Persuasive Speech Outline

With regard to solutions, considerable attention has been paid to the federal prison system. Between 1980 and 2013, the federal prison population increased by 790% from 24,640 to 219,298. Since peaking, the number of federal prisoners has lowered to 190,452 today. The decline is the result of criminal justice reform efforts in the past few years, such as former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s modification of the Department of Justice’s charging policies in 2010 and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s passage of Amendment 782 (“drugs minus two”) in 2014. In spite of their moderate success, such responses have failed to

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.

Mass Incarceration is a predicament in the U.S. because in the land of the free, there are more than two million people in prison. Prisons are homes to the majority of twenty-two percent of the U.S. population. The U.S. has a massive incarceration rate, seven hundred and sixteen per every one hundred thousand. The U.S. makes five percent of the world’s population and the third country in which most people live in but number one incarcerating humans.

Prison Overcrowding: Prisons have become warehouses of human beings as opposed to institutions meant to provide a means to engage in restitution by delinquent individuals in society. “One necessary condition for rising incarceration rates has been the massive expansion in prison construction and capacity, without which prison populations could not have grown so dramatically” (Guetzkow & Schoon, 2015). As more prisons are being built, more delinquents are being incarcerated in order to fill them. “Prison facilities are filled 38 percent beyond rated capacity, with overcrowding being particularly acute in higher-security institutions” (Rowland, 2013).

Fact: the United States accounts for five percent of the worlds’ population yet, it houses twenty-five percent of the worlds’ convicted criminals. (Liptak, 2008) The U.S. Department of Justice compiles the statistics of inmate population then releases those figures to the public. In reviewing the released numbers the break downs according to state, age, race and sex are able to be compared along with the overall number of citizens incarcerated. When state incarceration is combined with the federal incarceration 1,574,741 are behind bars in this country as of 2013. Inmate population breakdown by sex and race reveal even more statistics that cannot be ignored. There are roughly thirteen

Approximately 2,266,800 adults are currently imprisoned in America. In addition to those numbers, more than 4 million citizens are on probation which means they are being monitored by the Government (Blades, J., Norquist, G., 2014). The State of Texas, which sentenced 400 teens to life sentences shows an example of how serious mass incarceration is, and the current conditions in America’s prisons are unconstitutional stating that 70,000 prisoners are raped every year. According to national data from the US Department of Justice, over 7.2 million people are on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole. Furthermore, the US criminal justice system consumes $212 billion a year and employs 2.4 million people, more than Wal-Mart and McDonald 's combined, the nation 's two largest private employers” (Perkinson, 2010). According to the World Prison Brief in 2009, the United States had the highest incarceration rates, with 743 inmates per 100,000 people. In a 2003 report, Roy Walmsley noted that “more than three-fifths of countries (60.5%) have rates below 150 per

It is very costly to house inmates in prison every year. An article in Impaired Driver Update. Show that it cost $27,000 to hold one inmate for a year, and that approximately $50 billion a year is spent on incarceration. It cost 20 times more to have an inmate incarceration than to have them on probation. Of $50 billion dollars spent on correction, $6.8 billion is spent on probation. An article published in Federal Probation in 2013 states, “recidivism rates average between 43 and 67 percent and supervision violators constitute on third of the persons admitted to state correctional facilities,” and “on, average, persons under supervision have five prior arrest; 16 percent violated a federal, state, or local community supervision, and 8 percent have a history of absconding.” Sentencing offenders to alternative programs would help cut cost and also help decrease prison overcrowding.

jail population had grown to 2.23 million people, and the United States had by far the highest reported rate of incarceration in the world. Today, adult incarceration rates of the Western European democracies average around 100 per 100,000, and in the common law countries of Australia and Canada, the rates are only slightly higher. The U.S. rate in 2012 was seven times higher, at 707 per 100,000. At this level of penal confinement, the United States (accounting for about 5 percent of the world’s population) holds close to 25 percent of the global incarcerated

Prison is unfortunately big business in the United States and our society is paying the ultimate cost and there is only one system being rewarded. More than often we do not put much emphasis on the prison system in its entirety. It is a fairly simple concept to most Americans that if you commit a crime or if you’re one of the bad guys jail or prison is where you will reside and pay for the wrongdoing. The ultimate goal for this research is to engage the audience to reviewing the characteristics of mass incarceration and more importantly explaining the meaning. it’s pretty simple that is where the ‘bad guys’ go. The idea is to engage the readers into the different characteristics of mass incarceration and more importantly explain the meaning. There are infinite layers to the very problematic prison system in America. By exploring the different components of mass incarceration it will provide a better perspective of what is occurring in America’s seemingly never-ending prison cycle. The importance of understanding mass incarceration to reveal the positions Americans are indirectly affected by.

The purpose of this research is to determine why the correctional system in the United States incarcerates non-violent offenders or offenders in general at a higher rate than any other country? The way in which the United States correctional system sentences offenders is not fair due to prejudice and racism. The United States has this “get tough on crime policy” that is ineffective and is not benefitting anyone. According to Clear (1996), “the common view of the prison is simplistic because it fails to account for the unintended consequences of imprisonment,” (p. 57). Elective officials need to be aware of the issues that are facing our country due to this “get tough on crime” initiative.

In addition, politicians sometimes forget to mention to their people that incarcerating criminals is very expensive. In Florida alone it cost taxpayers over $20,000 to incarcerate someone for a year; it cost the United States over $32,000 dollars to incarcerate every inmate per year (CBS News, 2012). I believe that some people deserve to be incarcerated but I don’t believe even half of the people in prison needed to be there. The United States has about 5 percent of the world's population, but we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners - we incarcerate a greater percentage of our population than any country on Earth," said Michael Jacobson (CBS News, 2012). I think that prison is a temporary solve for our problem were as crime prevention and rehabilitation approaches are the real solution to the problems that society is facing.

“The U.S. spends about $80 billion each year on incarcerations... There are currently about 2.2 million Americans in prison, accounting for roughly 25 percent of all prisoners worldwide”(Wolfgang). This statistic is dangerously high. This statistic is good in a way, showing the world the US is good at catching criminals. On the contrast, it shows the world that the prison population in the US is arresting criminals for crimes that wouldn't be prosecuted in other parts of the world. The prison population is rivaling some countries on total complete population. An example being Jamacia, a self sustaining country with population of 2.4 million. Not far from the population of Americans in jail. The United States should

A big issue in prisons are overcrowding, it was previously stated that 12 million inmates that around the world that is in prison. Even after considering that that is the average of all prisons put together there is still a huge amount of people living in one prison.“ Jails now hold some 730,000 people in custody, more than triple their population in 1983”( Speiser). If the prisons population was triple the population size in 1983 and it is

In the year 2010, Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections performed a thorough survey on forty states’ prison system, which includes budget allocations, out-of-budget costs, and total taxpayer costs of maintaining prisoners. In this year, those forty states (ten states did not respond to the survey) spent a total of $33.5 billion dollars in costs related to the criminal justice system. Surprisingly, it cost taxpayers $39 billion to maintain this system, which translates to $5.5 billion in expenses that are not included in states’ Department of Corrections budget. According to this report, these forty states held a whopping 1.2 million inmates in correctional facilities during 2010, and the average cost of keeping them lock in was $31,286 per inmate, per year.