cut is more than half of the medical budget. They also mentioned California could save another $182 million if the governor would commute the sentences of illegal immigrants and deport them (Goldmacher, 2010). Another positive turn in the state correction policy which focuses on California’s overcrowding issue is, beginning October 1st of this year, “counties will assume responsibility for “low-level” criminal offenders” (Graves,

First there should exist a non custodial alternative to pre-trial as to free up space in prison for people who are not yet convicted. This will free up valueble prison space as well as avoid mishaps to people awaiting trial. The existence of a pre-trial lock up policy means that many times trials will be delayed and takes away precious time and resource from both suspects and government (PenalReform). Second, some minor cases should be taken out of the criminal justice system altogether. This policy now exist in many countries, where the police not only arrest but try to help parties who are involved in the incident to come together to form a peaceful agreement so to avoid making arrest for minor issues. This is not only a compassionate way to address many problems, but help to build a society of trust and understanding, also helps to reform the image of law enforcement so that people do not view them with such hostility as most do now days. Lastly, began developing ways to prevent crimes instead of merely responding to crimes. Politicians needs to find ways to turn bad neighborhoods into good ones instead of just ignoring some streets. In order to truly deter crime and lower crime rates, the root of the problem must be found and solved. Crime rate will not truly drop until the source of the crime is gone. If people have access to good education, food, and opportunity,

Prison overcrowding has been seen as a small issue in the eyes of big news organization however the problem may be breaking through your door soon enough. Many citizens have pushed several proposals on how to solve this problem but the state and federal government have denied all of these responses and have instead either freed criminals or have kept them as they were. Those who try and tackle problems like these often give up due to the fact that even more time and money may be needed to solve their wasteful solutions. Incentive programs such as work release and community service have only blinded law abiding citizens from the truth, that the government will not due what is necessary to de-escalate overcrowding in 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)

I want to see crime decrease and taxpayers not suffer in the end. Understanding what factors lead to an increase in recidivism rates could be the grounds to develop programs to assist in a decrease. “Harnessing a greater understanding of the factors that affect recidivism could also help with the formulation and implementation of cost-effective intervention programs during incarceration and the period of probation” (Forkner, 2010). Decreasing jail overcrowding by abolishing harsh laws and creating cost effective programs to assist in the reduction of recidivism could save taxpayers a lot of