The Basic Breakdown Of The Correctional System

This paper discusses three critical issues in the criminal justice system. It touches on the general issues of punishment philosophies, sentence decision making, and prison overcrowding and focused more specifically on the negative effects of each. Highlighted in this informational paper is the interrelated nature of the issues; each issue affects and is affected by the others. Data and information has been gathered from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Amnesty International, the NAACP Legal Defense

In, “The Caging of America”, by Adam Gopnik explains the problems in the in the American criminal justice system focusing more on the prison system. Some of the struggles that Gopnik states in his article are mass incarceration, crime rate, and judges giving long inappropriate sentencings to those with minor crimes. He demonstrates that inmates are getting treated poorly than helping them learn from their actions. Using facts and statistics, Gopnik makes his audience realize that there is an urgent need of change in the American prison system. The main idea of Gopnik’s article is that the prison system needs to improve its sentencing laws because prisons are getting over crowed. Gopnik’s argument is valid because there is a problem in the sentencing laws that has caused a malfunction in the prison system as a whole.

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).

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.

The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops

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

Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.

Prison Overcrowding is one of America’s most critical issues in the Criminal Justice system. Just as the name states, the problem is insufficient jail space – for which the solution would be to build more facilities. What causes this problem? There are a lot of people in the world that believe putting all crime doers in jail is the best resolution. Let’s be honest here

American prisons are overcrowding due to the luxurious lifestyles of prisoners which causes a large amount of incarcerations. States need to find a way to decrease incarcerations and save money at the same time. Prison is meant to be a punishment for individuals who have committed crime, therefore inmates do not deserve luxurious amenities such as free food and free health care since other programs in communities are suffering budget cuts.

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)

Although, since the 70s there has been a different combination of driving forces that have led to the transformation of the country’s criminal justice system and have such altered the nature of imprisonment (Investigative Reports, 11). Despite there being good outcomes on the changes, the negative trends associated to them have been alarming and sparked reactions among researchers. Perhaps the most significant changes that have been experienced have resulted from the exceptional rise in cases of incarceration, population in the U.S prisons and prevalent overcrowding. When overcrowding and rapid expansion of the prison facilities are merged they affect the living conditions, management of the prisons, put at risk prisoner safety and reduce meaningful program accessibility. A good example is of Texas whereby between 1992 and 1997, the number of the prisoners doubled up as the region attained one of the biggest rates of incarceration in the country (Schabas, 276).

Prison Overcrowding has become a major issue in the United States. Many laws such as the three strikes law and also mandatory minimums have played a major part in prison overcrowding in the United States. The violence that is caused by prison

Many states are under a court order to reduce prison overcrowding. However, many states have yet to come up with an effective strategy to eliminate prison overcrowding. As a result, many authors have tried to come up with concepts and plans to deal with this problem but every author has a different idea and every idea has a different outcome. Some ideas are beneficial short term and some are beneficial long term but each has many disadvantages. I think the best way and most effective way to eliminate prison overcrowding is a combination of methods that each author presents. Obviously an issue so complex like prison overcrowding cannot be resolved by one solution. We have to take in consideration that ever prisoner is different, every prison/jail is different and every state has different policies on releasing prisoners back into the community. We have to solve prison overcrowding in steps. It all starts before imprisonment, during imprisonment and what to do after imprisonment. These steps however, are steps that stresses on specific areas. To help eliminate overcrowding of prison all starts with the “before imprisonment” step. This step wants to deter people from going to jail and what we can do to help that. This steps ensures that policies are fair, possibilities of imprisonment are reduced and if not that the sentencing is reasonable, improving the efficiency of the criminal justice system and have more of a Due process model rather that Crime control model. The second

Have you ever wondered why so many people spend majority of their lives in jail/prison? Why can’t they just change their ways? Surely it must be simple to not do whatever actions lead you to being processed into that facility to begin with. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as it sounds. Some people find themselves in an endless cycle. The criminal justice system is not designed to rehabilitate inmates.