Prison Overcrowding And California 's Correctional System

Life in Incarceration did not define the end of a normal life within the state of California. In fact California's prison system brought a sense of purpose to those behind bars. In Doing Time in the Depressions second chapter, the process and key fundamentals of California's "Honor Camps", was system in which inmates were given salary towards the work they did as prisoners.Within the text it states "...California's road camps made a distinct contribution both to the solution of the prison-labor problem and to penology," (California, para. 1). Prisoners receiving paid labor for their work, and a decreased amount of physical punishment put a different light toward the Incarceration system. The camp created a positive impact within California, redefining the Prison Industry entirely.

The article focuses on the overcrowding in California prisons. In 2011 the U.S. Supreme found in the case of Brown vs. Plata that California prison system has preventable deaths occurring every five to six days. There has been a shortage in medical staff within the California prison system. This storage range from 20% doctors to 44% x-ray technicians. California prisons are built to house 80,000 people the prisons have twice as many inmates. California prisons have packed gymnasiums containing double and triple bunks. The article states this living condition is a make shift dormitory. When beating deaths occurs the staff has no idea for hours. Because California has allowed there prisons to maintain in these condition it has been found

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.

All aspects of the prison system have increased exponentially since the 1970s: “population size, budget, staffing, and number of facilities” (Owen & Mobley, 2012, p. 46). Not only does California have one of the highest incarceration rates nationally and internationally, it also has one of the highest rates of recidivism. Prior to 2011, two-thirds of those released were re-incarcerated within 3 years, most often for technical parole violations – not new convictions (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation [CDCR], 2013); the majority of rearrests in California occurred within one year (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). In Brown v. Plata, the Supreme Court ruled that California prisons violated the 8th Amendment on the grounds

UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies reports that the California Prison system "is the third largest penal system in the country, costing $5.7 billion dollars a year and housing over 161,000 inmates." (2012, p.1) The number of prisons in the State of California is reported to have "tripled…since 1980." (UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 2012, p.1) Reported are controversies relating to expansion of the prison system, climbing costs, and poor management in addition to abuse of inmates. (UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 2012, paraphrased)

campaign donations is estimated to be at least $45 million over the last decade” (p. 2).

Decades later a closely divided Supreme Court cited "serious constitutional violations" in California's overcrowded prisons and ordered the state to abide by aggressive plans to fix the problem (Doyle, 2011).

Incarceration is not meant to be fun. Prison overcrowding is becoming major issue all over the United State. Our prison and jail inmates are growing dramatically. More and more people are committing more crime, which cause them sometimes locked up. Each state has a different way of sentence offenders. The dictionary define overcrowding as beyond what is usual or comfortable, simple means you cannot have more than the amount of inmate in a cell than the state allows you to. A jail cell design for four inmates can’t have six inmates in there. California is one of the state that has been infected by prison overcrowding and need to come to a conclusion on how to fix and prevents it from happening. The number of inmates are increasing based on their

Over the past years, the prison population has increased dramatically. Can overcrowding in prison contribute to inmates not receiving the right treatment? Are inmates receiving the proper care while behind bars? Does locking away individuals who struggle with health and medical needs cause people to become even more unhealthy while they are incarcerated then released from prison. Unfortunately, it is clear that there are many health/ medical issues that affects inmates while they are incarcerated.

The County of St. Regis has a major problem of jail overcrowding that needs to be resolved soon. Sheriff Horace Farley believes another jail needs to be built in order to accommodate to the extra prisoners. Sheriff Farley and St. Regis County Board of Supervisors both want this temporary jail to be built in the City of Rollins. Rollins city officials, however, do not want a jail being built in the City Center because they had already planned for a downtown to be constructed at the same venue. Years later, the issue of overcrowding still remains so the County and the City of Rollins agreed to expand the women’s jail in order to house more of the female prisoners. The County also decided, without speaking to the officials of Rollins, to also

Per Derek Gilna’s report on Increase in Federal Prison Population, Overcrowding, prisons have become overpopulated throughout a five-year span from 2006 to 2011 (Gilna, page 48). Prison overcrowding has become a plague in the United States for some time now. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics shows more than two-million adults are incarcerated in US federal and state prisons. There are many reasons that prisons are becoming overpopulated but not such a certain cause. To fix the problem, attention must be brought towards the causes of this problem. Its happen to become a serious issue because it affects the prisoners, tax payers, prison staff and millions of others living in the U.S. as well. To put a stop to this continuous problem, action must take place to start prison reform and to structure our country to punish criminals in manner that is more reasonable than how we currently do it in today’s world.

So you may ask, how do we solve the problem of overcrowding to make it safer and more humane for everyone inside? In this decade, lengthy drug sentences help increase the federal prison population’s unsustainable growth so reducing the sentences of many nonviolent crimes especially drug related offenses could be the first step to solving overcrowding. Shorter sentences involves getting rid of the mandatory minimum sentences which are given from something called a “sentencing table” that is currently used throughout trials. Minimum sentences were first used in 1986 initially used to target high level distributors, but currently it has done more harm than good for low offenders. If congress allowed the federal judges more control over sentencing, they could choose what they thought was an appropriate punishment for given offenses. With this new potential reform, sentences could be given to

California found solutions to lower their prison populations. One solution was passing Assembly Bill 109 (Loftstrom, Raphael, 2016). Through Assembly Bill 109, sheriff’s and local probation departments were responsible for supervision of “low level offenders” (Loftstrom, Raphael, 2016). In comparison with Austin’s previously discussed reforms, California gave parole violators short stays in local jails, rather than sentence them to longer stays in prison. Secondly, low level offenders with “triple non-offenses” were also sentenced to local jail instead of prison (Loftstrom, Raphael, 2016). These reforms showed to decrease California’s prison population. By reducing the prison population’s, states would have more money to enhance diversion and rehabilitation

The California prisons have been crowded for decades. This cannot continue to go on. One of the reasons that the prisons are overcrowded is because of the types and lengths of sentences. Other reasons why the prisons are overcrowded is because many of the prisoners are there on non-violent crimes. Also many of the sentences are for smaller crimes. The one recent event that is dealing with this problem is release program that is letting out around 40,000 inmates over the next few years. This might be a good idea, yet we will not see the results for some time. This can possibly increase the crimes in our counties. There has to be other cures or

Two million people, a lot of people right? There are roughly about two million people incarcerated right now in the U.S. Yes, these people have earned their consequences for their actions, but are prisons taking advantage of their consequences, taking the punishments too far, or not caring about their necessary health and physical needs. Some may disagree and say that they deserve what is happening to them because of their actions, but there are also a lot of people that disagree with them. The prison environments in America need to change.