The Caging Of America By Adam Gopnik

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

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).

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

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.

Mass incarceration has been an issue in the United States since the start of the War on Drugs, because of the political agenda attached to the “tough on crime” regimen thousands of people have suffered as a consequence. The solution to this is one that can only be possibly solved by approaching through several angles. The ten steps presented by Michael Tonry, are an innovative and have merit to some extent. However, mass incarceration results from more than unjust sentencing laws, which is his main focus. If ever we are to resolve the issue, society and the criminal justice system must come together to completely reevaluate what we consider to be “tough on crime” and redefine the purpose of prisons, strictly punishment or rehabilitation. The focus has to shift from harsh sentencing, stigma, racial discrimination to a basic form of rehabilitation and reduction of the prison system in general. The criminal justice system has to do what they are actually meant to do and focus on rehabilitation measures, and when possible completely stop interaction with the prison system all together.

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

America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, surpassing countries like China, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Though the United States is home to roughly a small percent of the global population, it holds at least a quarter of prison inmates. And the decreasing rate of incarceration appears to be underwhelming in the circumstances of the last few decades. In his book, Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and The Future of Prisons in America, Jonathan Simon, who is a professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, explores the policies that led to the mass imprisonments rates through the stories of prison conditions in California. Simon examines California court decisions by using Brown vs

The United States Criminal Justice System has been what most citizens ask for a reform, but we’ve seen little to no change through the years. Currently, our country has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but almost 25 percent of the total prison population, meaning that we have the highest incarceration rates in the world and it’s been increasing through the past years. The United States of America in 1974 had 100 out of every 100,000 people incarcerated; today, roughly 700 out of the 100,000 people are prison (Madden, 2015, p,14). Mass incarceration has been one of the biggest problems in our Criminal Justice System and one of the biggest issues to be solved. American citizens have has several

In chapter 13 of Adam Benforado Unfair; Throwing Away the Key, the prisoner, the focus of the text is taking an in-depth look into Americans justice system and the love it has for mass incarnation. According to the reading, America only accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of all of the worlds prisoners. (P.g 209). There are 5 times more prisoners in state and federal prisoners than there where in 1978, a scary upward trend. There are several reasons into why Benforado believes the United States has yet to make any progress in deterring and impeded crime. One reason, Benforado suggest is that Americans favorite tools of mass incarceration and solitary confinement do not do what they are intended to do, in fact they do they opposite. Society tends to believe, that to decrease crime, we need to increase the magnitude of the punishment. With a growth in the severity of the punishment, criminals will not see the pay out in

Mass incarceration is a problem around the world, but nowhere else is it more plague than the United States of America, which has one-fourth of its population locked up behind bars. The cause for this problem in the U.S. can be blamed on many things, the "war on drug", private prison facility, tough laws, and mandatory sentencing. However, there are programs that are in place to help reduce the number of individuals in prison, like the "Texas experiment (Justice reinvestment)", and other rehabilitation programs. But those efforts alone cant fix the problem. To decrease the mass incarceration in the U.S. a new approach must be taken, such as; eliminate prison time for low-level crimes, "the three-strike law”, expand parole and probation, and reform private prison.

Name: Lecturer: Course: Date of Submission: Mass incarceration in American Prisons Introduction More than 2.3 million Americans today are prisoners, a population that represents more than a quarter of the number of prisoners in the world. This means that 760 Americans in one hundred thousand are prisoners in America (Detotto and Pulina). The rise in prisoners’ numbers has sharply risen since 1980 with the cost of maintaining the prison going to over four hundred percent within the same period.

Prison’s were established a long time ago to try to put an end to the rapidly increasing crime rate, however over time we are seeing the effectiveness of the most prisons decreasing. As a result of this epidemic, prisons have a higher recidivism rate and over 40 percents are currently operating over maximum capacity (Holder.) Through different types of research, we are finding out that our prison systems are no longer effective and there is a serious need for improvement. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate almost ¼ of the worlds prisoners (Holder.)

The penal system in the United States is often portrayed as being tough on crime, but to many other western nations the penal system in the United States is viewed as a broken system (Mallory, 2006). While this is a tough critique, the American incarceration rate is the highest in the world at over 714 per 100,000 U.S. citizens (Walmsley, 2008). This rate is much higher than many of other western European countries, whose average incarceration rate is only 95 per 100,000 citizens (Stern, 2002; Walmsley, 2008). America’s higher rate of incarceration might be more acceptable if it resulted in a safer society. Consequently, one could reasonably conclude that the United States’ political agenda for increasing punishment to decrease crime yields an ineffective result. Therefore, in the

In “How to Lock up Fewer People,” Marc Mauer and David Cole argue that the prison system in the US needs to be improved. America’s incarceration rate is far too high, and it must be reduced. To make their argument, they use many facts and shocking statistics. The authors state the problem at hand, recognize the obstacles, and push for reform.

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.