Prison Overcrowding Crisis

Richard Nixon was one of our most infamous presidents. He is now notoriously known for numerous scandals, one being the Watergate scandal, and consequentially his resignation. But during his time as president, he would influence one aspect of domestic affairs that would inevitably criminalize most minorities and is counterintuitive to its cause. Drugs. Nixon had persuaded the nation that drugs were our greatest enemy. He formally declared war on drugs in a press conference speech. The reason behind this declaration and the speech itself are important when evaluating Nixon’s performance as a public speaker because they show the strategies he used to sway his people into the anti-drugs mindset that is still held by many today.

As of 2015, 2.7% of adults in the United States were under correctional control, the lowest rate since 1994, however that is still roughly 6.7 million adults (Kaeble & Glaze, 2016). While the correctional population has declined, correctional facilities in the United States are still grossly overcrowded, with many facilities at or surpassing capacity. A report in 2010 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showed that on average, facilities were at 175% capacity (Brown, 2010). However, as of midnight on October 31st, 2017 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that their facilities, on average, were 132% occupied (Brown, 2017). Not only is prison overcrowding a burden on the facilities themselves, but also on the inmates. Prison overcrowding, that is, housing more inmates than the facility can humanely facilitate (Haney, 2006), places a strain on all resources throughout the correctional facility, including on the healthcare that’s offered, educational programs, and most dramatically on the physical space available to house inmates (Ekland-Olson, 1983).

On June 17th 1971, President Richard Nixon stood in front of congress and announced his widely criticized War on Drugs. The President claimed that drugs were the “Public Enemy Number One” among Americans. Fast-forward to 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. This act placed mandatory minimum sentences on minor drug infractions. The war on drugs not only incarcerated a very high number of Blacks, but also tore families apart in an effort to clean up neighborhoods which still affect many African American families almost a half-century later.

Have you ever been to prison before? Unfortunately it is not uncommon for many people in the United States to end up in prison at any given time in their life. Chances are, if you have not been to prison you know somebody that has been imprisoned, as America has the highest rate of incarceration in the whole world. Although America’s population only accounts for 5% of the world's population, we have the highest prison rate at 25% of the whole world’s incarcerated population (Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2015). Why do we continue to see these prisons overcrowded, and how exactly does this affect the inmates?

According to “The Apocalypse Now : The Lost War on Drugs”, the United States federal government began to become tough on “crime” especially drug offenses in the 1970’s under President Richard Nixon. Nixon stated that “drugs were public enemy #1” and that he was going to be tough on this crime. As a result, state level government began to create policies that were strict on drug offenses causing minimal sentencing for minor drug offenses. Instead of going after the root of the problem which was preventing drugs from entering the country, these laws targeting low income communities with predominantly black and Latino residents. In addition, these merciless laws were the cause of the significant amount of people, specifically men of color, in prison during the 1980’s “war on drugs” in the United States.

Prison overcrowding is a major problem in our criminal justice system and it continues to be a hotly debated topic as to how we should address the problem. One of the main reasons our prison systems have a problem with overcrowding is drugs. More specifically, the "war on drugs" started by President Reagan in 1982 brought a dramatic increase to the number of people put behind bars for drug offences. Mandatory minimum sentencing and truth in sentencing are two policies which have sent drug offenders to prison and kept them there for longer periods of time. The continuing crusade against drugs has apprehended hundreds of thousands of suspects who spend millions on drugs but the cost to incarcerate these non-violent offenders exceeds billions of dollars and much of that money is coming from the taxpayers ' pockets. One way to address this problem is to reverse the current trend of putting first time, non-violent drug offenders in prison and instead sentence these offenders to boot camp and counselling combined with family support.

In the year 1971, President Richard Nixon was convinced that America’s number one enemy was drug abuse. As a result, in that year he declared war on drugs, there was a punishment for not only supplying drugs but purchasing them as well. Nixon believed America would be a more effective and prosperous country if it were completely drug free. The war on drugs was really a convenient cover for the undeclared war on race. There were several consequences and negative effects for African Americans due to the “war”, more extensive drug regulations, over-policing, driving while black, drug sweeps, and finally no warrants when searching and seizing. More than half of the people in

More and more United States prisons are becoming too crowded to support the overwhelming flow of incoming criminals. There is a job that lawmakers have to do if they want to control the ever growing prison populations in the U.S. The problems of overcrowding United States prisons includes but is not limited to, inmate and guard safety, financial strains on taxpayers, and economic productivity. The solutions to these problems include increasing alternatives to incarcerations, risk assessments, eliminating ineffective sentencing laws for minor offenses, and creating more rehabilitation and treatment programs for minor offenses.

The United States is a country of inmates. With over 2.3 million Americans behind bars, it equates to almost one in every 100 Americans (Hunt, 2011). The United States makes up a little more than four percent of the world’s population. However, America has more inmates than the thirty five leading European countries combined. In 2013, the U.S. admitted 9,000 more sentenced prisoners than they released that year. (Carson, 2014). The U.S prison population has more than doubled over the last fifteen years, causing an extreme overpopulation and financial burden without any immediate solutions.

President Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs in 1971. At that time, America was leaving a tumultuous decade where young americans challenged the status quo, leading social movements that effected the very fabric of our country. Nixon, a strict conservative, was not a fan of these people disrupting the system and went after them. Tom LoBianco, reporter for CNN Politics, quotes former domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman who stated “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.” Unfortunately, this was not the first time drug laws were used to discriminate certain groups of people, especially minorities. Drug consumption has been around since humans discovered mind altering

Overcrowding prisons can be toxic not only for the inmates but also the corrections officers who are constantly working. There are better ways to protect our communities than mass incarceration. In the United States, incarceration defers punishment based on the severity and kind of the crime and. For example, allow drug offenders to serve a shorter sentence, release more elderly prisoners, give prisoners a full year off their sentences for participating in drug rehabilitation, and send more foreign inmates to their home countries. In the article Prison Overcrowding Threatens Public Safety and State Budgets, the author informs “From the collected data, the Initiative found that the incarceration system in this country “hold[s] more than 2.4 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails” (Williams 1). This was published in 2014,

Jails are facilities used to house inmates who have been arrested and being held pending a plea agreement, trail, or sentencing. Inmates who have been convicted of a misdemeanor criminal offense and are serving a sentence of 1 year or less are allowed to fulfill that sentence in a jail, oppose to those who have been convicted of a felony and were sentenced to 1 year or more for their conviction are housed in prisons. The Cook County Jail was established on January 15, 1831, by the Illinois state legislator. Furthermore, the courthouse and jail were not built until 1835.

Arising from President Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs”, this major increase in prison population is about 790 percent higher than it was in the 1980s, despite the fact that violent crime has been on the decline (Flatow). As President Nixon declared drugs the root cause of social instability, American citizens grew fearful of “crime”, although the term may be translated loosely, and

We know that crime never sleeps and where good exists, evil is not very far away. With the never-ending trend of crime and punishment, jails are constantly overcrowding. I have found there are differences between states and local jail facilities as well as the way they process detainees. I think it is safe to note there is no absolute solution to resolve the issue of overcrowded jails. As new laws are implemented with stiffer sentences, lesser sentences that have arranged for the offender to serve his or her time on the weekends can possibly create a potential risk for the safety and security of the detainees (Thompson & Mays, 1988).

Why are prison and jail so overcrowded? Could it be we need to establish a better program for rehabilitating the inmates? For many years now rehabilitation has been an issue within the Criminal Justice System. The debate of should these criminals be punished or should they be rehabilitated. What is the reason for our jails and prisons for becoming so full? Is it because we simply like to house criminals to keep them off the streets or do we truly not know how to rehabilitate them back in to society properly? Penitentiaries first used rehabilitation as a form of punishment with in their facilities, the inmates were required to read the bible and repent of there sins as a form of rehabilitated punishment. This form of rehabilitation did not work for long. They had to find different means of punishment. They were afraid that if they coupled rehabilitation with punishment the offenders would act worse and refuse to do anything for themselves. Most of us know that the word punishment means a penalty inflicted on an offender through judicial procedure; suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution. As well as rehabilitate is to restore to former state. So why should prisons or jails rehabilitate instead of being punitive? "Punishing offenders is something we take for granted. We expect that those who break the law will be punished by the criminal justice system, and we naturally link crime with punishment." (Banks xiii) If the jails and prison would concentrate on