Rising Prisoner Population In The United States

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

The U.S prison population rose by 700% from 1970 to 2005. A rate far outpacing that of general population growth and crime rates.

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).

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.

America has a major problem with overcrowding in its prisons, and action needs to be taken. Since 1970, the inmate population in the United States has increased over 700%, far greater than the general population as a whole. This has led to declining quality of life within the prison system including 8th Amendment violations and it represents a needless drain on state finances. There is simply no value in keeping non-violent convicts in the prison system, sometimes for years. The costs are high, and there is very little benefit to America. The justice system needs to be overhauled to relieve the massive crowding in US prisons.

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.

The United States currently has the highest number of prisoners in the world. According to Glaze and Herrmann (2013), approximately 6.9 million adults are under some form of correctional supervision in the United States. Crime in the United States is relatively equal to that of any other industrialized nation, so why does the United States house so many inmates irrespective of the fact that the nation cannot successfully manage a budget for the institution as well as manage the inmates? An inmate, Victor Hassine, provides insight as to what prisoners physically and mentally experience during incarceration as well as his ideas on the effects of prisons on inmates in his book, Life without Parole.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

According to [http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286] only two states allow felons to vote while in prison. This is quite alarming, especially considering that America’s nationwide prison population, since 1980, has increased by nearly 800 percent. This increase is due to harsher punishments for non-violent crimes, resulting in more than 1.57 million inmates being imprisoned in federal, state, and local prisons and jails at any given time. In addition, an estimated 12 million Americans cycle through the U.S judicial system for sentences less than one year in length, raising the estimated overall imprisonment rate, at any given date, to 2.4 million. These inmates, in addition to those barred from voting due to past felony convictions, make up approximately 2.5 percent of the nation’s voting population, according to a report by The Sentencing Project. [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/12/the-real-felony-denying-prisoners-the-right-to-vote.html] Prisoners that are currently serving time for their crimes should have the right to vote because it allows them to begin to make personal choices again and it is a basic right established by our nation’s founding fathers.

The United States is home to five percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoner. There must be a change to the current prison system which is doing more harm than good in American society and must be reformed. Reasons for this claim are that American prisons are too overcrowded with inmates, which creates a dangerous and unhuman environment. The cost to run a prison has gotten too expensive for tax payer pockets, and lastly the prison system is more as a punishment instead of rehabilitation with about sixteen percent of inmates most serious offence being drug charges. Prisons fall short of reforming criminals and the government is obligated to completely reform the prison systems in the United States.

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

These measures were taken to ensure public safety but are now posing a problem for our correctional facilities. Overcrowding and budgets are among the problems brought about by these measures. Both the state and federal correctional population throughout the United States have steadily seen significant increases in their population, every year for the past decades. Based on the census found on the Bureau of Justice website, the data collected between June 30th 2000 to December 30th 2005 showed that prisoners held in custody between federal and state prisons increased by 10%. (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”, p.1 -2)

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world to make the country a safer place to live in. For example, California’s “three strikes” this law is for repeat offenders and that they are mandatory to be sentenced after three times of committing crime, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that an arrest and prosecution are mandatory for all crimes major and minor (ALEC). Overcrowded prisons are a major problem that have been afflicting the United States for quite a few decades now. The cause for the overcrowding in the US prisons is uncertain, however there are a lot of conjecture based on researches that have been done and believes of comparison from the past to be causing the overcrowding. Overcrowding

In America’s tough economic society, over population has become an exceedingly hot topic issue. However, overcrowding in America’s prison system has been a severe problem since the 1970's. The majority of the changes have come from different policies on what demographic to imprison and for what reason. The perspective of locking up criminals because they are "evil" is what spawned this (Allen, 2008). Because of this perspective the prison system in America is in need of serious reorganization. Since 1980, most states have one or more of their prisons or the entire system under orders from the federal courts to maintain minimum constitutional standards (Stewart, 2006).

The USA has, currently, over 2.3 million people incarcerated in various kinds of prisons. We have the highest imprisonment population ratio in the world with 716 of 100,000 people in prison. This is hugely expensive too, considering just a level two prisoner costs an average $52.98. Prison overcrowding is growing at an alarming rate as well: it has become five times as large as it was 40 years ago. This issue is only going to get worse with time. A survey of 34 states reported an overall growth of 3%. While that may not seem like a lot, consider that the growth was concentrated in only a few of those surveyed. While some states may not feel the effects yet, it is only a matter of