Summary: The Growth Of Incarceration

The United States spends nearly $81 billion per year on corrections, but where is this money coming from, where is it going, and is it actually reducing crime rates? Crime rates in the United States have fallen since 1991 and murder rates have also fallen by half in last 25 years, however the prison population has increased by 500% in the last 40 years. Increase in the number of incarcerated citizens also lead to an increase in new prisons around the country and also the crippling of the american justice system. As the author of Wages of Rebellion describes, the prison-industrial-system as the most

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.

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.

The United States of America is phrased by many, as being “the land of the free.” Yet, the Unites States currently has the highest per capita prison population than any other country. The United States makes up only 5% of the world’s population and of that 5%, 25% of our overall nation’s population is currently incarcerated. A few factors that attribute to our high rates of incarceration include, sentencing laws: such as mandatory- minimum sentencing, lack of initial deterrence from crime, the war on drugs and the presence of recidivism. With our ever growing incarceration rates and the cost of housing individual offenders averaging $22,000 a criminal justice agenda. Recidivism refers to a person 's relapse into criminal behavior resulting in rearrests, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner 's release (National Institute of Justice.) Many programs have been implemented in our prison system to help reduce the recidivism rates. Programs such as educational/ vocational programming, reentry programs, substance abuse programs and subsidized employment are among many programs in which have been proven effective. Yet, due to costs deficits, the clock is ticking to find evidence based programs to invest in. So, the question currently being sought after is, which method is most effective in reducing recidivism rates?

No matter how you look at it, the prison system within the US holds too many people without valid reason. The last decade has seen a lot of states cut down on crime while also cutting down on their prison populations. In the years between 1999 and 2012, for example, both New York and New Jersey cut their prison populations by 30%, and crime rates fell “faster than they did nationally.”

From the article titled “The Punishment Imperative : The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America” by Todd Clear, and Natasha Frost, it goes into full detail on why the incarceration rate is failing. America incarcerates way more people that far exceeds the rate of our top allies. “With just under ten million people incarcerated in prisons and jails worldwide, America incarcerated more than one-fifth of the world’s total prison population.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 17) The United States now is in the lead in the world of incarceration, that beats countries like Russia, Rwanda, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Cuba, and the country has four times the rate of European nations. Maintaining the prisons came with a staggering price. In 2006, jurisdictions would spend around $68 billion on correctional supervision. They went from spending from $9 billion in 1982 to an 660 percent increase of $68 billion in 2006. Around the same time period, direct judicial expenditures has increased by 503 percent and the policing expenditures increased by 420 percent. The huge majority of the correctional dollars, with was around 90 percent, went to stabilize mass incarceration. “With a national average annual price tag of almost $29,000 per person per year of incarceration, it cost taxpayers at least ten times more to incarcerate a person than it would have cost to maintain him or her under supervision in the community.” (The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, Page 21) In general, this is an issue because the taxpayers are forced to pay a lot of money to maintain a person in prison. Locking up a serious violent offender is justified, however, for thousands of lower-level inmates, it costs taxpayers more than preventing

Prison reform must be implicated for the general public to feel safe once again. Society has trained us from a very young age to believe that that anyone who committed a crime belongs in jail despite “recent studies find no correlation between incarceration and low crime rates” (Machelor). There has actually been more studies that has suggest children who are raised in homes where the parents has spent most of their lives in jails are five times more likely to grow up to commit similar crimes of their parents. This is especially true in poverty stricken areas where children will resort to petty crimes like their parents. Government officials should consider crimes that correlate to economic and social disadvantages in society and “create

The United States of America has more people incarcerated than any other country on earth, a whopping 2,220,300 adults are currently locked behind bars. We have 500,000 more citizens locked up than China, a country 5 times our population run by an authoritarian government. From 1990 - 2000 the prison population increased by 1,000,000. The main reason for incarceration as a punishment in this country is rehabilitation, or so we have been told. In recent years an industry has developed that revolves around high incarceration rates and lengthy sentences, needless to say business is booming. The for-profit prison industry now makes millions off the backs of American inmates their families and every American taxpayer. The two largest

Once upon a time, Americans could proudly say that America was the land of freedom and opportunity. As the Pledge of Allegiance states, “One nation under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” However, under the current criminal justice system, more and more people lose their liberties because of the crimes they have committed. According to Roy Walmsley, a consultant of the United Nations and Associate of the International Center for prison studies, “In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represent about 4.4 percent of the world 's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world 's prisoners.” These people are not only prisoners, but they are also parents, sons, and daughters - the loved ones of families. The number of people that have been incarcerated also represents the number of families that have been shattered.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 3.2% of the population is either in jail, or under some form of correctional control (probation, parole, et cetera). Holding so many people behind bars isn’t cheap; it requires an annual budget of $80 million dollars. The high incarceration rates aren’t totally unjustified though; 54% of state prisoners are locked up for violent felonies. Even if all inmates who were in a United States prison for murder or rape were to be released, the United States would still have a higher incarceration rate than Germany.

Preview and Thesis: We, the United States of America are the world leaders in incarceration, but sadly, according to the webpage Federal Bureau of Prisons, under the section titled “Inmate offenses”, 46.2 percent are behind bars due to

High incarceration rates in the United States are astronomical. According to Williams (2014), there are more than twenty-four million people incarcerated between the state, federal, juvenile correctional facilities, jails, military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment center and prisons in the U.S. territories. The makes the United States to have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Texas prison system has grown faster than any other state and has been reported that one out of every twenty adults were in the corrections system under one form or another (Texas Tough, n.d.). The problem is that the crime rates do not account for the [prison] rates (Hartney, 2006). Thus, from the overcrowding, there are issues with

Today, the United States has more people incarcerated than ever before. More than 2 million people in the United States alone are in prison, three times the amount than before there were sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums (Bernick and Larkin). “The Federal Bureau of Prisons is overcrowded, operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity and housing a large population of non-violent drug offenders, at a significant cost to taxpayer” (Bernick and Larkin). Every year taxpayers are paying to keep inmates incarcerated. The average cost to keep one inmate in prison for a year is around $29,000. In state prisons alone, taxpayers spend over $50 billion dollars

The United States is known for being the greatest country in the world. Land of the free, home of the brave, and leader of the free world, but the United States is actually the world's leading jailer. Incarceration rates have been increasing exponentially in the United States, however the crime rate has been on a steady decline over the last quarter of a century. These increasing number of imprisonments has resulted in the United States leading the nations by highest percentage of incarcerations per capita. The high incarceration rate in the U.S. has negatively affected the economy. As stated by Christian Henrichson “ such as employee benefits, capital costs, in-prison education services, or hospital care for inmates”, it is costly not only for state governments to maintain the correctional facilities, but many are funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers are deluded by state and federal governments by convincing them that if prisons aren’t supported and unfunded, the safety of citizens is in jeopardy due to crime rates increasing and low incarceration rates.

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