Should The Offending Be Held In Jail Pre-Trial?

There is no question that mass incarceration is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be discussed and addressed. America has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population (Just Leadership USA, 2017) Various policies dated back centuries helped to create this problem of mass incarceration (Just Leadership USA, 2017). Today there are 2.3 million Americans incarcerated throughout the state, local, and federal jails (Just Leadership USA, 2017). New York City (NYC) houses approximately 10,000 inmates per year; 43.7% of these inmates are diagnosed with having a mental health disability (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). 54% of the inmates on Rikers Island are arrested for a minor offense and should be able to fight their cases from home; however, in many instances the family members are of low socio-economic status and unable to post bail (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). Minor offenses include loitering, jumping the turnstiles, unnecessary Parole / Probation violations, and trespassing. In many instances, it is the mentally ill and homeless individuals who are arrested for trespassing as they elect to sleep in the subways instead of taking residency in a shelter. Moreover, many of these offenses does not have to result in an arrest. Police officers have the autonym to let some of these individuals go with a warning, desk ticket, and/or summons.

In a fight to reduce overcrowding, improve public health and public safety, and reduce the costs of criminal justice and corrections, federal, state and local leaders are constantly looking for alternatives to incarceration. A number of strategies have been put in place to save public funds and improve public health by keeping low-risk, non-violent, possibly drug-involved offenders out of prison or jail while still holding them accountable and securing the safety of our comminutes. These programs have been put in place to help those who don’t necessarily need to be in jail, get their priorities straight while also holding them accountable for their actions. They have been put in place to help reduce incarceration rates, but also help those who may have mental health issues or substance abuse issues that have caused them to make bad decisions (Treatment Court Divisions).

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

Prison Overcrowding: Prisons have become warehouses of human beings as opposed to institutions meant to provide a means to engage in restitution by delinquent individuals in society. “One necessary condition for rising incarceration rates has been the massive expansion in prison construction and capacity, without which prison populations could not have grown so dramatically” (Guetzkow & Schoon, 2015). As more prisons are being built, more delinquents are being incarcerated in order to fill them. “Prison facilities are filled 38 percent beyond rated capacity, with overcrowding being particularly acute in higher-security institutions” (Rowland, 2013).

People in The United States have been affected by the prison system, it has saved many lives, but on the other hand, people have prosecuted for minor crimes, to end up spending a lot of time in jail, which breaks apart families for far too long, it also creates a big rift between the people of this fine nation and their distrust of the law. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan has issued a law that has cut funding for the mental institutions in the United states as called the deinstitutionalization of mental health, and to show ways of how we can bring our mental health system into place. Also in the same era laws have been put in place to put harsher laws on drug offenders called mandatory minimum sentencing, some people like non-violent, first-time drug offender are being treated the same way as a drug lord, and a way that we can fix that is push laws in congress to loosen minimum sentencing. Not to forget to mention the death penalty, how tax payers are wasting our money on keep prisoners on death row. Having a poor mental health system, strict mandatory minimum sentencing, racial bias in our prisons, and death penalty laws has led people to enter our prison system wrongfully. By fixing those rules we can help our society grow, and achieve greatness by doing right to our prison system.

Over the past forty years the increased of mass incarceration within the Federal Bureau of Prisons has increased more than 700 percent since the 1970’s, between the different type of ethnicity. Billions of dollars have spent to house offenders and to maintain their everyday life from rehabilitation programs, academic education, vocational training, substance abuse programs and medical care. The cost of incarceration climbs according to the level of security based on violent and non-violent crimes. Fewer staff is required in minimum and medium-security prisons that house low-level offenders. Incarceration is likely to serves as one indicator of other co-occurring risks and vulnerabilities that makes families particularly fragile. Mass incarceration is likely to increase if awareness is not implicated to reduce the rate of imprisonment and broken families to take back their communities and reclaim their hope for the future.

Despite the large amount of criminals in prison, the crimes: murder, rape, and others has only “accounted for 10.6 percent of the total Crime Index” (Access Integrity Unit). The vast majority of criminals locked up are held on drug addiction or petty theft charges and not more serious offenses such as murder or assault. To put it simply, the cells that were built with taxpayers’ dollars holds 89.4 percent of criminals that are of no real threat to society. While the jail cells continue to fill up with occupants that has no business being behind bars, the general public will not feel any safer until new laws are passed to insure lesser offenders can get the help they so desperately need.

in recent decades, violent crimes in the United States of America have been on a steady decline, however, the number of people in the United States under some form of correctional control is reaching towering heights and reaching record proportions. In the last thirty years, the incarceration rates in the United States has skyrocketed; the numbers roughly quadrupled from around five hundred thousand to more than 2 million people. (NAACP)In a speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton notes that, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.” (washington post) How could this be? Are Americans more prone to criminal activity than the rest of the world? How could they be more prone to criminal activity if crime rates have been dropping? Numbers like that should be cause for concern, because if crime rates are dropping then it is only logical for one to expect the number of incarceration to go down as well; unfortunately, the opposite is true. Shockingly, there seem to be a few people who actually profits from keeping people in jails. The practice of mass incarceration who most see as a major problem in the United States of America is actually beneficial to some. The prison system in the United States who was create to

Let’s pretend that you have been accused of a serious crime. You allegedly match the suspect description and have been picked up by your local police department. Your family and neighbors all watching you as you are being hauled off to your local jail. You are being detained in a cell awaiting to speak with someone that can help you. A public defender has been assigned to assist you because you only earn minimum wage and cannot afford to hire your own private counsel. The public defender informs you that the prosecutor has offered a plea bargain; plea guilty and get only 2 years in jail or go to trial and possibly face 15+ years if found guilty. You know you are innocent, but the thought of being incarcerated for that much time begins that weigh in on you. Your public defender, who is supposed to be there to help you, recommends you take the plea. “It’ll only be two years”, he says “more than likely less with good behavior”. You don’t even know what evidence the prosecutor has against you, if any. You are given a week to accept or reject the offer, while being detained in a cell because you couldn’t make your monetary

The most essential features of our criminal justice system is bail, preventive detention, and plea bargaining. These three features are necessary for our criminal justice system to work the way it does. One of the most beneficial way, two of these systems benefit the criminal justice system, is by lessening the burden on prisons and jails, which are already over capacity. In some ways bail, preventive detention, and plea bargaining are seen as controversial and counterproductive to our criminal justice system, but are required to maintain an equality between safety, fairness and justice.

The issue with American’s jail problem is one that most people overlook today. In order for there to be a solution, people must realize the issue at hand. The best way would be to create better alternatives to jail time. Jail should be reserved for those who commit more violent and serious crimes. In order to be more productive and also contribute more to the environment, more community service hours and less jail time should be offered to those with less serious offenses

The Department of Justice breaks crime reductions down into three basic principles: punishment, corrections, and deterrents. Citizens in the United States tend to think of prison inmates as being segregated from society. There are walls with barb wire, and guards in towers with firearms in between inmates and civilization. Millions of prisoners are released each year, so today 's prisoners could be tomorrow 's neighbors so wouldn’t you agree that corrections should be the focus of the America 's prison system. Unfortunately, rehabilitation or corrections are not the focus and the United States focuses primarily on punishment.

There are many prison inmates who come from broken homes and have mental problems that went undiagnosed and untreated. The problem is that prison’s do not try to teach prisoners how to learn from their mistakes and better themselves. (McGovern, Celeste. 42) What actually happens is that criminals tend to be better criminals, and have the ability to “one up” the police. Our politicians need to stress how important vocational, educational, drug-treatment, and work programs are, in order to improve the attitude and demeanor of these convicted felons. This is the only way to keep ex-con's from becoming repeat offenders. (DeLuca, H.R. 38) Ex-convicts who find a job and a place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In Norway, prisoners can start their new jobs 18 months before they get out of prison. In America, there are 27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs such as barber and roofer.

There have been varied considerations during the incarceration of suspected offenders over the past decennary with respect to duration of imprisonment, severity of punishment, and the regularity or rate of recurrence of imprisonment. Furthermore, critics of incarceration have also been debating about the motives for incarceration, its usefulness, and ability to transform criminals. Fierce debates have also risen about fairness during incarceration

Within the United States Criminal Justice System, it is not only goal to simply punish those who break the law, but to also reduce the level of criminal activity. In order to fulfill this important aspect of the Criminal Justice System, offenders must be rehabilitated and motivated to refrain from engaging in further criminal activity so that they do not return to prison. Since the early 1990’s, our country’s crime rate has been declining. Studies such as the Pew Safety Performance Project point out that this is an important goal for correctional systems to keep in mind, but it is not the only one. Pew Safety believes that ensuring the taxpayer dollars are spent effectively is also an important aspect of the correctional system.