Nonviolent Drug Offenders

Prisons today are pushed to their limits, both state, and federal prisons. Inmates are forced to live in unsanitary, unhealthy, unsafe, and poor conditions. Men and woman should not be made to sleep on floors, sleep in tents outside, or fight for a spot in a long line to shower. This issue needs to be addressed, and some states have proceeded to do so and have had great results.

In his chapter on “Assessing the Prison Experiment,” he explained that the increase of crime rate is not the sole reason that mass incarceration occurs, and it was also because the courts and the legislature did indeed became “tougher” on offenders (Currie 14). Currie discussed the circumstances of the war on drugs, which was launched by President Richard Nixon. He indicates that the incarceration rate and sentence longevity were increased dramatically since the beginning of the war on drugs. Some of these offenders were given a sentence for more than ten years without the possibility of parole, which is taking away any chance of the prisoner being released before the completion of his or her sentence. Locking people up is a failed attempt to descend the crime rate, and the adoption of mandatory minimum sentencing law is the root of mass incarceration. The government should reconsider the current sentencing laws and reform the correctional system in order to solve the current mass incarceration problem. Furthermore, establishing more community-based programs for youth offenders and initiating early release programs are excellent alternatives to resolve the issue of mass incarceration from both long-term and short-term perspectives, respectively.

Statistical elaboration has shown that decreasing the prison population does not affect the well being of the community. Diminishing overcrowding within our jails should be of great importance for state administrations. Our President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into effect in 2010. The method must be two-fold: first, understand how the Fair Sentencing Act works, and second, put a greater emphasis on the recommendations given in reducing the disparity in sentencing.

The issue is intermediate sanctions and community corrections within the correctional practices. The two classic forms of punishment/supervision for crimes in the United States are imprisonment and probation. Imprisonment is extremely expensive, often too harsh for both the offender and his/her family based on the crime committed, and tends to be far less effective than hoped in rehabilitating the offender. Probation is used far more frequently than imprisonment but is problematic because many repeat offenders have already unsuccessfully undergone prior probation and there is a lack of supervision due to the heavy caseloads of probation department caseworkers. Faced with the great expense, extreme nature and ineffectiveness of imprisonment vs. the ineffectiveness and lack of supervision in probation, lawmakers have struggled to fill the gap between those two classic law enforcement measures with

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 article, “THE REAL ANSWER TO MASS INCARCERATION”, Gilad Edelman analyzes President Obama's views on the increasingly high prison population in the United States, and what his plans are to help the mass incarceration issue our country faces.The author refers to the statistics given by Obama during his speech that demonstrated the high percentage of prisoners we have in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Gilad Edelman also addresses one of Obama's main focuses which is the impact nonviolent criminals have in our prison population, and how new policies need to be implemented in efforts of shortening sentences or releasing some prisoners. Another reference the author makes is to Leon Neyfakh with regard to the topic

Prominent among them is the reduction of the prison sentences for nonviolent and low-level drug crimes. However, this is not enough. “Even if we released everyone imprisoned for drugs tomorrow, the united states would still have 1.7 million people behind bars.” That massive statistic comes as a great shock to readers, as they only now realize the true urgency of the issue. The authors acknowledge that “half the people in state prisons are there for a violent crime.” However, “not all individuals convicted for a violent crime are alike.” They are convicted for different levels of violence: some are mass murderers or serial killers, while others are “battered spouses who struck back at their abusers.” Mauer and Cole also refer to studies that found that longer sentences are not better deterrents, as most serious offenses were committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The authors call for acknowledgement that excessively long sentences are merely a waste of money and totally

In the last few decades, there has been an increase in the number of individuals who have been incarcerated in both federal and state prisons. Indeed, research has shown that harsher sentencing policies and more punitive laws have resulted in the incarceration of more than 2.3 million people in the varied jails and prisons; thereby making the United States the leader as far as incarceration is concerned. Incarceration and sentencing systems have conventionally been aimed at having varying goals including rehabilitation, incapacitation, punishment and deterrence. Recent decades have seen the enactment of sentencing policy initiatives with the aim of enhancing the criminal justice systems deterrent effect.

For many years now, the criminal justice system has become stricter, causing more and more people to be arrested and sentenced to prison. As prisons become more occupied, the living conditions, health, and treatment of prisoners starts to deteriorate, which has become a trend over the last few decades. However, President Obama has noticed this prison environment and has taken a stand in saying that something needs to be done about it. Though many people would argue that prison reform is unnecessary because prisoners deserve to be treated poorly, there is sufficient evidence that shows that the current conditions end up doing more harm mentally and physically to the

The president is clearly ardent in his resolve to find a solution to this costly problem. While some benefits of prison reform, such as the reduction of taxes, can be easily expressed in numbers, others are less palpable. Barack Obama spoke of the crumbling up of families. “Around one million fathers are behind bars. One in nine African American kids has a parent in

In December 2013, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of eight federal inmates. Each had been convicted of nonviolent crack cocaine offenses, and six of whom were serving life sentences (Miles 2014). The surge in the prison population of the United States of America can be attributed to changes in sentencing and policies that created stricter laws and harsher punishments for offenders. For the last half-century, America’s attempts to get tough on crime and wage a war on drugs have landed the U.S. the highest spot on the worldwide charts in regards to prison population; only in recent years has the rate of incarceration changed course, tracking a slow, steady downward trail. Incarceration is supposed to be punishment as rehabilitation, yet it has become the primary response to crime. It is simply punishment, greatly lacking in any true form of rehabilitation

(Zhang, Y., Zhang, L., Vaughn, M. (2009). Determinate prison sentences or mandatory-minimum sentencing seems like it would discourage criminals from committing crimes because one would think that with harsher sentences would be likely to deter criminals from breaking the law. In the 1970s, indeterminate sentencing was used frequently, in most states judges and parole boards used wide discretion in sentencing offenders. (Zhang, Y., Zhang, L., Vaughn, M. (2009). As it stands, the number of prisoners in the US in 2017 is ten times as much when compared to pre -1971, while the overall population rates have increased only by a third. Half of these prisoners (51%) are jailed for non-violent offenses (World Prison Brief, 2015). The existing number of prisons is not enough to hold and adequately maintain its numerous populations. Many of them are

Currently there are over 1.5 million individuals in the United States that are behind bars. The highest population of incarcerated individuals in the world. Since the passing of the War on Drugs and Crime under President Nixon the rate at which individuals especially African Americans are incarcerated has dramatically increased. 1 in 3 African American males are expected to be incarcerated at sometime within their lifetime. With the War on Drugs and different acts such as mandatory minimums and three strike policies in place the rate at which people are incarcerated will continue increasing at alarming rates. This paper will further explore these issues and ways in which this issue can be solved.

Many people in jail are waiting for justice. Having to sit in a jail cell doing time for something you didn't do and having to wait for an appeal that's not going to happen can be rough. There's has to be a change in the sentencing reform. First of all , prison is getting overpopulated. According to source 1 " Imprisonment destroys employment prospects and family ties. This shows how sentencing reform can affect peoples lives because most american lives are Fathers and Mothers trying to support for their families are stuck in prison waiting for an appeal and to beat the trial to get back to supporting their families. Eventually, the more people you put in prison the badder it gets. In source 1 line 5-7" After 45,000 criminals were placed in

Convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning are just the first few steps of reducing crime. All the effort, time, and money that go into keeping criminals locked up and off the streets are really for nothing in the end if he or she commits the same crime again after release. James Haley, who is the book editor of “Prisons” points out, “Every year, close to six hundred thousand inmates are released from state and federal prisons around the country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, two-thirds of former convicts commit new crimes and one-half are re-incarcerated within three years of being released from prison” (138). Are US prisons truly effective when so many prisoners are committing new crimes upon release? It is for the better interests of American safety that some prisoners are locked up for life, but this should not include the constant return of re-offenders. The life of most convicts involves committing a crime and being sentenced to jail only to repeat the same process again. Many re-offenders see incarceration as a ticket to a place to sleep and food to eat.