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Prison Overcrowding And The United States

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Nelson Mandela once said, “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” The prisons in the United States have been overcrowded for many years and require a change in order to fix this. Some of the main causes for prison overcrowding that will be covered in this paper are mass incarceration, long sentencing, recidivism, and prisoners of drug crimes. Overcrowding of prisons in the United States is a major issue that affects not only the prisoners themselves, but taxpayers and politicians. Although there are many different solutions to prison overcrowding such as building more prisons, alternative and shorter sentences, etc., the issue is still prevalent. Some feel the best way to deal with overcrowding is to build more prisons to accommodate the large influx of prisoners. Others feel the best mode of action to solve this problem is through shorter, and alternative sentencing, which frees up space for serious offenders of the law. This paper argues that shorter, and alternative prison sentences are the most effective way to reduce the prison population in the United States. Prisons and their overcrowding is a controversial topic not to be taken lightly. There are an incredible number of people in American prisons today. For example, according to Peter Katel, there are more people in prison right now in the United States than any other country. The

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