Prison Population Trend Analysis

Rising prison populations could be a problem in society because of how much money it costs to have prisoners. It also could be a problem in society because when people hear the mass amounts of numbers of prisoners and people being arrested people could become disgusted and worry about what the government is really doing to stop all these

Criminality in our country is often assigned to you at birth determined by trivial categories such as race, class, gender, immigration status, religion, and the list can continue forever. Life outcomes can be predetermined when taking all of these identities into account, making someone more susceptible to the reach of the mass incarceration system. However, I will be focusing on undocumented immigrants and how being seen as “illegal” is part of their daily lived experiences and how there are very strong parallels between the immigration detention centers and prisons in the United States. Undocumented people experience similar forms of social and political disenfranchisement that people affected by the criminal justice system also have to

The United States prison population has expanded at an increasingly rapid rate over that past several decades. Each day, more and more criminal offenders are sent to prisons; most of which were designed to house fewer inmates but are now packed to their limits. This “mass- incarceration era” as many scholars and commentators of the Criminal Justice System call it, is a result of several key issues that have created an environment within the correctional system that forces many inmates to serve longer prison sentences while increasing recidivism rates. Current federal and state sentencing policies have resulted in historically high rates of offender recidivism and the highest incarceration rates in the world (Warren, 2007). As a result, prison population and overcrowding has rapidly increased and has become a serious issue across the country however, a reform in sentencing policies, more early-release incentives, and reintegration back into society through rehabilitation will help reduce recidivism and prevent the continuing rise of prison populations. (change once paper is complete)

The United States prison population has grown tremendously from approximately 500,000 to 2.3 million people in just three decades. We (U.S) spend almost $70 billion annually to place adults in prison and jails, to confine youth in detention centers, and to supervise 7.3 million individuals on probation and parole. California has the largest prison population in the country, with more than 170,000 individuals behind bars. In Los Angeles, more than half of current parolees live in neighborhoods that are home to less than 20 percent of the city 's adult residents. More than a billion dollars are spent every year to incarcerate people from these communities. At the same time, as of spring 2010, the Los Angeles Unified School District was projecting a deficit of $640 million in the 2010-11 academic year. As a result, district officials were planning to raise class sizes and lay off thousands of teachers and other school-based staff.

In this paper we will discuss some descriptions of jail’s place in corrections and its role throughout history on most of these offenses come with a sentence of a year or less and anyone with over a year sentence is usually sent to a prison facility (Seiter, 2011). On the other hand, prisons have an ample amount of time to work with, rehabilitate, and reform offenders. Prisons do this with the hope that offenders can eventually be placed back into society and limit their recidivism back to crime. “The first jails were created in England and they were called goal” (Seiter, 2011,

Over the last decade the prison population in the United States has increased but the total admissions has decreased. In 2004, the national statistics for the prison population showed 1,497,100 persons to be incarcerated from Federal Institutions to State Institutions. Ten years later in 2014, the prison population increased to 1,562,525. This increase in population is not as dramatic when it comes to comparing 2004 and 2014. However, comparing 2014 to 1978 there is a tremendous increase in population, the total population in 1978 was 307, 276. From the war on drugs to the increase numbers of homicides, in 36 years we have incarcerated over one million additional people. In one year, the justice system admitted 631,

In “The Scale of Imprisonment in the United States: Twentieth Century Patterns and Twenty-First Century Prospects,” Zimring, the author, discusses the policies of prisons and the fluctuations of incarceration rates and crime rates and what they mean (pars. 1-57). On the policies of the prisons, Zimring asks a questions: Were there 51 different governments

In August 1994, the California Department of Corrections released its annual five-year facilities master plan for new prison construction. This plan, usually submitted to the Legislature earlier in the calendar year, was delayed so that the additional need for new prison beds resulting from the recently enacted Three Strikes and You're Out legislation could be incorporated into the plan. The facilities plan is based on the department's spring 1994 population estimate that estimated a total of 246,000 inmates by June 1999. This projection was recently revised to 211,000, 35,000 fewer inmates. There are several reasons for this reduction, as shown in Figure 1 and discussed below.

Some trends of the incarcerated in the United States include gender, race, age and marital status. ( Bohm & Haley, 2012.). There are more black males age 25-44 who are unmarried than any other statistic shown. To break it down further the race of the most incarcerated individuals in state prisons are black but in federal prisons are white. However, in federal or state prisons the most common prisoner is a male. Also in both state and federal prisons the median age for Smost criminals is between 25-44 and of those who have never been married. The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates with criminals serving the longest sentences in the nation. However, increases in the United States population contribute to high incarceration

In order to start and continue to accomplish the German and Norweigan approach to incarceration the U.S. must create new sentencing models in order to stop mass incarceration. The U.S. centers its system on incapacitation, removing the possibility for the individual to commit further crimes, and punitive sanctions to punish individuals. By 2012, the prison population grew by 705 percent, meaning just a little under 1.4 million inmates. This increase in inmates can be analyzed in the harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes, such as drug possession. Mandatory minimums are responsible for the increase, which is why in order for these methods to be effective, they must be gotten rid of and a new method for punishing certain crimes should be established.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative from Bureau of Justice Statistics ,a experiment recorded in the year of 2010 shows to us that the United States incarceration rates by race were approximately 380 white people ,966 latino people ,and 2,207 black people (Thomas).These numbers are not balanced at any rate.The US Bureau of Justice Statistics also did a test displaying that every male black child that is conceived in 2001 has a 32% chance of attending prison or juvenile detention center ,and compared to whites which is 6% that displays that blacks are five times more likely to go to jail than white males are (Quigley). Racism in the criminal justice system leads to internal problems within jails, external problems regarding criminal sentences and police, and mentally damaging toward the human being called out for the crime. Throughout all this information this led me to question; To what extent do races play a role in incarceration?

Another interviewee that also agreed with the bill said that the prison population in the United States is assumed the highest compared to other countries. Part of that is because of to the sentencing that are harsher for crimes considered small in other parts of the world. The passage of this bill will give law makers and parties involved in the justice system a chance to review and evaluate laws and sentencing for reasonability. Secondly, the law will influence that attitude of judges, prosecutors toward minorities. This is true because are often the victims of harsher sentences for similar crimes committed by Caucasian. As a result, minorities make up the majority of the prison population. Thirdly, prison has proven to be a failures. It

There are a few reasons why I believe that the inmate population is high. First, not only are we incarcerating serious offenders, we incarcerate offenders who have committed crimes that could have been handled with probation or other rehabilitative way. Second, those offenders that come from low income communities or the lower class, who cannot afford to pay their fines, court fees, or even bail, will end up spending time in jail until they pay their fines or have their day in court. Also, those offenders who receive a mandatory minimum sentence (Seiter, 2014) for a crime are sent to prison for years, when a judge could have given them probation or supervision. Lastly, there are not enough programs or businesses that help inmates reintegrate

Currently as a nation we use severity as our biggest form of deterrence; our threat of imprisonment has grown dramatically over time. In 1985 the average release time for a conviction of robbery was 32 months and in 2002 it jumped to a minimum of 53 months (Incarceration and Crime). We focus heavily on severity and longer incarceration rates; the idea is that a 10% increase in incarceration would lead to a 1.6%-5.5% decrease in crime (Lieka 2006) but this is not true. Prison rates have increased tenfold since 1970 and yet the crime rates have not dropped near those percents.The leading argument against increase in incarceration uses other states as examples of how ineffective it is; for example Florida heavily focuses on imprisonment to reduce crime with no effect (Incarceration and Crime). This idea would be great and a good mode of deterrence if those who go to prison actually learn their lessons and mend their future ways. Also if the unwanted effects of prison were at least tolerable this might deter crime but sadly even after experiment and evidence it is not a well functioning theory. The cost of funding our mass incarceration does balance out the decrease in overall crime. Besides when we have a nation who is majority hard on crimes compared to other crimes we end up severely punishing people who probably would respond better to rehabilitation than jail.

Megan Ferrell, I agree applied research can be used in finding ways to lower the recidivism rates for offenders released from prison. In fact, there has been applied research that found when spending more time in prison the recidivism rate is reduced (Mears, Cochran, Bales, & Bhati, 2016). Mears, Cochran, Bales, and Bhati when doing their research identify three sets of hypotheses about time served and recidivism relationship (Mears, Cochran, Bales, & Bhati, 2016). They examined data on 90,423 inmates that were released from Florida prisons and found a pattern of greater time served initially increases recidivism but after approximately one year, it decreases recidivism and after two years there were no effects shown (Mears, Cochran, Bales,